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ART. XII.-The Metallic Cowries of Ancient China (600 B.c.). By Prof. TERRIEN DE LACOUPERIE, Ph. & Litt.D.

SUMMARY.

I. 1. Curious coins variously named in Chinese numismatic collections.

2. Great taste for numismatics in China.

3. Lack of criticism and knowledge.

4. Effects of this ignorance even in Europe.

II. 5. The Ants' nose money!

6. It is their oldest name in numismatics.

7. Native explanation that they were buried with their dead.

8. Sham implements used to be buried.

9. The Ghosts' head money!

10. They were really cowries made of metal.

11. Places where they were found.

III. 12. Figures, description and legends.

13. Wrong hypothesis of their having been issued by the great Yü.

14. Issued really in B.C. 613-590 in Ts'u.

15. Circumstances of their issue.

16. Reason why there are so few data about them.

17. Geographical and historical proofs.

IV. 18. They were a combination of cowries and metallic money.

19. Great extension and age of this currency.

20. Reason why these pieces were issued in Ts'u, a non-Chinese land.

I.

1. Several of the collections of coins made in their own country by intelligent and enthusiastic Chinese Numismatists contain specimens of a curiously-shaped scarab-like copper currency. They are variously called Y-pi tsien or 'Ant's nose metallic currency;' Kuei-tou or 'Ghosts' heads,' and finally Ho-pei tsien or 'Cowries Metallic currency.' The first two of these names, quaint and queer as they are, do not in the least suggest what the things so designated were intended to be. But when we consider that such denominations were applied by numismatists, who were unaware of

the circumstances which had led to the issue of this peculiar currency, we cannot be astonished that the uncritical Chinese scholars of former ages, being at their wit's end, should have adopted a sensational appellative to arouse the mind of their readers to the peculiarity of the case.

2. The taste for numismatics is old in China, though for want of opportunity, not so old as the love of antiquities. Collections of ancient objects and souvenirs among the rich families (not to mention those in the royal museum and library) were already in fashion at the time of Confucius. But metallic currency was then hardly in existence, and could not at that time therefore afford a field for the antiquarian taste for collecting ancient specimens.

It was a common habit among Chinese collectors to compile and publish catalogues of their collections; and this habit having been continued down to the present day, we are enabled to understand how the Chinese are in possession of nearly five score of numismatical works. Many more were not preserved to modern times, and have left no traces of their existence. The oldest of those mentioned in the later books, but which have perished in the meantime, would be nearly fourteen centuries old.2

3. The knowledge of historical minor events, and of palæography, combined with a spirit of criticism, which is required for numismatics, has almost always been defective among the Chinese collectors of ancient specimens of currency. Two or three recent works excepted, their numismatical books are indeed of a low standard. The natural tendency to imitation which has caused so large a part of their literature to be mere patchwork and mosaic, was necessarily fatal to the progress of that part of knowledge.

A list of them is given in the introduction to my Historical Catalogue of Chinese Money, from the collections of the British Museum and other sources (4to. numerously illustrated), vol. i.

The Tsien Pu, by

Ku yuen, who lived during the Liang

dynasty (A.D. 502-557), often quotes in the description of curious and rare specimens an older work, the Tsien tche, by Liu-she, a work now lost and of unknown date. Vid. 李佐賢Li Tso-hien,古泉滙 Ku tsuen

huei, K. iii. f. 1.

Any statement acquires in that conservative country authority and respect in proportion to its age, however false or fanciful the basis on which it rests. And this characteristic was coupled with the tendency to attribute to the great men of antiquity any valuable deed or improvement of later times. The result was a falsification of the sound notions which otherwise could have been obtained from an unbiassed inquiry made by the collectors themselves, had they taken that trouble.

4. And as they did not do so, they give us figures of genuine specimens of money once current as that of the primitive times. The much-respected names of Fuh-hi and Huang-ti of the fabulous period, as well as those of Kaoyang and Yao belonging to the dawn of Chinese history, are indicated by them as having issued specimens of currency, which a better knowledge now proves to date only from the fifth, fourth, and third centuries B.C. These erroneous statements have both crept into Western literature and scientific books, of course with misleading results. For instance, a well-known German naturalist and traveller gives as a proof of an antiquity of twenty-two centuries B.C. for strata of the loess, the finding of the copper knife-money of Yao at Ping-yang fu.2 Now it turns out on investigation that there is no knife-money from that place, and that the pu-money found there, and formerly attributed to Yao's time, was issued, as a matter of fact, as late as the middle of the third century before the Christian era. It is obvious from this, that, so far as numismatic chronology, and the inferences derived from it, go, the loess theory of the German scholar must be amended.

