Passing to the islands of the Pacific we shall find shell money playing an important part among the primitive peoples, such as those who inhabit New Ireland, New Britain, the Pelew and the Caroline groups. It will suffice for our purpose to describe the form in which it is employed in New Britain. Mr Powell[26] tells us that the native money in New Britain consists of small cowrie shells strung on strips of cane, in Duke of York Island it is called Dewarra. It is measured in lengths, the first length being from hand to hand across the chest with arms extended, second length from the centre of the breast to the hand of one arm extended, the third from the shoulder to the tip of the fingers along the arm, fourth from the elbow to the tip of the fingers, fifth from the wrist to the tip of the fingers, sixth finger lengths. Fish are generally bought by the length in Dewarra unless they are too small. A large pig will cost from 30 to 40 lengths of the first measure (fathom) and a small one ten. The Dewarra is made up for convenience in coils of 100 fathoms or first lengths; sometimes as many as 600 fathoms are coiled together, but not often, as it would be too bulky to remove quickly in case of invasion or war, when the women carry it away to hide. These coils are very neatly covered with wickerwork like the bottom of our cane chairs.... At Moko and Utuan they use another kind of money as well as this, the other being a little bivalve shell, through which they bore a hole and string it on pieces of native made twine[27]. It is also chipped all round until it is a quarter of an inch in diameter and then smoothed down into even discs with sand and pumice. Here we find strings of shells, which undoubtedly in the first instance were used for personal adornment, converted into a true currency. The simple savages whose possessions were exceedingly few and scanty, equated their fish to strings of shells which formed their only ornament, and when they got a more valuable possession in the pig, they quickly learned to appraise that animal in shell worth, just as the North American Indians learned to estimate the horse in Wampum. Instead of shells the natives of Fiji are said to have employed whales’ teeth as currency, red teeth (which are still highly prized) standing to white ones somewhat in the ratio of sovereigns to shillings with us[28]. Passing on to the mainland of Asia we shall find that the Chinese, who in the course of ages have developed a bronze coinage of their own apart from the influences of the Mediterranean people, had in early times an elaborate system of shell money. Cowries appear in the Ya-King, the oldest Chinese book, 100,000 dead shell fishes being an equivalent for riches. Tortoise shell currency is also mentioned in the same book. The tortoise of various kinds and sizes was used for the greater values which would have required too many cowries. Tortoise shell is still elegantly used to express coin. Several kinds of Cypraea were used, including the purple shell, two or three inches long; all the shells except the small ones were employed in pairs. A writer of the second century B.C.[29] speaks of the purple shell as ranking next after the sea tortoise shells, measuring one foot six inches, which could only be procured in Cochin China and Annam, where they were used to make pots, basins and other valuable objects. So attached were the Chinese to these primitive coins that the usurper Wangmang restored a shell currency of five kinds, tortoise shell being the highest. From this time we hear no more of cowries in China Proper, but they left traces of themselves in the small copper coins shaped like a small Cypraea, called Dragon’s eye or Ant coins[30]. It is doubtless to a similar survival that we owe those curious silver coins made in the shape of shells which come from the north of Burmah and of which there are several specimens in the British Museum. They are about the size of a cowrie, and doubtless served as a higher unit in a currency, of which the lower units were formed by real shells.
Fig. 4. Burmese silver shell money.
In 685 B.C. in parts of China pearls and gems, gold, knives and cloth were the money, and under the Shou dynasty (1100 B.C.) we understand from ancient Commentaries that the gold circulated in little cubes of a square inch, and the copper in round, tongue-like plates by the tchin tchu, while the silk cloth 2 feet 2 inches wide in rolls of 40 feet formed a piece.
In the Shu King, when in 947 B.C. commutation for punishment was enacted, the culprit according to the offence was to pay 100, 200, 500 or 1000 hwars, or rings of copper weighing 6 ounces. The Chinese likewise used hoes as money, just as we shall find the wild people of Annam doing at the present hour. But in the course of time the hoe became a true currency and little hoes, such as that here figured, were employed as coins in some parts of China (tsin, agricultural implements). The copper knives which played so important a part in the development of Chinese coinage will be dealt with more particularly in a later chapter. In Marco Polo’s time cowries were in full use, as in the province of Yunnan[31].
Fig. 5. Chinese hoe money.
On the borders of China and Tibet we may still find a state of things not far removed from that existing in the China of 2000 years ago[32]. The Tibetans, who in recent years employ Indian rupees, for purposes of small change cut up these coins into little pieces, which are weighed by the careful Chinese, but the Tibetans do not seem to use the scale, and roughly judge of the value of a piece of silver. Tea, moreover, and beads of turquoise are largely used as a means of payment instead of metal.
Speaking of this same region (called by him Kandu), Polo says[33]: “The money-matters of the people are conducted in this way: they have gold in rods which they weigh, and they reckon its value by its weight in saggi, but they have no coined money. Their small change again is made in this way: they have salt which they boil and set in a mould, and every piece from the mould weighs half-a-pound. Now eighty moulds of this salt are worth one saggio of fine gold.” Tea seems to have taken the place of salt in modern times.
Turning next to the southern frontier of China, we shall find among the tribes of Annam a system of currency which strongly reminds us of that found in the Homeric Poems.