Pennyweight Pennyweight A pennyweight (abbreviated dwt, from denarius weight) is a unit of mass that is equal to 24 grains, of a troy ounce, of a troy pound, approximately 0.054857 avoirdupois ounce and exactly 1.55517384 grams. In the Middle Ages, a British penny's weight was literally, as well as monetarily, of an ounce and of a pound of sterling silver. At that time, the pound in use was the Tower pound, equal to 7,680 Tower grains (also known as wheat grains). The medieval English pennyweight was thus equal to 32 Tower grains. When Troy weights replaced Tower weights in 1527, the
Five Grains behavior towards the Five Grains could take on political meaning: as a protest against the overthrow of the Shang Dynasty by the Zhou, Boyi and Shuqi ostentatiously refused to eat the Five Grains. Such rejections of the grains for political reasons underwent a complex development into the concept of "bigu", the esoteric Taoist practice of achieving immortality by avoiding certain foods. By the time of written records, the development of agriculture in China had become greatly mythologized. There were various traditions regarding which of the early Chinese leaders introduced the Five Grains: Shennong (神农) ( "Divine Farmer") was a Chinese