A Literary and Historical Atlas of Asia. J. G. Bartholomew
(1891); Catalogue of Coins in the Indian Museum, vol. i. by V. A. Smith (Oxford, 1906), vols. ii. and iii. (1907, 1908) by H. Nelson Wright; E. H. Walsh, The Coins of Nepal (Journ. of Roy. Asiat. Society, 1907); J. Allan, Coinage of Assam (Num. Chron., 1908).
IV.—THE COINAGES OF THE FAR EAST
China.—The earliest coins of China, like those of Western Asia, date from the seventh century B.C.: these are small bronze spades and knives, copies of the actual spades, knives, or rather billhooks, and other small articles of husbandry which had previously been used for barter. The knives are about seven inches long and bear an inscription giving the weight or value and the name of the town or confederacy which issued it; a modified form of the spade money, called the pu (flattened) money, circulated widely in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. (Plate VIII. 1, a pu coin of the town of Lu-Yang). Round money had been made as early as the fourth century B.C., but it was not till 221 B.C. that the great reformer Shih Huang Ti (221–210 B.C.), the "First Emperor," definitely superseded all previous currencies by round coins. His coins were pieces of half an ounce (pan-liang), and were continued by the Han dynasty (Plate VIII. 6, a pan-liang of the Empress Kao Hou, 187–179 B.C.).
This coinage gradually became so debased and counterfeited that in 118 B.C. the Emperor Wu Ti (122–117 B.C.) issued a new bronze coinage of five-chu pieces (Plate VIII. 2); the five-chu piece remained the standard coin for the next eight centuries. The attempted monetary reforms of the usurper Wang Mang (9–22 A.D.) may be mentioned here. In addition to reviving a modified pu and knife money (Plate VIII. 4), he instituted a round coinage (ho tsiuen, Plate VIII. 3), but after his assassination and the restoration of the Han dynasty the five-chu piece was restored. The history of Chinese currency is henceforth a continual struggle between the government and the counterfeiter. On one occasion at least, the government sought to get rid of the forgers by making the most skilled of them mint officials.
In 618 A.D. the Tang emperor Kao Tsu (618–627 A.D.) issued the Kai yuan tung pao, "current money of the inauguration" (i.e. of the Tang dynasty, Plate VIII. 5), which gave the coinages of the Far East the form they have retained almost to the present day. From the time of the Sung dynasty (960–1120 A.D.) onwards the legend took the form "current money of" (name of regnal period) (Plate VIII. 8, "current money of (the) Sung Yuan" period, 960–976 A.D.). The Southern Sung dynasty (1127–1278 A.D.) dated their coins on the reverse in regnal years. The Mongols (1260–1341 A.D.) issued but little copper money. An account of their extensive paper currency in the reign of Kublai Khan (1260–1295 A.D.) is given by Marco Polo. The Ming dynasty (1368–1628 A.D.) placed the mint-name on the reverse, while the Ching dynasty (1628–1911) placed the mint-name in Manchu on the reverse (Plate VIII. 7, Shun-che period, 1644–1662 A.D.; Pekin mint).
It is only recently that a serious attempt to institute a silver coinage in China has been made. In the nineties of last century, mints with European machinery were instituted in each province, and struck silver and copper coins of European fabric (Plate IX. 1, half-dollar of the late Emperor Kuang Hsü, 1875–1910) for Sze-Chuan. During the last thirty years bilingual silver coins have been issued for the Mohammadan population of Chinese Turkestan (Plate IX. 6, reverse of a five mithkal piece of Kashgar). One of the most remarkable of Chinese coins is the silver rupee recently issued for the Sze-chuan province, bearing the Emperor's head, and copied from the Indian rupee, with which it is destined to compete for Tibetan trade (Plate IX. 3).
Japan.—The Japanese borrowed the art of coinage from the Chinese, and issued coins as early as 708 A.D. Plate VIII. 9 is an early Japanese copper coin or sen of the period 818–835 A.D. (inscription—"Divine Treasure of Wealth and Longevity"). From the tenth to the sixteenth centuries the main coinage of Japan consisted of imitations of contemporary Chinese coins. One of the commonest of Japanese coins is the kwan-ei sen (Plate VIII. 10), which was extensively issued from 1624–1859. Large, flat gold coins (obans and kobans) were frequently issued from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The smaller gold and silver coins of this period are rectangular (Plate IX. 7, a gold bu of 1837 A.D.). Plate IX. 4 is the obverse of a coin (a piece of 5 momme) with an interesting history. In 1765, a high official named Taruna ordered that all silver ornaments should be confiscated as useless luxuries and made into coins. This edict aroused great indignation, particularly among the fair sex, and its enforcement was one of the causes which led to the assassination of the tyrannical governor. In 1869 a mint with European machinery was established in Tokio, and a coinage of gold, silver (yen or dollar), and copper (sen, 100 = 1 dollar) on the European model adopted (Plate IX. 5, 50 sen of the sixth year of Meiji, 1873).
Corea, Annam, and Siam.—Corea issued bronze coins in the Chinese style in its various intervals of independence. The commonest is the Shang Ping cash issued at various mints from 1790 to 1881 (Plate VIII. 11). Plate IX. 2 is a piece of one yang (silver) issued by the new mint in 1898. Japanese influence may be traced in it (cf. Plate IX. 5), as on the Chinese coin of Kashgar (Plate IX. 6). The kings of Annam issued an extensive coinage modelled on the Chinese till Annam became a French possession. Siam has issued a coinage struck by European machinery since 1850 (Plate IX. 8, rupee of Phra Chom Klao, 1850–1868 A.D.).
Bibliography.—Terrien de Lacouperie, British Museum Catalogue of Chinese Coins, vol. i. (all published) (1892); J. H. S. Lockhart, Currency of the Farther East (Hong-Kong, 1893–1895); H. G. Munro, Coinage of Japan (Yokohama, 1904); A. Schroeder, Annam, Etudes Numismatiques (Paris, 1905).
V.—COINS OF EUROPEAN POSSESSIONS IN ASIA
English.—In 1600 Queen Elizabeth granted a Royal Charter to "The Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies," and soon afterwards ordered silver coins to be struck at the Tower Mint for the Company's use in the Indies (Plate X. 2, sixpence or real of this issue). In 1677 the first English mint in India was established at Bombay, which had come to Charles II. in 1662 as part of the dowry of Catherine of Braganza, and rupees and copper cash were issued in the name of Charles II., or "bearing the name of their impure king" as an indignant Moghul historian describes them. For trade with the natives, however, the Company required coins of a type familiar to them, and had to send their bullion to be minted at the Moghul mints or to imitate Moghul coins at their own mints, the latter course being really forgery, as it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that the Great Moghul finally allowed them to issue coins freely in his name (Plate X. 5, half-rupee of Murshidabad struck by the East India Company in name of Shah Alam II.