ANCIENT CHINESE PAPER MONEY AS DESCRIBED IN A 

 CHINESE WORK ON NUMISMATICS. 



By ^\ndrew McF. Davis. 



Received, January 7, 1918. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 



Foreword, by Andrew McF. Davis 467 



Introduction by tlie translator, Kojiro Tomita 477 



Translation of the Ch'iian Pu T'ungChih 479 



Appendix: Translations from other sources 632 



On the 10th of February, 1915, I presented a paper to the Academy 

 entitled "Certain Old Chinese Notes." The same was published 

 separately with the additional sub-title "Or Chinese Paper Money." 

 The notes which furnished the title of my paper are now deposited in 

 the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, but were at that time in my 

 possession and were on that occasion submitted to the inspection of 

 the members present. The oldest of the notes was emitted under the 

 Emperor Wu-tsung, of the T'ang Dynasty, who reigned from 841- 

 847 A.D. or 840-846 according to another system of stating the 

 chronology. The Chinese Emperors were accustomed to break up 

 their reigns into periods and the particular period in which this note 

 was emitted was designated as Hwei-Chang or Hui-ch'ang according 

 to the manner which the translator adopted for the phonetic trans- 

 literation of the Chinese characters. 



In that paper the notes themselves were described and an attempt 

 was made to place on record not only what is now known concerning 

 them but also what knowledge was at command of European students 

 of economics and finance, at any given time, from the days of Marco 

 Polo to the present time. This examination disclosed the existence 

 of a Chinese numismatical work entitled Ch'iian Pu T'ung Chih, which 

 included in its study of coinage a description of this ancient paper 

 money, so far as it was known to the author, and also furnished illustra- 

 tions of the notes described, covering a period from about 650 A.D. to 

 1425, A.D., that is to say nearly eight centuries, all prior to the first 

 voyage of Columbus. The illustrations are evidently intended to be 

 of the same size as the original notes. The existence of a number of 



