The pawn and the gram

The pawn is Sri Lanka’s unit for gold: a weight of eight grams, used by shops, pawnbrokers and the dealers’ association. Newspapers still quote the sovereign by it. This page explains what the pawn is, how it relates to the gram and ten grams, and why it remains the unit of trade even when the world price is quoted by the ounce.

The pawn as a weight

A pawn is eight grams of gold. That is a fixed weight, not a coin or a piece of jewellery. When a shop or a pawnbroker quotes a price for a pawn, they mean the metal value of eight grams of fine gold, or of a lower karat if stated. The pawn is the standard unit for quoting gold in Sri Lanka, just as the ounce is the standard unit in international markets.

The pawn has a long history. It is the weight of the British sovereign coin, which circulated in Ceylon and was used as a store of value. The coin itself is no longer common, but the weight remains in use. A Sri Lankan who says “a pawn of gold” means eight grams, and every shop understands it.

The pawn and the gram

The gram is the smaller unit from which the pawn is built. One pawn is eight grams, so the price of a pawn is eight times the price of a gram. The ten-gram weight is a little heavier than a pawn, and it is used for chains and bangles. The relationship is simple: a pawn is eight grams, and ten grams is ten grams. There is no other conversion needed.

The Central Bank publishes the price of a troy ounce, which is about thirty-one grams. To get the gram price, the ounce price is divided by the number of grams in an ounce. To get the pawn price, the gram price is multiplied by eight. The table on other pages does that arithmetic, but the relationship is fixed and does not change.

Why shops and pawnbrokers still quote by it

The pawn is a convenient size for savings. A traditional Sri Lankan household buys gold as a store of value, and the pawn is the unit that matches the amount of money typically saved. It is large enough to be worth storing, but small enough to be affordable. The gram is too small for a transaction, and ten grams is a less familiar weight.

Pawnbrokers also prefer the pawn because it is a standard unit for loans. A customer brings in a piece of jewellery, the pawnbroker weighs it, and the value is quoted per pawn. The loan amount is then calculated as a percentage of the metal value. The pawn makes that calculation simple and consistent across shops.

The older unit: ran

A buyer may hear the word “ran” in a shop or from an older relative. The ran is an older unit for weighing gold, used before the gram became common. It is not used in official quotations today, and it does not appear on any Central Bank publication. It is enough to know that it is a name for a weight, and that it is not the same as a pawn.

A reader who hears “ran” should ask for the weight in grams. The gram is the unit that the Central Bank and the international market use, and it is the unit that this site uses. The ran is a historical curiosity, not a unit for calculation.

The pawn in the newspapers

Newspapers in Sri Lanka report the gold price by the pawn. The headline figure is usually the Sea Street dealers’ price for a pawn of twenty-two karat gold, set by the All Island Jewellery and Pawnbrokers Association. That is a different price from the Central Bank’s reference, because it is set later in the day and it is for a specific karat.

The Central Bank’s reference is for one troy ounce of fine gold. This site divides that ounce into the pawn, but the karat is twenty-four. A reader who wants the twenty-two karat pawn price must multiply the twenty-four karat pawn price by twenty-two over twenty-four. The table on the price-by-karat page shows that directly.

The pawn and the world market

The world gold price is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce. The Central Bank converts that to rupees per ounce. The pawn is a local unit that does not appear in the world market. A trader in London does not quote a pawn; they quote an ounce. The conversion from ounce to pawn is done locally, by the bank, by shops, and by this site.

The conversion is a simple division and multiplication. It does not add any cost. The making charge and the margin are added by the shop, not by the conversion. The pawn is therefore a unit of account, not a different product. The metal is the same; only the weight is different.