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Ratti Vs Carat

Internationally Gems are generally weighted in CARATS. Carat being a measure of weight which means on metric scale 200 milligrams. This is a standard system and is recognized worldwide.
However, in India, though for business dealings carat is being used, but for retail sales the traditional concept of ‘RATTI’ is still in use. Ratti is approximately 182 milligrams. In few areas 120 milligrams is said to be a Ratti. (so a ratti can be 0.9 carat or 0.6 carat depending on where do u live)

Similarly the Bigah (length) and cents (area) vary from state to state… and worse a lot of the government’s land records are in these unstandardized units of measurement… Why does not ISI (Indian Standards Institute) goes ahead and standardizes these units… or abolish it… lest they create confusion.

BTW guys you might also like Carl Sagan’s audio documentary Pale Blue Dot

12 replies on “Ratti Vs Carat”

Ankur: I was never aware that carat, apart from being a measure of the purity of gold, was a measure of the weight of gems! Thanks for educating me.

In Maharashtra, the weight of gold is often measured in what is called ‘toLa’ (pronounced with a heavy L). I wonder if this is related to carat or ratti?

luckily tola is standardized… 1 tola means 11.664 g. but unfortunately the other indigenous units are not standardized.

btw u would have heard the 4C of diamonds… cut, color, carat (weight) and clarity.

I am looking for 6 Ratti Blue sapphire (neelam)But don’t understand how much carat it will be in Srilanka?

be careful a lot of blue saphire are now being lab created. plus large stones should have a certificate of origin with them.
on price… check online there is very little country to country variation in price

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