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ART. IX.-On the Origin and Earlier History of the Chinese Coinage. By L. C. HOPKINS, M.R.A.S.

THE origin and earlier history of the Chinese coinage have been discussed in several European works, of which the most important are, in order of date, Dr. W. Vissering's "On Chinese Currency," Leiden, 1877; Professor S. M. Georgievsky's "Drevneishia moneti Kitaichev” (The Ancient Chinese Coins), 1889; and M. Terrien de Lacouperie's "Catalogue of Chinese Coins," printed by order of the Trustees of the British Museum, 1892.

The second of these productions, being in Russian, is to my great regret inaccessible to me. Curiously enough, the other two are both in English, though neither of their authors claims that nationality.

In many ways Vissering's volume is a most meritorious achievement. The scheme of the book is excellent; the author has obviously spared neither time nor labour nor zeal on his task, and wherever he gives a full translation, he adds the Chinese text. Here unfortunately is the weak point of the work. The translations are so very defective as in many places to be useless. I do not know whether I am right in my conjecture, but this part of Vissering's undertaking gives me the impression that his translations of a text which offers numerous difficulties, have been made with the help of dictionaries only, and without the immense, the indispensable advantage of references to and consultations with living native scholars. I do not believe there exists a single Occidental student who has acquired Chinese in China or amongst Chinese, that will dispute the opinion of Dr. Bretschneider, quoted and confirmed by Professor G. Schlegel in the T'oung Pao, vol. i. p. 119, in

these words "The mistakes he [Dr. Hoffmann] made were principally due to the insufficiency of our Chinese dictionaries, and to his never having been in China. We quite agree, in this respect, with Dr. Bretschneider, when he says: that it is impossible to make correct translations from Chinese in Europe [the italics are not mine] without the assistance of a good native scholar; excepting, of course, those sinologues who have studied the language in China, and who have studied it for a long time.'"

Hence every allowance ought to be made for Vissering's shortcomings in this respect, if, as seems to have been the case, he had learnt Chinese in Europe only.

M. Lacouperie has not dealt, I regret to point out, fairly by his predecessor in these numismatic studies. The only reference to Vissering's work that is to be found in the whole of the "Catalogue" is in a single footnote on p. lxviii. of the Introduction, and is to this effect: "It [viz. Ma Tuan-lin's Section on Currency] forms. . . the bulk of Dr. W. Vissering, On Chinese Currency, Coin and Paper Money, Leiden, 1877." Yet M. Lacouperie is abundantly indebted to the Dutch author. Over and over again he makes use of Vissering's work, sometimes without alteration, oftener with slight verbal changes, omissions, or additions, frequently with somewhat more material modifications, but always without acknowledgment. Between pages 338 and 431 of the "Catalogue," I have marked no less than forty-four passages thus silently adopted.

With regard to the "Catalogue of Chinese Coins" itself, I wish to be perfectly frank. Having had occasion to examine it closely-and I doubt if any other person has spent so much time over this book as I have-I came to certain conclusions which led to the preparation of the present paper. I found, as I believed, many demonstrable errors, many mere conjectures of the author's stated as though they were well ascertained and acknowledged facts, and a number of difficult points which merited much more thorough investigation than they had yet received. In view, therefore, of the authoritative character of a volume issued

by the Trustees of the British Museum, I felt impelled to endeavour to the best of my powers to present the available data of this obscure and intricate subject, as they emerge after what has been, I know, a long and careful, and, I hope, an unbiassed examination of all the materials accessible to me which throw light on the first stages of the Chinese monetary system.

Before plunging into the rather tangled details which it has been necessary to gather together and arrange, it may be as well to indicate concisely what appears to be shown, and what, though not demonstrable, is suggested, by the evidence available for forming conclusions.

The actual origin of the earliest form of their metallic money is clearly unknown to the Chinese. But tradition, already embodied in the work known as Kuan Tzŭ, and afterwards repeated in the Lu Shih of Lo Pi, attributes to the founders of the Hsia and Shang dynasties the casting of metal from mountains which are named into what may have been merely ingots, with the object of relieving distress in times of flood and drought.

But Kuan Tzu gives us, and in considerable detail, particulars of the use of "treasure" in the administration of his agrarian polity by a still earlier ruler, the legendary Emperor Shun. Chinese numismatists, relying upon these passages in Kuan Tzu, believe that a few of these treasures "have come down to historical times, and that they are represented by the archaic inscribed pieces of peculiar shape discussed below under the heading of Pi ch'éng ma. This attribution is by no means free from doubt, and is partially founded on a reading of the legends on the pieces which is itself most questionable.

It would appear probable that at a later epoch, say about the beginning of the Chou dynasty, two distinct types of metal money, with corresponding names, possibly characterizing different regions or political centres, were already in existence the knife-money and the wedge-handled pu. The former seems to have been mainly current in what is now the province of Shantung. Whether a third type, the

J.R.A.S. 1895.

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circular coin pierced in the centre, may not also have been in use in some parts of the country seems impossible to decide. The History of the Earlier Han dynasty is the ultimate source of our knowledge of the next stage.

According to this work, a Minister, not himself a native of the Chou State, but employed by the founder of that dynasty, instituted (which may mean either invented, or simply introduced), for his master's benefit, a "system of currency." This system included squares of gold of a fixed weight, lengths of silk and hempen cloth of definite dimensions, and, lastly, round copper or bronze coins having a central square hole, which the historian speaks of as ch'ien, a name the true origin of which is most obscure, but which remains their designation to this day. It is a matter of question whether the term ch'ien was, in the first instance, applied to this round copper coin, or whether it was preceded by the word ch'üan, and, if either of these names was so applied, whether other terms may not have been employed besides. Further, we do not really know whether these coins were inscribed or not.

The next point is reached in the statement recorded in the same history that a larger coin than was then current was cast by the Chou sovereign Ching, and was inscribed with the words pao huo, "valuable exchange." Specimens of archaic appearance are preserved which have this legend on them, as well as others bearing the numbers "four" and "six" before the character for "exchange."

It would be unsafe to infer that there had been no change whatever in the currency of the Chou realm in the interval of nearly six hundred years that had elapsed between the reign of Ching and the establishment of the dynasty. Still less should we be justified in assuming that in the various other States, one uniform and continuous type had prevailed during this considerable period. Probably some of the round coins which have come down to us, and the date and locality of whose issue cannot be certainly determined, may reach as far back. Many of them have round instead of square central holes.