C P Brown: Economic Parameters

19. ECONOMICAL PARAMETERS


The economic parameters are of utmost importance in the quality of life after the advent of marketing concepts, representational value in monetary teams, elimination of barters and self-sufficient village communities. Before 1750 India was in a well-developed stage and a world force in industries and exports of cloths, spices, carpets etc.

The tremendous wealth of this region in particular was known to the entire world It excelled not only in material wealth, but cultural, religious, literary, and political.

Slowly the abject poverty, resulted in unprecedented famines in which children were sold and thousands, moved from place to place, never to return to their homes. In spite of such calamities, CRACK COLLECTORS were employed for extraction of the revenue. A graphic portrayal is given verbatim from a book Letters from Madras…by a lady, 1846, P 144. “The collectors are chiefly bent upon keeping up the revenue, whatever may happen and the people suffer terribly when they have any additional draw back. A ‘Crack collector' as the phrase goes, is one who makes a point of keeping up the revenue in defiance of impossibilities. There may be a famine, a hurricane; half the cultivators may take refuse in another district in despair; there may seem no possible means of obtaining the money; but still the collector bullies, tyrannizes, starves the people – does what he likes in short, and contrives to send the usual sum to the Board of Revenue, and is said to be a ‘crack collector’. This extract is from the book of Shri. Bangorey, a votary of CPB.

Equivalent values, Prices, ratios to understand the standards of living

Only those equivalent parameters which are of some use in evaluation of the economic standard of living in 1820s, as available are given. It is very important to keep these in mind, to visualise the mind boggling loot that went on. In a nut shell, even a hundred Taimurs or Abdalis or Ghaznis could not have looted from India half as much as the British did, in less than a century. But this fact is not being projected by our own writers.

1seer = approx 1kg.
60-80kg of wheat was sold per rupee.
80-160kg of Rice was sold per rupee.
Price of Eggs 40-50 per rupee.
Pay of a Judge and Magistrate: 24000/- per annum 36000/- Pounds
-maximum
With this pay he could employ 7500 people throughout the year! And enjoy their labour.

WRITERS pay – in 1820, 500 pounds per annum (420Rs. per month).
(CPB’s Rank) After six Yrs 1500 pounds (1260Rs per month)
9 years 3000 pounds (2020Rs per month)
After 12 Yrs 4000 pounds (3300Rs per month)

EIC generally employed 30 Writers for civil service at each of the 3 Presidencies.
Number of servants employed by a private family – 57 people at a Total pay of Rs. 290 pm; an average of 4 Rs. per head.

The bulshit of expenditure by DB exposed.
“Catch the bull by the horns” they say to indicate getting into the problem in depth. The time now is ripe to catch this ‘bull’ the manuscript collectors by the Westerners by horns.

Let us list out some pseudo facts: -
1. CPB donated in 1944 to The Madras Library 2440 manuscripts
2. He spent all his money from pay etc.
Plus loans for the literature as per JHS 60000 Rs.
As per GN Reddy 40000 Rs
As Per CPB himself 30000 Rs
3. From letters from KR he spent altogether, on poets about 400 Rs
4. His payment Rates to Pundits
Average 8 Rs.
For 1000 Poems copying in Telugu 5 Rs.
5. He had 15-20 people working with him.
6. He left Andhra areas Cuddapah Masulipatam / Rajahmundry in 1834, December permanently.

Now with above facts, let us make some inferences. My in-depth study of this whole built up story shows that in all his life he spent about 4240/Rs. only on purchase of Manuscripts.

The ghastly Truth is he collected only 441 Manuscripts. Most were at a pittance.

Cost of Manuscripts

If Truth is to be exposed, and explored it is even less. He got one lot of 342 for 230 Rs, he got a donation of a cartload of books, he used to borrow books and return, and KR had not mentioned any payment for any book to anybody. The analysis of GOML records show that CPB could not have acquired more than 500Mss.

Maximum Pays in Cuddapah

Now the tamasha of the literary factory started with the purchase of the Bungalow in Cuddapah. There are 6 names only from Cuddapah / Kambham which surface. These poets were working between 1828 and 1831 and from then on there was no work. So for 36 months Aug 28 – Aug 31, for 6 people, at 15 Rs per person, it comes to 3240 Rs.

Finally when Brownji went to Rajamundry, Masulipatam, Guntur, Trichinapoly etc etc for 4years till he left Andhra, in 1834 let us assume another 5 people working at 15 Rs pm for 4 years (1830 to1834) the pay is 3600 Rs. Thus the pay to all his poets in this literary Mahayagna is a total of 6840 Rs.

Possible Expenditure on the Yajna

Then in 1834 this Daksha Mahayajna got a chopper from Veerabhadra in England and CPB had to get back and come back sheepishly to Madras, never to set foot again into Andhra areas.
Any yajna has to have the Ritvigs. Let us see the confusing array of the poets. Under the heading Brown’s group of Pundits, “To the great sacrificial fire Of the literary yajna, as researchers, servants, scribes those who poured in their great ghee of knowledge as oblation in the FIRE are the pundits who are named”.

To sum up only 4 books were printed out of a maximum of 54 books, which were collected. Balance some 50 books we can presume were copied onto paper after correction.

This is the Great Service people crow on and on.