ABSTRACT
J , V of India,1 drawn up in the year 15 54 by Antonio Nunez, Accountant of the Treasury at Goa. As an official document based on the knowledge acquired in the course of half a century, this record obviously carries much higher authority than the vague and fragmentary statements of individual travellers ; but, unfortunately for the present purpose, it is confined to the places where the Portuguese possessed settlements, and consequently it ignores the kingdom of Golconda, passing from Pulicat to the settlements in Bengal. For Golconda, the earliest satisfactory data known to me are those contained in the Dutch Relations included in the present volume. These data are clearly authoritative, as being furnished by men whose only business in the country was to buy and sell ; but I have tested them by working through the extant invoices2 of the Dutch vessels which sailed from the East Coast between 1615 and 1624. These invoices furnish a large number of equations, quantities and values being frequently given in both Indian and Dutch units, and they definitely establish the conclusion that the figures given by Schorer represent accurately the commercial units in use at this period ; but allowance must be made for the fact that the Dutch, like the Portuguese, usually neglected small fractions, so that it is impossible to set out the equivalents of Indian units in the due number of decimal places. The equivalents given in this Appendix will not then in all cases satisfy the professed metrologist, but they are sufficiently near the truth for ordinary readers.
