Besides the gradual depreciation of the Portugal rei, so prominently noticed in this paper, there was introduced in Goa a reduction of the rei locally below the rei of Portugal in the ratio of 15 to 8. I do not know the history or understand the object of such a change, nor do I see that it affects the calculations in this article. In a table of values of coins current in Portuguese India, given in the Annaes Maritimos of 1844, each coin is valued both in Reis of Goa and in Reis of Portugal, bearing the above ratio. My kind correspondent, Dr. J. N. Fonseca, author of the capital History of Goa, tells me that this was introduced in the beginning of the 17th century, but that he has yet found no document throwing light upon it. It is a matter quite apart from the secular depreciation of the rei.
Thus Alboquerque, returning to Europe in 1504, gives a "Moorish" pilot, who carried him by a new course straight from Cannanore to Mozambique, a [buckshish] of 50 cruzados; this is explained as £5—a mild munificence for such a feat. In truth it was nearly £24, the cruzado being about the same as the sequin (see i. p. 17).
The mint at Goa was farmed out by the same great man, after the conquest, for 600,000 reis, amounting, we are told, to £125. It was really £670 (iii. 41).
Alboquerque demands as ransom to spare Muscat "10,000 xerafins of gold." And we are told by the translator that this ransom of a wealthy trading city like Muscat amounted to £625. The coin in question is the ashrafi, or gold dīnār, as much as, or more than the sequin in value, and the sum more than £5000 (i. p. 82).
In the note to the first of these cases it is said that the cruzado is "a silver coin (formerly gold), now equivalent to 480 reis, or about 2s. English money, but probably worth much more relatively in the time of Dalboquerque." "Much more relatively" means of course that the 2s. had much more purchasing power.
This is a very common way of speaking, but it is often very fallaciously applied. The change in purchasing power in India generally till the beginning of last century was probably not very great. There is a curious note by Gen. Briggs in his translation of Firishta, comparing the amount stated by Firishta to have been paid by the Bāhmanī King, about A.D. 1470, as the annual cost of a body of 500 horse, with the cost of a British corps of Irregular horse of the same strength in Briggs's own time (say about 1815). The Bāhmanī charge was 350,000 Rs.; the British charge 219,000 Rs. A corps of the same strength would now cost the British Government, as near as I can calculate, 287,300 Rs.
The price of an Arab horse imported into India (then a great traffic) was in Marco Polo's time about three times what it was in our own, up to 1850.
The salary of the Governor at Goa, c. 1550, was 8000 cruzados, or nearly £4000 a year; and the salaries of the commandants of the fortresses of Goa, of Malacca, of Dio, and of Bassain, 600,000 reis, or about £670.
The salary of Ibn Batuta, when Judge of Delhi, about 1340, was 1000 silver tankas or dinārs as he calls them (practically 1000 rupees) a month, which was in addition to an assignment of villages bringing in 5000 tankas a year. And yet he got into debt in a very few years to the tune of 55,000 tankas—say £5,500!