[32] The bahar (from _bahara_, a word of Sanscrit origin) has long been in quite general use in the East. The word is found variously spelled, "bahare," "bare," and "vare." Its value varies in different localities, there being two distinct weights--one, the great bahar, used for weighing cloves, other spices, etc.; and the small bahar, about 150 kilos or 400 pounds avoirdupois, used for weighing quicksilver, various metals, certain drugs, etc. John Saris, writing of the commerce of Bantam, says: "A sacke is called a Timbang, and two Timbanges is one Peecull, three Peeculls is a small bahar, and foure Peeculls and an halfe a great Bahar, which is foure hundred fortie fiue Cattees and an halfe." At Malacca and Achen, the great bahar is said by an old Dutch voyageur to contain 200 cates, each cate containing 26 taiels or 38 1/2 Portuguese ounces, weak; the small bahar, also 200 cates, but each cate of only 22 taiels or 32 1/2 ounces, strong; while in China the bahar contained 300 cates, which were equivalent to the 200 cates of Malacca. Instructions to Francois Wittert, commissary at Bantam, gives the following table for weights: 1 picol = 2 Basouts or Basauts = 100 catis; 1 hare = 9 basauts = 4 1/2 picols--which should have amounted to 600 Dutch pounds, but in the equivalent then rendered was only 540 pounds. Dutch annals also give equivalents in Dutch pounds as 380, 525, 550, and 625. Modern English equivalents in pounds avoirdupois for various places are: Amboyna, 597.607; Arabia--(Bet-el-falsi), 815.625, (Jidda), 183.008, (Mocha), 450; Bantam--(ordinary) 396, (for pepper) 406.780; Batavia, 610.170. See Satow's notes on _Voyage of John Saris to Japan_ (Hakluyt Society's publications, London, 1900), pp. 212, 213; _Recueil des voyages_ (Amsterdam, 1725); and Clarke's _Weights, Measures, and Money_ (N.Y., 1888). [33] Apparently referring to the hostilities in the preceding year between the Dutch and English at Pulovay, a small island near Banda (see _ante_, note 8). See list of Dutch forts in 1612-1613 in the Moluccas, in _Voyage of John Saris_. [34] A court minute of the English East India Company, dated November 12, 1614, has the following in regard to Dutch opposition to the English in the East Indies: "Yett he [_i.e._, John Saris] found the Dutch very opposite to hinder the English in their proceedings all that ever they might, as well by vndersellinge, contrarye to their promyse, at [_sic_] by all other means of discouradgement, makeinge shewe of waunte without any occasion."