Asiatic Coins

Chinese.

In spite of the very early references to money in Chinese literature, there is no reason to believe that the earliest coins are much older than the seventh century B.C. that is to say that coinage originated in the Far East about the same time as it did in the west and independently. The earliest Chinese coins are small bronze spades and knives, copies of the spades and bill hooks and other small articles of husbandry that had been used for barter. The knives are about six inches long and bear the value and name of authority issuing it ; pu money, a modified form of the spades circulated widely in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. Small change was supplied by cowrie shells in this period, as it had been long before the invention of a coinage. There was an issue of bronze cowries in the 7th century B.C. Round money with a hole in the centre was issued as early as the 4th century but it was not till 221 B.C. that the reforming Shah Huang Ti (221-210 B.C.) superseded all other currencies by the issue of round coins of half an ounce (pan-liang), which were continued by the Han dynasty. This coin became gradually reduced and debased and was replaced in 118 B.C. by the Emperor Wu Ti's five-chu piece which remained the coin of China for the next eight centuries; a break in the monotony of the regular coinage is formed by the archaistic innovations of the usurper Wang Mang (A.D. 9-22) who issued a modified form of the pu and knife currency and a new round coin (ho tsien). The history of Chinese coins is the his tory of a series of gradual debasement of the government cur rency until it is overwhelmed by the increasing activity of forgers and a new coin is instituted. On one occasion at least the most skilful of the forgers were given work at the government mints. The five-chu piece lasted till the rise of the T'ang dynasty when the emperor Kau Tsu in 618 issued the Kai-yuan coin (Pl.

which gave the coinage of all the Far East its form till the end of the i9th century—a round coin with a square hole and a four character legend of the form "current money of (regnal period)." The Southern Sung dynasty (A.D. 1137-1278) dated their coins on the reverse in regnal years and the Ming dynasty (A.D. 1368-1628) put the mint name on the reverse as did the Ching dynasty (A.D. 1628-1911), the latter giving it in Manchu characters. Paper money has been in use in China since the 9th century and was current almost to the exclusion of regular coins under certain of the Mongol emperors, for example Kublai Khan, whose paper money is described by Marco Polo. For over 2,000 years the copper cash with occasional multiples of it was the only coinage of China ; gold and silver were current by weight only, the latter in the form of boat shaped ingots. The monotony of the series is only rarely broken as for example by the nail-mark of the em peror Wen-Teh on the Kai-yuan pieces, an issue of lead coins in the 12th century and the issue of large token pieces (Pl. VII.-17)

going up to I,000 cash in value during the Tai Ping rebellion when the rebels held the copper mines. With the increasing popularity of Spanish Colonial and Mexican dollars as a silver currency in China, several attempts were made to institute a silver coinage in the i9th century; not till the very end of the i9th century were mints established to strike silver and copper coins of European style in all the provinces. One of the last of these, a rupee of Sze-Chuan, was the only coin of the Chinese empire to bear the head of an emperor. This was because it was intended to compete for Tibetan trade with the Indian rupee. Under the Republic, coins were at once struck with the portraits of Sun Yat Sen and Yuan Shih Kai and the various generals who have since been fight ing for China have issued their own coins with their portraits. A feature of the issues of the latter has been the number of gold coins they have issued, for the first time in Chinese history. The very extensive series of talismans, coin-like in shape but usually larger should be noted. Many are Taoist and Buddhist in their legends and types ; others are simply lucky pieces.

Japan.

The art of coinage was borrowed from China by Japan whose first bronze coins were issued in A.D. 708, Twelve different issues were made down to the middle of the loth century, each of a different reign. For the next six hundred years, how ever, no government coins were issued and the currency was sup plied by imitations of contemporary Chinese coins made by the great nobles. In the 17th century the copper kwan-ei (Pl. VII.-I9) was first issued in 1624 and remained in vast variety the usual issue for over two centuries. The ei-raku and bun-kyu sen of the 19th century were the only other regular copper coins. Unlike China, Japan has had a gold and silver currency since the 16th century. The gold coins are large flat pieces in the shape of rectangles with circular corners the largest size being obans and the smaller kobans; these bear various small official stamps and a large signature in ink of a mint official. They range in length from 6 inches to 2 inch. Other gold pieces are the small rectangular pieces of I and 2 bu (Pl. VII.-i8) issued from time to time; round gold is rare and usually of provincial mints. There have not been many issues of silver, usually in small rectangular pieces; the so-called bean money with the figure of Daikoku is not a cur rency but was made to add to the large, long silver presentation pieces to bring them up to a certain weight. A notable Japanese coin is the oblong silver piece struck in 1765 out of confiscated silver ornaments by an official named Taruna.

In 1869 a mint on European lines was established in Tokio and gold, silver (yen or dollar) and copper have since been regularly issued from it. The e sen of Japan are not coins but amulets and bear figures of Daikoku, the god of wealth, Itsibu fishing, etc.