Century B.C. to A.D. 621. "Including the series in the British Museum. By Terien de Lacouperie, Edited by Reginald Stuart Poole, LI D. London: printed by order of the Trustees.
It has lately been suggested that the infant-like shape of the Chinese eye and the beardless chine of the men are suggestive of immaturity in the race. Certain colour is given to this theory by the curiously 1d development observable in their civilisation and their atta and sciences. In most of the amenities of life they arrived, like precocious children, at a certain level of advance at a serv early period. But there they stopped short, and ut the present day they are infinitely behind nations which were in state of savagery It is difficult to see in they have made any steps forward since the beginning of our era. They themselves believe that wisdom died with the ancients, and their ion is a melancholy acknow-the truth of this theory, xs well us evidence of their inability, when left to themselves, to do anything but Like their other arts, their coinage stands out conspicuously ws' proof of the above assertions, If their records are to be believed, the Great Yi (1994 B.C.) was the first caster of coins; nnd, without piuriis g our faith to this statement, it may be confidently said that during the next few centuries there certainly were issues ut coined money. The Chinese have always hud large supplies of the precious metals; th merce has demanded ready medi change; xnd yet their various attempts to supply this lave rorulted, after all these centuries, in the si in which i known to Europeans as cash" and which represents about the tenth of a halfpenny. Ie is impossible to imagine any greater lence of incompetency ina commercial m than this, Dr, Terrien de Lacoufinite research and rear ability to whol of the cur-Feney from the dawn the present day, and his mine of exact ai ig intermat Tu common with many nations of xn quiry, the Chinese in their early history adopted cowries as x medium of exclia and these ran current side by side with i curliest date historiaue hind been silent on the use of these shells, the secret of their existence would have' been divulged in the write character for that which la precious, which is a hieroglyphic representing 'a the same way a record of the hells which were concurrently used anything valuable. Even late, however, as the time ut Mare" Polo cowries were current in the province of Yunnan, and it is safe to assume, therefore, that they had existed uninterruptedly in the country from a time possibly coeval with that of the ening discovered by Layard in the ruiue of The next step in advance. w: ion in the first in-nce of hoes and spades as money, and afterwards of bronze representations of those tools, The tools themselves can have had only " very limited circulation, and must have passed current only as clothes which are pawned by the improvident among our own working classes on Monday, to be taken out again om Saturday sight, may be said to pass into circulation, With the emblems representing them it was different, and it is difficult to understand why it was necessary to exchange them for pieces of metal and silk, as was done in the eleventh century B.c.' The explanation probably is that the choice of articles so used in various of the country was guided by the ease with which the materials were obtainable. A more convenient shape was given to the evinage later by the introduction of ring money, which, however, being insufficient for the wants of the ple, was supplemented by " knife cur such og is now in use among the Khamti Singho tribes to the south-west of China. This medium of exch suid to have been first used by soldiers on a campaign in the seventh century, and it is of this that the modern **eash' he linen descendant.
The knives, and afterwards the emblems representing the knives, were made with circular holes at the end of the handles, for the purpose, no doubt, of stringing them, By degrees the blades of the knives were reduced in size, and the useful part, the round and pierced end of the handle, became the more and more important portion il eventually the blade entirely disap:
well as the handle, with the of what was practically the round of the present day.
is Inst development was carried out a later period, and meanwhile coins of various shapes competed with one another for popular approval One kind, the spade money," is particularly interesting, as bein the only reference to the Stone age which found among the innumerable Chinese currencies. It represents the shouldered celt of South-Eastern Asix, which curiously. enough tins been found only in Pegu, Cambodia, and Central India, Side by side with these coing, *'ring-money," inscribed of foreign i which in the seven century B.c. were introduced into Shantung ddfe money," gems, and pearls by traders from the Indian Ocean, This was a period of general when the country was to a number of contending Sta and when barter was probably the principal means of buying and selling, An end was put to this pol 21 Be, by the establishment of the Empire by Shi Hunngti, who attempted to unify the coinage by prohibiting the use of gems, pearls, tortoiseshells, cowries, and tin," as money, wing round browze coins xnd small cub-s of gold. With the disappearance (206 v.c.) of his short-lived dynasty, the ment control over the coinage was wd, and the natural result followed.
ey of all kinds and descriptions again came into vogue; and cubes of white metal, pieces of door-skin, and coins of all shapes and sizes were isted from the principal trading centres. So great did this evil become that in 116 an attempt was made to re-establish Government control, and three oticers were appointed to preside over the Mint.
From this time may be dated the begining of the long struggle between the Government and the counterfeiters which has existed to the present day. Instead of attempting to deal with forgeries by rendering the coiner's work more difficult by means of an improved currency, and by enforcing legal penalties, the authorities sought a remedy in returning practically to barter. Silk, hempen cloth, grain, and eral in'lumps' again became' recognised medix of exchange, and it was left to \d semi-independent chiefs to issue was put out with
with coinage questivne has been shown by incompetence to deal all succeeding Governnrents, and at the present moment the merchants and shopkeepers at Peking are up in arms at the Ergo "cash" which live been current in reposed abolition by the authorities of the
the capital since 1859, and in which th people have faith,. in favour of th cush" in use in the rest of the and which from the aaa by which toan be feited is always received with susicion. Every collector knows how extreme-ver the Chinese are at forging, Tt is only necessary for him to allow it to come known that he wants a knife coin or any other ancient piece, and he is sure to be presented with one which has all
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.