OLD GOA BOOKS QUOTED AT A PREMIUM
by Frederick Noronha

Panjim: Books from Goa, specially those dating back some centuries, have gained a premium advantage and are being quoted at tens of thousands of rupees each in the international market.

Goa incidentally was the first place in Asia to have a printing press of its own, and due to the early history of colonialism in this region there are quite a few books dating back to the seventeenth century or earlier.

Many old books related to Goa are available for sale, for instance, on the Internet site http://www.bibliocity.com/ If one uses the word "Goa" in a search, it is possible to locate quite an unexpected range of books.

Some of the centuries-old books on Goa are priced at whopping sums -- for as much as Rs 17,000 each and, in one case, even above a quarter million rupees!

One of the oldest books on the list is also the costliest. It is a book of Jesuit letters -- Lettere Annve D'Etiopia, Malabar, Brasil e Goa, Dall'anno 1620, and is nearly three hundredand eighty years old.

Published in Rome by Francesco Corbelletti, it is currently priced at 3,750 pounds, which is about Rs 2.5 lakh!

There are also other high-priced books on Goa in the international antique-book market.

Jose Nicolau da Fonseca's 1878 'An Historical and Archaeological Sketch of the City of Goa' is priced at Rs 17,000. This book -- now available as a reprint in India -- is preceded by a 'short statistical account' of the territory of Goa. It was published by Thacker & Co in Bombay.

Another interesting -- but also highly priced -- item is an antique map. It is a plan of the City of Goa, dating back to 1747, and is itself priced at around ten thousand rupees!

Another antique map of Goa (Mallet) is priced at $73 (Rs 3000). It was published in 1683. B Penrose's 'Goa, Rainha do Oriente' (or, Goa, The Queen of the East) published in Lisbon in 1960 is now being quoted at nearly two thousand rupees.

C.R.da Costa's 'Les Communautis des Villages a Goa', published in Lisbon in 1892, is priced at a little under six thousand rupees.

D.G.Dalgado's treatise on the flora of Goa and Savantwadi is also currently highly priced and valued internationally. Bibliocity offers this book for a little under seven thousand rupees.

It deals with medicinal plants, and is titled 'Flora de Goa e Savantvadi, Catalogo Methodico das Plantas Medicinaes, Alimentares e Industraes'.

In the early stages of colonialism, the Portuguese and other Western powers are known to have learnt considerable facts from the Indian medicial system and use of plant-based medicines here.

Charles Dellon's account of the Inquisition at Goa (1812) is priced at over nine thousand rupees. Another edition, printed in London in 1688, is priced at a higher $450 (approx Rs 19,000).

Gabriel Dellon's 'Relation de L'Inquisition de Goa', published from Paris in 1688, is however priced at a little over eight thousand rupees.

Even Sarto Esteves' fairly recent 'Goa and Its Future' (1966) costs eight hundred rupees. Mariano Feio's anthropological study 'As Castas Hindus de Goa' (Hindu Castes of Goa), Lisbon-1979 is priced at US$35 (Rs 1470).

Other books listed on Bibliocity's catalogue on the Internet include titles on Goa's first elections (Halappa, $25), the liberation of Goa (Gaitonde, $30), Golden Goa (Marg, $27.50), Inside Goa (Manohar Malgonkar, $35), and Goa Sings (Michael Martins, $10).