Seer

Indian subcontinentTraditional unit (still used in some regions)

80 tolas, about 933 g. A traditional South Asian measure of grain and other goods.

1 seer = 0.933104304 kilograms (exactly).

About the seer

Over large parts of Asia the seer served as the everyday grocer's weight, used for rice, wheat, ghee and similar goods, and in some places also as a measure of volume. Under the Mughals a seer was 30 dams and 40 seers made a maund. Each British presidency later kept its own version. Bengal reckoned the seer as 16 chitaks of 5 tolas, which is 80 tolas.

The government seer of British India comes to about 0.93310 kg, the figure used here, and the same value survives in Pakistan, Nepal and Aden. After independence India's Standards of Weights and Measures Act of 1956 set the seer at 1.25 kg instead, and then metric weights replaced it. Other values are far apart: Afghanistan uses about 7.066 kg, Iran has a metric seer of 75 g and a sihr of 160 g, and in Sri Lanka the seer is a capacity of about 1.06 L. The word seer must therefore always be tied to a place and date.

Sources: Wikipedia: Seer (unit); Wikipedia: Tola (unit)

Seer conversion chart

1 seer expressed in every other weight & mass unit:

More Indian subcontinent units

• tola (weight & mass)
• maund (weight & mass)
• guntha (area)
• cent (India) (area)
• marla (area)
• kanal (area)
• ghati (time)
• muhurta (time)
• prahar (time)
• lakh (counting & quantity)
• crore (counting & quantity)
• arab (Indian) (counting & quantity)
• kharab (Indian) (counting & quantity)

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