Tue use of seals had extended much in China about two centuries after Christ and this led gradually to stamping silk and skin for various purposes. Just at that time the manufacture of paper was introduced from the West and it was found to be an article capable of many conimon uses. This led the Taoists for example to multiply charms rapidly by stamping them on paper to sell to the superstitious, either to hang on their doors or to carry with them when travelling. Commercial accounts were written on paper for convenience, and merchants and shopkeepers provided themselves with Is for stamping. They came into the habit also of stamping the paper before or after they wrote their figures upon it. This was the state of things when the establishment of the Caliphate on the Euphrates gave an im to eastern trade. The Chinese in the eighth and ninth centuries made much more silk than before for foreign countries. The spread of the silk manufacture in Western regions did not put an end to the demand for the silk goods of China or for the unwoven silk. Neither Europe nor Western Asia could manufacture enough of their own silk to meet the demands of the market. The historian Robertson says of this period that the silk of China was purchased in Shensi the westernmost province of that empire, and conveyed thence by caravan in a march of eighty or a hundred days to the banks of the Oxus, where it was embarked and carried down the stream of that river to the Caspian. After a dangerous voyage across that sea and ascending the river Cyrus as far as it is navigable, it was conducted by a short land carriage of five days to the river Phasis which falls into the Black Sea.
Thence it was taken by ship to Constantinople. While such was the activity of trade by land there would naturally be a corresponding expansion of sea-bore trafic from tle seaports of China to India and farther west. The three centuries of the Tang dynasty at the sawe time gave opportunity to home commerce to grow in proportion, Trade flourishes when an empire is at peace. If was these circumstances combined which led to the invention of paper money in the Tang dynasty, and it was to the Chinese merchants and statesmen particularly of the ninth century that the credit is due in the first instance of employing paper money in the form of drafts payable at certain cities.
Those who wish to master this subject will find much to interest them in Vissering's work which received - the Julien prize a few years ago, During the present year the Peking Oriental Society has published a paper, (taken chiefly from a work by Wang-liu published in 1881) by the lamented Japanese Minister to China, Shioda Saburo, on the same subject. This paper is of very great value. It brings out clearly the point that silver was not employed as money before the Tang dynasty, and that it was then introduced. Reference is here made to the work called Jé Chilw by Ku Yen-wu* who died two cen turies ago, where it is said that before the Tang dynasty copper cash was the medium of exchange between govern ment and people, and silver had never come into use. At that time silver was already introduced in South China, meaning by that term Canton and Kuangsi. It is a curious fact that at about A.D. 500 according to Chinese history as examined by Ku Yeu-wu there were in regard to money circulation three belts of country. In the extreme south, gold and'silver were in use, Canton being the centre of trade,, In middle China all along the Yangtse into Szechuan, copper cash were used everywhere as the medium of exchange, All this belt of territory with Canton, Kuangsi and Tongking were then ruled aren SIRS See Wang Ziu's work $5 3g=3 Ch'au-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.