The tola also transliterated as tolah or tole, is a traditional South Asian unit of mass

Mass

Mass can be defined as a quantitive measure of the resistance an object has to change in its velocity.In physics, mass commonly refers to any of the following three properties of matter, which have been shown experimentally to be equivalent:...

, now standardised as 180 troy grains

Troy weight

Troy weight is a system of units of mass customarily used for precious metals, gemstones, and black powder.There are 12 troy ounces per troy pound, rather than the 16 ounces per pound found in the more common avoirdupois system. The troy ounce is 480 grains, compared with the avoirdupois ounce,...

  or exactly 3/8 troy ounce

Troy ounce

The troy ounce is a unit of imperial measure. In the present day it is most commonly used to gauge the weight of precious metals. One troy ounce is nowadays defined as exactly 0.0311034768 kg = 31.1034768 g. There are approximately 32.1507466 troy oz in 1 kg...

. It was the base unit of mass in the British Indian system of weights and measures introduced in 1833, although it had been in use for much longer. It was also used in Aden

Aden

Aden is a seaport city in Yemen, located by the eastern approach to the Red Sea , some 170 kilometres east of Bab-el-Mandeb. Its population is approximately 800,000. Aden's ancient, natural harbour lies in the crater of an extinct volcano which now forms a peninsula, joined to the mainland by a...

 and Zanzibar

Zanzibar

Zanzibar ,Persian: زنگبار, from suffix bār: "coast" and Zangi: "bruin" ; is a semi-autonomous part of Tanzania, in East Africa. It comprises the Zanzibar Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of the mainland, and consists of numerous small islands and two large ones: Unguja , and Pemba...

: in the latter, one tola was equivalent to 11.398 grams (0.9772 British tolas, 175.90 troy grains).

The tola is a Vedic

Vedic period

The Vedic period was a period in history during which the Vedas, the oldest scriptures of Hinduism, were composed. The time span of the period is uncertain. Philological and linguistic evidence indicates that the Rigveda, the oldest of the Vedas, was composed roughly between 1700–1100 BCE, also...

 measure, with the name derived from the Sanskrit

Sanskrit

Sanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...

 tol (तोलः root तुल्) meaning "weighing" or "weight". One tola was traditionally the weight of 100 ratti

Ratti

A ratti is a traditional Indian unit of mass measurement, and has now been standardized as 0.12125 gram. It was measured by ratti seed. This seed is actually "Abrus precatorius" seed.*1 tola = 12 masha or 11.67 gram...

 (ruttee) seeds, and its exact weight varied according to locality. However, it is also a convenient mass for a coin: several pre-colonial coins, including the currency of Akbar the Great

Akbar the Great

Akbar , also known as Shahanshah Akbar-e-Azam or Akbar the Great , was the third Mughal Emperor. He was of Timurid descent; the son of Emperor Humayun, and the grandson of the Mughal Emperor Zaheeruddin Muhammad Babur, the ruler who founded the Mughal dynasty in India...

 (1556–1605), had a mass of "one tola" within slight variation. The very first rupee

Rupee

The rupee is the common name for the monetary unit of account in India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan, Mauritius, Seychelles, Maldives, and formerly in Burma, and Afghanistan. Historically, the first currency called "rupee" was introduced in the 16th century...

 , minted by Sher Shah Suri

Sher Shah Suri

Sher Shah Suri , birth name Farid Khan, also known as Sher Khan , was the founder of the short-lived Sur Empire in northern India, with its capital at Delhi, before its demise in the hands of the resurgent Mughal Empire...

 (1540–45), had a mass of 178 troy grains, or about 1% less than the British tola. The British East India Company

British East India Company

The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...

 issued a silver

Silver

Silver is a metallic chemical element with the chemical symbol Ag and atomic number 47. A soft, white, lustrous transition metal, it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element and the highest thermal conductivity of any metal...

 rupee coin of 180 troy grains, and this became the practical standard mass for the tola well into the 20th century.

The British tola of 180 troy grains (from 1833) can be seen as more of a standardisation than a redefinition: the previous standard in the Bengal Presidency

Bengal Presidency

The Bengal Presidency originally comprising east and west Bengal, was a colonial region of the British Empire in South-Asia and beyond it. It comprised areas which are now within Bangladesh, and the present day Indian States of West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Orissa and Tripura.Penang and...

, the system of "sicca weights", was the mass of one Murshidabad

Murshidabad

Murshidabad is a city in Murshidabad district of West Bengal state in India. The city of Murshidabad is located on the southern bank of the Bhagirathi, a distributary of the Ganges River. It was the capital of undivided Bengal during the Mughal rule. Nawabs of Bengal used to rule Bengal from this...

 rupee, 179.666 troy grains. For the larger weights used in commerce (in the Bengal Presidency), the variation in the pre-1833 standards was found to be greater than the adjustment.

The tola formed the base for units of mass under the British Indian system, and was also the standard measure of gold and silver bullion

Precious metal

A precious metal is a rare, naturally occurring metallic chemical element of high economic value.Chemically, the precious metals are less reactive than most elements, have high lustre, are softer or more ductile, and have higher melting points than other metals...

. Although the tola has been officially replaced by metric units since 1956, it is still in current use, and is a popular denomination for gold bullion bars in Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

, India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

 and Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

, with a ten tola bar being the most commonly traded. In Nepal, minting of tola size gold coins continue up to the present, even though the currency of Nepal is called rupee and has no official connection to the tola. It is also used in most gold markets (bazars/souks) in the United Arab Emirates

United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates, abbreviated as the UAE, or shortened to "the Emirates", is a state situated in the southeast of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia on the Persian Gulf, bordering Oman, and Saudi Arabia, and sharing sea borders with Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran.The UAE is a...

 and in all the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf

Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf

The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf , also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council , is a political and economic union of the Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf and constituting the Arabian Peninsula, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates...

 (GCC) countries.

The word tola is also the slang term for a measure of charas (Indian hashish

Hashish

Hashish is a cannabis preparation composed of compressed stalked resin glands, called trichomes, collected from the unfertilized buds of the cannabis plant. It contains the same active ingredients but in higher concentrations than unsifted buds or leaves...

)