292 PRICES 



• Prices and Wages in India.' This valuable publica- 

 tion contains, among other matter, the prices of the 

 most important food-grains in the principal districts 

 of each province, from the year 1861 to the date of 

 issue. ' Prices and Wages' may be had in London or 

 Calcutta for 2s. (R. 1/8), and it is therefore easy for 

 any student to trace the course of rupee prices in the 

 last half century for himself. For historical purposes, 

 however, it is desirable to go back earlier than 1861, 

 and I have therefore printed in the Appendix such 

 price-lists as I have been able to collect for the years 

 before 1861. 



For the United Provinces I have not been able to 

 find any continuous records going back earlier than 

 the beginning of the nineteenth century — that is 

 to say, for the period anterior to the establishment 

 of British rule. There is in existence, however, a 

 very interesting record of prices in Bengal in the 

 eighteenth century, and as this record is sometimes 

 referred to, but has never to my knowledge been 

 reprinted, I insert it here. Although in many re- 

 spects the economic conditions of Bengal and the 

 Ganges Doab have always been different, yet I can 

 see no reason for supposing that during the eighteenth 

 century the value of the precious metals differed in 

 the two provinces ; and, therefore, the table which 

 is here reprinted may serve as a basis for conjecturing 

 the value of money in Upper India before the estab- 

 lishment of British rule. 



The table was prepared by G. Herklots, Esq., Fiscal 

 of Chinsurah, and published in Gleanings in Science, a 

 Calcutta periodical, which was issued monthly from 

 1829 to 1831. There is a brief note at the head of the 

 paper to explain that the table shows, from authentic 

 documents, the market price of the following commo- 

 dities in Lower Bengal in one month in each year, 

 for which generally the month of August was 

 selected : 



