The name may come from the Punjabi ਪਾਓ páo, which was a traditional charge of one quarter of a seer per every maund of grain that was weighed, converted into a tax by Sawan Mal.
[2][3] The pao was recorded in the Bengal Presidency in 1850, but was not considered to be an integral part of the local system of weights.
It was equal to four chitaks, and hence a quarter of a seer: the equivalent Imperial weight at the time was given as 7 oz.
[4] The use of a quarter-seer weight in Ahmedabad had also been noted in a British East India Company survey of South Asian metrology carried out in 1821: the name of the unit was not recorded, but it would have been equivalent to 4 oz.
In Nepal, the pao (Nepali: पाउ, romanized: pāu) was 1⁄12 of a dharni, and equivalent to about 194.4 grams in 1966.