II.

5. The Y-pi tsien are mentioned by several works on numismatics without any other indication than their name.

1 F. v. Richthofen, in his China, vol. i. p. 150.

2 Their attribution to Yao rests on this simple-minded Chinese reasoning, that as Ping-yang was the capital of Yao, all the antiquities found there are remnants of his time.

So, for instance, in the great catalogue of the Antiquarian Museum of the Emperor Kien-lung, published in 1751 (forty-two vols. in folio 1). The complete ignorance as to their authenticity is shown by the fact that the author of a small treatise on the current money of foreign countries, Wai Kwoh Tsien Wen, has reproduced a figure of the Y-pi tsien, without any indication or reference as to their origin. The mere fact of his including them in his work shows that he thought himself justified in considering them non-Chinese.

It is needless to dwell further on the ignorance of those of the native numismatists, who know nothing about the real nature of these coins, and indulge in the wildest speculations about them. It will be sufficient to indicate only their most important suggestions, and then to give the probable solution of this little problem.

6. As to the various names these monies bear, we may remark that Ant's nose current money,' or Y-pi tsien

, is the oldest known. We find it quoted as the common appellation by Hung Tsun in the twelfth century A.D., the most important of the ancient numismatists. Besides the name, he does not give any other information, except a short description of the specimens.

7. An explanation of this quaint name has been put forward by the learned author of the Ku kin so kien luh, another numismatical work of some importance. He says that in ancient times people used to bury with the dead, and in the coffin, some tchin-y, i.e. valuable ants, meaning by that, metallic figures of ants, and hence these little scarab-shaped objects dug out of the ground received their queer appellation. The suggestion of the learned author receives some sort of confirmation, so far as the custom of burying objects is concerned.

1 Vid. the reprint of the numismatical part, Kin ting tsien luh, K. xv. f. 14v. 2 This statement has perhaps some relation to the following § 23, bk. ii. sec. i. pt. ii. of the Li-ki, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxvii. p. 140: “At the mourning of Tze-chang Kung-ming, I made the ornaments of commemoration. There was a tent-like pall, made of plain silk of a carnation colour, with clusters of ants at the four corners, (as if he had been) an officer of Yin."

8. Yet we hear more about sham implements or objects than of anything of intrinsic value. For instance, an interesting statement is attributed to Confucius, in the Book of Rites, that "in the time of the Hia, the earliest dynasty, they did not sacrifice to the dead, but simply made for them incomplete implements of bamboo, earthenware without polish, harps unstrung, organs untuned, and bells unhung, which they called 'Bright implements,' implying that the dead are spirits (shen) and bright." So much for the supposed Confucian statement. On the other hand, the use of images as charms is still current in modern times. To images or drawings of tigers, lizards, snakes, centipedes, etc.-the list is almost inexhaustible-is ascribed the virtue of attracting to themselves the diseases which would otherwise attack the inmates of the house.2

We cannot say that this justification of the popular appellative of the Ant's nose currency is satisfactory, and we should not be surprised if our readers pronounced the whole business unseemly. However, in Chinese matters of popular feelings and notions, hypercritics would never have any rest.3

9. Another name—and a more popular one of the same scarab-shaped specimens of ancient currency was Kwei-tou,* i.e. Ghost's head' or Kwei-lien, i.e. 'Ghost's face.'5 No reason is given by the native scholars for such a soubriquet, and therefore we are at liberty to suggest that it may have arisen from the fact that some of them were found in graves.

10. It is only with the third name, Ho-pei tsien, or cowries metallic-currency, which we find in a recent work, the Ho pu

The

1 Li-ki, Than Kung, sect. i. pt. iii. § 3, Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxvii. p. 148. This passage is not to be found in the Liki as published and translated by J. M. Callery, Li-ki ou Mémorial des rites traduit. Turin, 1853, 4to. text is the abridgment made by Fan, a renowned Chinese scholar. Sham objects, like carriages of clay and human figures of straw (substitute of living people), were not always that which was put in tombs. For instance, the following case (Li-ki, Than Kung, sect. i. pt. iii. § 19): "At the burial of his wife, Duke Siang of Sung (d. B.c. 637) placed in the grave a hundred jars of vinegar and pickles." 2 N. B. Dennys, The Folk-lore of China (Hong-Kong, 1876, 8vo.), pp. 72, 51. 3 Sham objects have been buried with the dead also in the West at the time of the stone period. Cf. below, §§ 11, 17.

“鬼頭, name given to them in the Topography of Ku-shé hien 固始縣志, where many were found.

゚鬼臉

‘貨貝錢.

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