Abrus precatorius beans (also known as rosary peas or jequirity beans) are shiny, scarlet-red seeds with a black spot. Other less common varieties can come as a white seed with a black eye or a black seed with a white eye. These plants are native to Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Pacific region but have been introduced to other locations including Florida and Hawaii. - Poison Control Ask your grand-parents how they weighed and bought jewellers from their local sonar sunhar, and they will tell you of the virtues of the black and red ratti seed which was used as a consistent weight measure by all jewellers in India, in the older days. See the rati seed in its seed pod at the Wilderness Orchard in Delhi in this video... Ratti (Sanskrit: raktika) is a traditional Indian unit of measurement for mass. Based on the nominal weight of a Gunja seed (Abrus precatorius), it measured approximately 1.8 or 1.75 grains or 0.1215 g as modern standardized weight.[citation needed] It is still used by the jewellers in the Indian Subcontinent. Indus weights were based on binary multiples of Masha which was equal to 8 Ratti Ratti weights of Ancient Indian coins Gandharan Satamana of 100 Rattis (11-12 g) Mauryan Karshapana of 32 Rattis (3.5 g) Ratti based measurement is the oldest measurement system in the Indian subcontinent, it was highly favoured because of the uniformity of its weights. The smallest weight in the Indus Valley civilization was equal to 8 rattis, (historically called Masha). The Indus weights were the multiples of Masha and the 16th factor was the most common weight of 128 Ratti or 13.7 g. A unit called Śatamāna, literally a 'hundred standard', representing 100 krishnalas is mentioned in Satapatha Brahmana. A later commentary on Katyayana Srautasutra explains that a Śatamāna could also be 100 rattis. A Satamana (Śatamāna, literally "hundred measures") was used as a standard weight of silver coins of Gandhara between 600–200 BCE.[4], rest of the Indian currency weights like Karshapanas were also based on the weight of ratti. Gold coins excavated from southeast Asia have been analysed as following the ratti based weight system as well. During the period of Kautilya, the 32 ratti standard was called as Purana or Dharana which was in vogue before the Mauryan empire, but Kautilya provides a new standard of 80 ratti called Svarna, which was widely adopted from that time onwards. The ball weights from jeweller's hoard discovered from Taxila conform to the 32 ratti standard also called Purana by Kautilya, while the Mathura weights (Dated from 1st century BC-2nd century AD) with Brahmi numeral 100 (100 svarna or 100 karsha) conforms with the new svarna standard. ''The Great Mogul Diamond'' described by Tavernier weighed 319.5 Ratti Mughal empire employed Ratti as a unit of measure for the weight of precious stones such as diamonds. Around 1665 the Shah’s son, Aurangzeb, showed a diamond to the famous jeweler and world traveler Jean Baptiste Tavernier.