&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, Gurwood’s 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.
1800.—“In case
of failure in the payment of these instalments, the crops are seized, and sold by the Parputty or accomptant
of the division.”—Buchanan’s Mysore, ii. 151–2. The word is elsewhere explained by Buchanan, as “the
head person of a Hobly in Mysore.” A Hobly [Canarese and Malayal. hobali] is a sub-division of a
talook (i. 270).
[1803.—“Neither has any one a right to compel any of the inhabitants, much less the
particular servants of the government, to attend him about the country, as the soubahdar (see SOUBADAR)
obliged the parbutty and pateel (see PATEL) to do, running before his horse.”—Wellington, Desp.
i. 323. (Stanf. Dict.).]
1878.—“The staff of the village officials … in most places comprises the following
members … the crier (parpoti). …”—Fonseca, Sketch of Goa, 21–22.
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
D’Acunha’s 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. D’Acunha, when he goes astray,
seems sometimes to have followed Mr. Birch.
The word pardao is a Portuguese (or perhaps an indigenous)
corruption of Skt. pratapa, ‘splendour, majesty,’ &c., and was no doubt taken, as Dr. D’Acunha says,
from the legend on some of the coins to which the name was applied, e.g. that of the Raja of Ikkeri
in Canara: Sri Pratapa krishna-raya.
A little doubt arises at first in determining to what coin the name
pardao was originally attached. For in the two earliest occurrences of the word that we can quote—on
the one hand Abdurrazzak, the Envoy of Shah Rukh, makes the partab (or pardao) half of the Varaha
(‘boar,’ so called from the Boar of Vishnu figured on some issues), hun, or what we call pagoda;—whilst
on the other hand, Ludovico Varthema’s account seems to identify the pardao with the pagoda
itself. And there can be no doubt that it was to the pagoda that the Portuguese, from the beginning of
the 16th century, applied the name of pardao d’ouro. The money-tables which can be directly formed
from the statements of Abdurrazzak and Varthema respectively are as follows:3
ABDURRAZZAK (A.D.
1443).| 3 Jitals (copper) . | = | 1 Tar (silver). |
| 6 Tars … | = | 1 Fanam (gold). |
| 10 Fanams . . | = | 1 Partab. |
| 2
Partabs . . | = | 1 Varaha. |
And the Varaha weighed about 1 Mithkal (see MISCALL), equivalent to 2 dinars Kopeki.
VARTHEMA
(A.D. 1504–5).| 16 Cas (see CASH) | = | 1 Tare (silver). |
| 16 Tare . . | = | 1 Fanam (gold). |
| 20 Fanams . . | = | 1 |
