Chapter PAPUA to PARDAO of P by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

for China. … They use in Goa in their buying and selling a certaine maner of reckoning or telling. There are Pardawes Xeraphins, and these are silver. They name likewise Pardawes of Gold, and those are not in kinde or in coyne, but onely so named in telling and reckoning: for when they buy and sell Pearles, stones, golde, silver and horses, they name but so many Pardawes, and then you must understand that one Pardaw is sixe Tangas: but in other ware, when you make not your bargaine before hand, but plainely name Pardawes, they are Pardawes Xeraphins of 5 Tangas the peece. They use also to say a Pardaw of Lariins (see LARIN), and are five Lariins for every Pardaw. …”—Ibid.; [Hak. Soc. i. 187].

This extract is long, but it is the completest picture we know of the Goa currency. We gather from the passage (including a part that we have omitted) that in the latter part of the 16th century there were really no national coins there used intermediate between the basaruccho, worth at this time 0.133d., and the pardao. xerafin

worth 50d.¹⁴ The vintens and tangas that were nominally interposed were mere names for certain quantities of basaruccos, or rather of reis represented by basaruccos. And our interpretation of the statement about pardaos of gold in a note above is here expressly confirmed.

[1599.—“Perdaw.” See under TAEL.]

c. 1620.—“The gold coin, str uck by the rais of Bijanagar and Tiling, is called hun and partab.”—Firishta, quoted by Quatremère, in Notices et Exts. xiv. 509.

1643.—“… estant convenu de prix auec luy à sept perdos et demy par mois tant pour mon viure que pour le logis. …”—Mocquet, 284.