YU 



The accumulations of one monarch ^^^ are stated at £1,296,750 ^^* 

 and from this he set apart £406,250 ^35 for the holy edifice of 

 Jaganndth. A similar magnificence surrounded the private life of the 

 Orissa kings. Their five royal residences {Kataks) still live in popular 

 tradition ; and although the story of the prince ^^^^ who died just as he 

 had married his sixty-thousandth wife is doubtless a fable, yet it is 

 a fable that could only be told of a great and luxurious court. 



How came it that the same amount of revenue which made the 

 Orissa kings so rich, now leaves the English Governors of the province 

 so poor ? I have already shown that the great influx of silver, which 

 European trade poured into India, so decreased the value of that metal 

 that it sank from -yLth the value of gold in the twelfth century, to yV^h 

 or jL^h six hundred years later. But even this decrease would not 

 explain the affluence of the Hindu rulers of Orissa as compared 

 with the poverty of the English. It is when we consider the value of 

 silver as expressed, not in gold, but in food, that the explanation 

 becomes clear. Nothing like a regular record of prices under the 

 Gangetic dynasty (1132—1532) exists. But fortunately the maximum 

 prices of food during the great famines, which in almost each genera- 

 tion decimated Orissa, have come down to us, with the proportion 

 which those prices bore to the ordinary rates. In the famine at the 

 beginning of the fourteenth century, unhusked paddy rose to sixty 

 times its average rate, and sold from six shillings and eightpence to 

 nine shillings per hundredweight ^^^ In the next century, under 

 King Kapilendra (1452—1479 LD.), paddy rose to 62i times the 

 ordinary price, and fetched from 6s. 11^(1. to 9s. lid. per hundred- 

 weight 33^ Stirling, one of our first Commissioners in Orissa, obtained 

 an ancient paper showing the exact rates under the Grangetic dynasty. 

 According to it, unhusked paddy sold from just under a penny to 



333 Rij4 Anang Bhim Deo. 334 4,788,000 M&rhas of gold. 



335 1,500,000 Mirhas of gold. Purushottama Chandrikd, As. Res. XV. 

 3''6 Purushottama, in the Solar List of Kings, described on a previous page. 



337 The following calculation, the first of the kind in Lower Bengal history, is 

 submitted with diffidence to Indian statisticians. While I believe that the data here col- 

 lected are absolutely correct, it will be seen that several elements of uncertainty exist. 

 In the famine at the beginning of the fourteenth century, paddy rose to 120 kahans 

 per bharan. The Orissa bharan will be found fully explained in my Stat. Ace. of 

 Puri, App. 1, p. 16. The paddy bharan contains nominally about 9^, but practically 

 9 cwt. A k&han is 1,280 cowries, and 4 k4hans or 5,120 cowries, were taken as the 

 official rate of exchange per rupee when we first obtained Orissa (in 1803). Afterwards 

 this rate was complained of, on the ground that a rupee cost 6 or 7 k&hans instead of 4 ; 

 and this formed one of the alleged causes of the Khurdha rebellion in 1817. (Mr. 

 Commissioner Ewer's Report to Chief Secretary to Government, dated Cuttack, 13th May 

 1818, para. 95, O.R.). At present Ihe rate is 3,5.84 cowries to the rupee, the great 

 difference being due to the fall in the value of silver which has rapidly gone on since we 

 obtained Orissa ; and so far as I can judge, the rate officially fixed in 1 804 of 5,120 cowries 

 per rupee was considerably under the actual rate of exchange. 120 kdhans per bharan of 

 9 cwt. would be 6s. %d. per cwt. at the rate of 4 kihans or 5,120 cowries per rupee, thus : 

 120 klhans = 30 rupees or 60 shillings ; and if 60 shillings buy 9 cwt., the price of 1 

 cwt. will be 6«. %d. On the other hand, if we take the lower or present rate of exchange 

 at 3,584 cowries per rupee, 120 k4hans per bharan will equal 9s. &d. per cwt. If we take 

 the exchange at the alleged old rate of 6 k&hans or 7,680 cowries to the rupee, which I 

 believe to be nearer the truth, the price woiild be reduced to 4«. Qd. per cwt. But in this 

 and the following calculations I have taken the rates of exchange which would give 

 the highest possible prices in the fourteenth century, so as to avoid the risk of overstating 

 the rise in prices since then. 



338 125 k&,hanf, per bharan of 9 cwt., i.e., 6s. ll^d. at 4 kdhans or 5,120 cowries 

 per rupee ; and 9s. \\d. at the lower rate of exchange of 3,684 cowries per rupee. 



