VI. JADE COINS AND SEALS 



In ancient China, jade took also the place of valuable money, 1 

 and was occasionally also turned into coinage. We remember the 

 statement of Pan Ku that jade disks were given away as a stimulus to 

 scholars and statesmen, if their services were demanded by a particular 

 state (p. 154). Kuan-tse, the minister of Huan, duke of Ts'i (b. c. 

 693-642), speaks in his book on political economy of the trade then 

 existing between the different parts of China and the outside countries, 

 mentioning jade, gold and pearls as objects of barter. The former 

 kings, he says, because these things came from afar and were obtained 

 with difficulty, made use of them according to the respective value of 

 each, pearls and jade being estimated highest, gold placed in the second 

 class, knife money and spade-shaped coins ranging in the lowest class. 2 



A jade coin is illustrated on Plate XXVII, Fig. 1. It is a combina- 

 tion of the round cash type and the so-called knife on which the back 

 is marked by two parallel incised lines; the blade is broad and blunt, 

 is running in a curve, and pointed below. It is noteworthy that the 

 hole is round, and not square as in the copper coins. 



The four characters on the obverse read ta ts'iian wu shih, "Great 

 money, fifty." 



On the reverse, the symbols of sun and moon are engraved, the sun 

 in the shape of a circle above the hole, and the moon as a crescent 

 rjelow it. 



The coin is cut out of a pure-white jade, 7 cm long, 3-4 mm thick; 

 the diameter of the disk being 2.5-2.7 cm. This coin originated from 

 Wang Mang, the Usurper (9-13 a. d.). The same legend as above is 

 found on a common copper coin with square hole and without the 

 knife-handle, on the reverse of which the figures of the sun, moon and 

 the dipper are shown; in another type it is Ursa major, a two-edged 

 sword and a tortoise with a snake (see Kin-shih so, kin so, Vol. 4). 

 This jade coin is of the same style as the copper coins of the usurper 

 Wang Mang. The identity of the types will be recognized from Figs. 

 2 and 3 of the same Plate. On the circular portion in Fig. 2 the two 

 ■characters i tao "one knife" are inlaid with gold. On the handle or 

 knife-part, three characters are cast in high relief, reading p'ing wu 



1 For analogous examples see H. Schurtz, Grundriss einer Entstehungsgeschichte 

 des Geldes, p. 107. Weimar, 1898. 



2 Compare Bushell in Bishop, Vol. I, p. 23, and J. Edkins in Nature, 1884, 

 p. 516. 



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