Tola
Also: Tolā, ভরি (Bhari)
A long-standing South Asian measure of weight for gold and silver, the tola comes to precisely 11.6638 grams and remains in daily use across India, Pakistan and the Gulf.
Few weight measures have proved as durable in the bullion world as the tola (Hindi: तोला). Rooted in the Indian subcontinent, it has served the gold trade for hundreds of years and still fixes a precise value of 11.6638 grams. That figure was inherited from the silver rupee, whose weight the Mughal administration standardised. You will meet the tola most often today in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and equally on the bullion desks of the Arabian Peninsula, where Dubai and Bahrain are key hubs.
Where the unit comes from
Etymologically the term traces back to the Sanskrit tula, meaning a balance or pair of scales. Under British-Indian weights and measures legislation, the tola became the official reference for precious metals and was pegged to the mass of a single silver rupee. Tying money directly to weight was common practice in pre-modern coinage, and that heritage is precisely why the measure has survived so long in the jewellery and bar markets.
Turning tolas into familiar units
1 tola = 11.6638 g = 180 grain = 0.375 troy ounces
1 troy ounce = 2.6667 tola
10 tola = 116.638 g ≈ 3.75 troy ounces
Feed a figure into the unit converter and it will translate the live gold price into a per-tola value for you.
How tola bars trade internationally
On the market you will find tola bars issued as 1, 5, 10 and 100 tola pieces. Of these the 10-tola bar — roughly 116.6 g — dominates Gulf wholesale dealing and counts as a settled regional benchmark there. It does not, however, carry LBMA Good Delivery status, which demands a minimum of about 350 troy ounces. Typical fineness sits at 999 or 995, i.e. 24 carat fine gold.
| Denomination | Grams | Troy ounces |
|---|---|---|
| 1 tola | 11.66 g | 0.375 ozt |
| 5 tola | 58.32 g | 1.875 ozt |
| 10 tola | 116.64 g | 3.750 ozt |
| 100 tola | 1,166.38 g | 37.50 ozt |
Keeping it apart from similar measures
Do not mix up the tola with the East Asian tael, a unit that ranges from about 37.4 g in Hong Kong up to 50 g in China depending on where it is used. The troy ounce at 31.1035 g and the grain at 0.0648 g share the troy family but represent quite different reference amounts. Every one of these — the tola included — is handled by the melt value calculator.
The short version
Fixed at 11.6638 g, the tola is a well-defined and historically embedded measure that stays central to gold dealing across the subcontinent and the Gulf. If you are purchasing or appraising bars or jewellery originating there, get comfortable moving between the tola and both grams and troy ounces.