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&c. We presume that the Great Duke (audax omnia perpeti!) has used it in the Anglicised form at the head of this article; for though we cannot find it in his Despatches, Gurwoods Explanation of Indian Terms gives Parbutty, writer to the Patell. [See below.] 1567. That no unbeliever shall serve as scrivener, shroff (xarrafo), mocuddum, naique (see NAIK), peon, parpatrim, collector (saccador), constable (? corrector), interpreter, procurator, or solicitor in court, nor in any other office or charge by which they may in any way whatever exercise authority over Christians. Decree 27 of the Sacred Council of Goa, in Arch. Port. Orient. fasc. 4. PARDAO, s. This was the popular name among the Portuguese of a gold coin from the native mints of Western India, which entered largely into the early currency of Goa, and the name of which afterwards attached to a silver money of their own coinage, of constantly degenerating value. There could hardly be a better word with which to associate some connected account of the coinage
of Portuguese India, as the pardao runs through its whole history, and I give some space to the subject,
not with any idea of weaving such a history, but in order to furnish a few connected notes on the subject,
and to correct some flagrant errors of writers to whose works I naturally turned for help in such a special
matter, with little result except that of being puzzled and misled, and having time occupied in satisfying
myself regarding the errors alluded to. The subject is in itself a very difficult one, perplexed as it is by
the rarity or inaccessibility of books dealing with it, by the excessive rarity (it would seem) of specimens,
by the large use in the Portuguese settlements of a variety of native coins in addition to those from the
Goa mint,2 by the frequent shifting of nomenclature in the higher coins and constant degeneration of
value in the coins that retained old names. I welcomed as a hopeful aid the appearance of Dr. Gerson
DAcunhas Contributions to the Study of Indo-Chinese Numismatics. But though these contributions
afford some useful facts and references, on the whole, from the rarity with which they give data for the
intrinsic value of the gold and silver coins, and from other defects, they seem to me to leave the subject
in utter chaos. Nor are the notes which Mr. W. de G. Birch appends, in regard to monetary values, to
his translation of Alboquerque, more to be commended. Indeed Dr. DAcunha, when he goes astray,
seems sometimes to have followed Mr. Birch.
And the Varaha weighed about 1 Mithkal (see MISCALL), equivalent to 2 dinars Kopeki.
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