When Coins Ran Short: Small Coins and a Proposal to Abolish Money

A coin in the Eastern Jin could carry a private man's name. The Jinshu's treatise on food and money gives the currency after the court crossed the Yangzi in four sentences: 'Since the disorders in the Central Plain, when Emperor Yuan crossed the river he used Sun's old coins, heavy and light mixed together: the largest were called Bi-lun, the middle ones Si-wen. Shen Chong of Wuxing also cast small coins, called Shen-lang coins. As coins were not plentiful, they accordingly grew dear' (晉自中原喪亂……錢既不多，由是稍貴). Three sorts were in use at once: old Wu coins of uneven weight, the largest called Bi-lun and the middle Si-wen; and Shen Chong's small ones, named after the man who made them. The passage ends where the trouble is: coins were few, and therefore dear.

One: after the crossing

'Heavy and light mixed together' is the treatise's own phrase. A few sentences earlier it shows where the mix came from: Sun Quan had cast a coin worth five hundred and then one worth a thousand, 'too dear, with nothing but an empty name, and people suffered from it'; when people found them inconvenient the Wu court 'stopped them and cast them into vessels, the offices no longer issuing them'. The Eastern Jin used the remainder, though the page does not say how much remained. The three names are worth a look: Bi-lun names a coin by shape, Si-wen by a number, Shen-lang by the man who cast it — two descriptions and a private name. Weight, diameter, number cast: the page gives none.

Two: the third year of Taiyuan

One edict in the same section turns 'why coins were scarce' into a route. In the third year of Taiyuan: 'Money is the state's precious treasure... The Yi of Guangzhou prize bronze drums, and the province produces no copper of its own; we hear that official and private traders covet Bi-lun coins for the extra weight of their catties and ounces, to take them into Guangzhou and sell them to the Yi, who melt them down and make drums. Let this be strictly forbidden; those caught to be punished' (錢，國之重寶……鑄敗作鼓。其重為禁制，得者科罪). By its own account: drums were valued, the province had no copper, traders carried heavy coin south, the Yi melted it into drums.

The passage gives a direction, a motive and a response, but no quantities and no word on whether the ban worked. There is a seam too: the edict blames 'petty men, greedy for profit', private greed and destruction; later in the same treatise Kong Linzhi blames 'long years of war and disorder'. The two explanations sit apart, and this piece sets them side by side without merging them.

Three: Huan Xuan's proposal

'In the Yuanxing era of Emperor An, Huan Xuan, managing the government, set up a proposal to abolish money and use grain and cloth' (安帝元興中，桓玄輔政，立議欲廢錢用穀帛). The page then turns straight to Kong Linzhi; nothing else from that side survives — no reasoning, no scheme, nothing on how grain and cloth would be priced or what would become of the coin. Only the opposition has a text. That must be said first: one long speech on a page is not a report of a debate in which both sides were heard.

Four: Kong Linzhi's rebuttal

Kong Linzhi begins by denying that grain and cloth can be money. He cites the Eight Policies of the Great Plan, where goods come next after food, and calls money the resource of exchange: 'the sage kings made a useless commodity to circulate useful wealth, which has neither the cost of decay nor the hardship of transport' (故聖王制無用之貨……又省難運之苦). Grain and cloth are the reverse — precious because they feed and clothe, and 'to divide them off as currency does much damage', worn out in traders' hands and wasted by cutting. He calls Zhong Yao: cunning men 'wet the grain to turn a profit and wove thin silk to pass as wealth', and though the Wei code was severe 'it could not stop them' (巧偽之人，競濕穀以要利，制薄絹以充資).

His second line explains the shortage: 'money's disuse comes from long years of war and disorder; it fell into disuse of itself, and there was a reason — so it was at the end of the Han' (錢之不用，由於兵亂積久，自致於廢). Coins had not failed; the times had. Abolish a currency already in use and 'the common people at once lose its benefit'; 'the way to wealth really depends on money', so that 'men who have money but no grain will all sit down and starve' (致富之道，實假于錢……皆坐而饑困). He ends: 'the remedy, in my view, is not to be sought in abolishing money'. The treatise closes: 'the court's discussion mostly agreed with Linzhi, so Xuan's proposal was not carried out' (朝議多同琳之，故玄議不行).

Five: the Southern Dynasties, on another page

This page of the Tongdian opens with Liu Song, not the Eastern Jin, so the two pages are not two reports of one episode but the front and back of one line. Under Song a coin office was set up in the seventh year of Yuanjia and four-zhu coins cast; soon came a proposal to make one coin pass for two, and this time both sides speak. He Shangzhi opposed it: 'when the number is small the coin is heavy, when the number is large goods are heavy; the amounts differ, but the use is the same', and one-for-two is 'merely to raise an empty price' (數少則幣重……徒崇虛價者也). Shen Yanzhi urged it: 'the use grows wider while the currency grows narrower', and with clipping everywhere 'though the penalties are heavy the fraud grows denser' (用彌廣而貨愈狹……奸弊方密). The court took Shen's advice, and stopped it after a time, public and private alike finding it inconvenient.

Under the Qi, Kong Ji argued in the fourth year of Jianyuan that the trouble in the Three Wu was not cheap grain — 'for several years there have been floods, yet grain has not been cheap; this is the realm's shortage of money, not a glut of millet' — and that the fault of coinage 'lies in repeated changes of weight'. He wanted five-zhu coins cast after Han law; the court began buying copper and the emperor died. Under Emperor Wu, Xiao Ziliang's memorial gives prices in the page's units: 'money is dear and goods cheap, nearly twofold', the ploughman's 'hu brings a few tens', the weaver's 'bolt brings only three hundred' (斛直數十……疋才三百). Taxes fall due at fixed times and are reckoned at current value, while eastern coin is mostly clipped, so the government takes only round full ones — 'two for one'.

By the Liang the page describes a patchwork rather than a currency: 'only the capital and the Three Wu, Jing, Ying, Jiang, Xiang, Liang and Yi used money; the other provinces mixed grain and cloth in trade; in the Jiao and Guang lands gold and silver were used entirely' (梁初，唯京師及三吳……全以金銀為貨). Du You's interlinear glosses naming Tang provinces are notes, not the text. The Liang cast a five-zhu 'weighing four zhu, three can and two grains', a hundred to a catty and two ounces, and a 'formula woman coin' one inch across; older coins end 'uneven in weight'. In the Putong era the court moved to iron coin; iron was cheap, everyone cast, and after Datong 'iron coins lay about like hills, prices soared, and traders carried money in carts, no longer counting it but reckoning only by the string'. Even the string changed: eighty coins east of the pass, seventy above Jiang and Ying, ninety at the capital; an edict ordered full strings, nobody complied, and by the end a string was thirty-five.

What the pages withhold is as plain as what they give: neither gives coins cast per reign, copper output, the scale of private minting, or how long a shortage lasted; neither mentions hoarding, and this piece does not supply it. The two also do different work: the Jinshu keeps one debate whole with one side missing; the Tongdian a run of measures and prices. So this piece does not weigh whether the money economy advanced or receded. The pages show governments arguing over the weight of their own coin.

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