NOTE B.
Anna’s remarks on the contrast between the present dearth and the “good old times” of cheap bread, when the rupee went so much further than it does now, are very characteristic. The complaint, too, is very universal, and is to be heard in the household of public functionaries, the highest as well as the lowest, in every grade of native society, and more or less in all parts of India.
The Narrator’s notion, that “The English fixed the rupee at sixteen annas,” is another specimen of a very widespread Indian popular delusion. The rupee always consisted of sixteen annas, for the anna means only the sixteenth part of anything, but to the poor the great matter for consideration in all questions of currency is the quantity of small change they can get for the coin in which their wages are paid. Formerly this used to fluctuate with the price of copper, and the quantity of copper change which a silver rupee would fetch varied as copper was cheap or dear, and was always greatest when the copper currency was most debased. The English introduced all over India a uniform currency of copper as well as of silver, and none of course were greater gainers in the long run by this uniformity than the very poor.
NOTE C.
I am unable, at present, to give either the native words or music for this curious little Calicut song. The second part is probably of Portuguese origin, or it may have been derived from the Syrian Christians, who have been settled on that coast since the earliest ages.
The English translation of the words, as explained to me by Anna, is as follows:
PART I.
THE SONG FROM THE SHIP.
(To be sung by one or more voices.)