188 Asiatic Sovereigns and Paper Currency. [No. 2, 



nearly fifty years afterwards and found the same system still pursued 

 under the later princes of the dynasty. The dynasty was then 

 verging to its fall — it had indeed rapidly followed the law of all 

 Asiatic dynasties — what Gibbon calls " the unceasing round of va- 

 lour, greatness, discord, degeneracy and decay." Marco Polo had 

 found the Moghul power in all the youthful vigour of concuiest ; lbn 

 Batiita finds it a decrepit stock, " primo nutans casura sub Euro." 



The following is the Muhammaclan traveller's account, as we read 

 it in the edition lately published at Paris by MM. Defremery and 

 Sanguinetti (Yol. IV. p. 259.) 



" The inhabitants of China do not use pieces of gold or silver in 

 their commercial transactions, and all coins that come into the 

 country are melted into ingots. They buy and sell by means of 

 pieces of paper, each of which is as large as the palm of the hand, 

 and bears the Sultan's mark or seal. Twenty-five of these notes are 

 called a balisht,* which means the same as our dinar. "When any 

 body finds that his notes are worn out or torn, he carries them to 

 the office which is just like the mint with us, and there he has 

 new ones given him in place of the old. He has nothing to pay 

 for this, for the officers who have the charge of supplying these notes 

 are paid by the King. The management of the office is entrusted to 

 one of the principal Amirs of China. If a person comes to the mar- 

 ket with a piece of silver money (dirrliem) or even of gold (dinar), 

 in order to purchase any thing, no one will take it or pay him any 

 regard, until he has changed it for notes, and then he can buy what 

 he pleases. "f 



The chief difference between these two narratives is the absence, in 

 the latter, of the heavy seignorage of 3 per cent, which had been 

 levied in Marco Polo's time. Dr. Lee in his translation adds a sen- 

 tence to explain it, " This is done without interest, — the profit aris- 

 ing from their circulation accruing to the King ;" but these words 

 have not been kept in the late critical recension of the text. 



* Dr. Lee in his translation wrongly gives the name as Sliat, reading Vil-shat 

 instead of lalisht. 



t In the curious account of Ion Batuta's interview with the shekh (iv. p. 

 275), we have an instance of the currency of these notes, when one of the saint's 

 companions gave him some paper-money ( d,s^J\^jjo i^JuJlyi ) and said, "Take 

 these for your hospitable entertainment and depart." 



