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Picul

Picul
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 擔
Simplified Chinese 担
Vietnamese name
Vietnamese đảm
Korean name
Hangul 담
Hanja 擔
Japanese name
Kanji 担
Hiragana たん
Malay name
Malay pikul
Indonesian name
Indonesian pikul

A picul /ˈpɪkəl/ or tam is a traditional Asian unit of weight, defined as "a shoulder-load, as much as a man can carry on a shoulder-pole".

The word picul appeared as early as the mid 9th century in Javanese.

Following Spanish, Portuguese, British and most especially the Dutch colonial maritime trade, the term picul was both a convenient unit, and a lingua franca unit that was widely understood and employed by other Austronesians (in modern Malaysia and the Philippines) and their centuries-old trading relations with Indians, Chinese and Arabs. It remained a convenient reference unit for many commercial trade journals in the 19th century. One example is Hunts Merchant Magazine of 1859 giving detailed tables of expected prices of various commodities, such as coffee, e.g. one picul of Javanese coffee could be expected to be bought from 8 to 8.50 Spanish dollars in Batavia and Singapore.

As for any traditional measurement unit, the exact definition of the picul varied historically and regionally. In imperial China and later, the unit was used for a measure equivalent to 100 catties.

In 1831, the Dutch East Indies authorities acknowledged local variances in the definition of the pikul. In Hong Kong, one picul was defined in Ordinance No. 22 of 1844 as  133 1⁄3 avoirdupois pounds. The modern definition is exactly 60.478982 kilograms. The measure was and remains used on occasion in Taiwan where it is defined as 60 kg. The last, a measure of rice, was 20 picul, or 1,200 kg.


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