We have now found that within the area where our weight standards arose the ox was universally diffused, and regarded as the chief and most general form of property and medium of exchange; that over the same area gold was found to be more or less equally distributed in antiquity; that the metallic unit is found in all cases adapted to the chief unit of barter, whether that be ox or reindeer, beaver skin, or squirrel, as soon as peoples have learned the use of metal; and finally that over our special area from the Atlantic to Central Asia the cow at various times and places retained a value which fluctuated only from 120 to 140 grains of gold. When therefore we recall the fact, also pointed out above, that the gold unit employed from Gaul to Central Asia was one that only fluctuated from 120 to 140 grains, and when we recollect further that this unit in the ancient Greek Epic is called not a talent but an ox, when prices, and not merely the actual ingots of gold are mentioned, the conclusion follows that not merely in Greece but in all the other countries the gold unit represented originally simply the conventional value of the cow as the immemorial unit of barter.
Next follows an important question, How was the primitive weight standard fixed? In other words, how did mankind arrive at the general opinion that a weight of gold of about 130 English grains was the equivalent to the conventional value of the animal?
If we could but discover a region in which the weight and monetary systems still in use are essentially independent of our Graeco-Asiatic standards, and where it could be proved that the monetary system is an independent native development, and where this development is of such recent date that the record has been preserved in a written document, not merely reaching us in the dim form of a tradition, blurred and broken in the long and misty space of years that lie between us and those who first shaped our system, we would undoubtedly discern more clearly the stages of its evolution.
The Chinese empire with the neighbouring peoples who have participated in its civilization afford us just the case which we desire. It will be seen from what follows that not merely the monetary system of China, but her weight system is of an origin almost wholly unaffected by Western influences.
We saw above that the earliest form of money in Greece took the form of spits or small rods of copper, no doubt of a specified size; we found in Annam that iron hoes, in mediaeval India iron formed into large-sized needles, in modern times in Central Africa pieces of iron of given dimensions, bars of iron among the Hottentots and among the peoples of the West Coast of Africa, brass rods of fixed length in the region of the Congo, and pieces of a precious wood likewise of fixed dimensions, have served or do still serve as media of exchange, and as units by which the values of other commodities are measured. In all these cases mere measure not weight, is the method of appraisement. As the archaic Greek “spit” or obolus of bronze eventually became a round bronze coin, familiar to us as Charon’s fee, and in still later times under the abbreviation ob. as the accountant’s symbol for a half-penny, as d. (denarius) denotes the penny, so we shall find that the common Chinese copper coins pierced with a square hole in the centre have had an almost identical history.
At the time when the Chinese made their great invasion into South-eastern Asia (214 B.C.) they still were employing a bronze currency under the form of knives, which were 135 millimetres (5⅖ in.) in length, bearing on the blade the character minh, and furnished with a ring at the end of the handle for stringing them. Under the ninth dynasty (479-501 A.D.) they used knives of the same form and metal, but 180 millim. (7⅕ in.) in length, furnished with a large ring at the end of the handle and inscribed with the characters Tsy Kú-u Hoa. Next the form of the knife was modified, the handle disappeared, and the ring was attached directly to the blade, but now as weight was regarded of importance, its thickness was increased to preserve the full amount of metal, and the ring became a flat round plate pierced with a hole for the string[211]. Later on these knives became really a conventional currency, and for convenience the blade was got rid of, and all that was now left of the original knife was the ring in the shape of a round plate pierced with a square hole. This is a brief history of the sapec (more commonly known to us as cash) the only native coin of China, and which is found everywhere from Malaysia to Japan[212].
Fig. 21. Chinese Knife Money (showing the evolution of the modern Chinese coins).
Except where foreign coins such as American silver dollars are employed, all payments in silver and gold are made by weight, the only money being the copper cash. The Chinese metric system, like our own, is based on natural seeds or grains of plants. Thus ten of a kind of seed called fên (the Candarin) probably placed sideways make 1 ts’un (the Chinese inch[213]), just as our forefathers based the English inch on 3 barleycorns placed lengthwise. So with their monetary system,