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,[[208]] 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. pratāpa, '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 Pratāpa krishṇa-rāya.
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 Abdurrazzāk, the Envoy of Shāh Rukh, makes the partāb (or pardāo) half of the Varāha ('boar,' so called from the Boar of Vishnu figured on some issues), hūn, 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 Abdurrazzāk and Varthema respectively are as follows:[[209]]
| Abdurrazzak (A.D. 1443). | |
| 3 Jitals (copper) | = 1 Tar (silver). |
| 6 Tars | = 1 Fanam (gold). |
| 10 Fanams | = 1 Partāb. |
| 2 Partābs | = 1 Varāha. |
And the Varāha weighed about 1 Mithḳāl (see [MISCALL]), equivalent to 2 dīnārs Kopekī.
| Varthema (A.D. 1504-5). | |
| 16 Cas (see [CASH]) | = 1 Tare (silver). |
| 16 Tare | = 1 Fanam (gold). |
| 20 Fanams | = 1 Pardao. |
And the Pardao was a gold ducat, smaller than the seraphim (see [XERAFINE]) of Cairo (gold dīnār), but thicker.
The question arises whether the varāha of Abdurrazzāk was the double pagoda, of which there are some examples in the S. Indian coinage, and his partāb therefore the same as Varthema's, i.e. the pagoda itself; or whether his varāha was the pagoda, and his partāb a half-pagoda. The weight which he assigns to the varāha, "about one mithḳāl," a weight which may be taken at 73 grs., does not well suit either one or the other. I find the mean weight of 27 different issues of the (single) hūn or pagoda, given in Prinsep's Tables, to be 43 grs., the maximum being 45 grs. And the fact that both the Envoy's varāha and the Italian traveller's pardao contain 20 fanams is a strong argument for their identity.[[210]]
In further illustration that the pardao was recognised as a half hūn or pagoda, we quote in a foot-note "the old arithmetical tables in which accounts are still kept" in the south, which Sir Walter Elliot contributed to Mr. E. Thomas's excellent Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, illustrated, &c.[[211]]