Assistance With Chinese Ancient

My daughter likes to buy me ancients for Christmas and birthdays. In her last purchase the dealer threw in this Chinese ancient. My daughter commented on how the Ancient Chinese had a very different approach to coinage than Greeks or Romans of the same time period and wanted to know more about this difference, like why the square hole in the center, no image of a ruler and what exactly the two images on the coin ( I may have it upside down) are. What came on a card with the coin is, bronze five Zhu (the denomination, I presume). On the obverse, Huo Quan. The reverse is "blank, as made". It is identified as the Xin Dynasty ( (Chin, I again presume) and the emperor as Wang Mang and the time period as 7-23 AD. Now that is a good deal so what I else would I want to know? First what are the two symbols ( Huo and Quan?), their literal translation, on the obverse and what do they mean? Second why the square hole in the center (good for stacking or tying together as in the equivalent of the sack or purse that in Rome we call a follis?). Third, why no image (iconoclastic religious objections as in Islamic or Byzantine coinage of a bit later)? Anything else you can tell me about this coin, Chinse coinage of the Chin or Han Dynasties much appreciated.

 

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I'm not an expert on the period or anything, but I may be able to help answer some of the questions. The coins were cast rather than struck, meaning the coin mold was engraved and metal poured in to it, rather than using an engraved die to strike the coin flan and leave the design as most ancient Western coins are made. Making them via cast allowed for cheap production and massive scale. The square hole is related to the production method; it allowed the coins to be put onto a bar after being cast and having the rough edges filed away without the coins spinning. It also allowed for merchants to string the coins together for use in larger purchases, so it was accepted and useful to all parties involved. You have the image right side up, by the way. The coin is read right to left; huo quan, meaning five quan. Wang Mang, the ruler at the time, was known for his numerous monetary reforms led by him and these coins were a part of it. I don't know much about the reforms but there is a good bit of records about it available. I wouldn't really know the reason why there is no design, but it is common on all Chinese coins to only have script like this. I would guess that it is tough to get good attractive designs to display properly after casting.

 

Kevin, Check out this link .
1 Cash - Wang Mang (Fifth reform; "Biscuit coin") - China (ancient) – Numista

 

The coin is indeed a Huo Quan of Wang Mang.

To answer your questions we have to go start at the beginning.

Chinese coins are based on smaller versions of bronze tools that had been used as trade items in the pre-coinage era. In China the these items included spades (shovel blades), knives and spinning whorls (aka weights for spinning yarn or for looms). The last of these were round bronze items with a small round hole in the middle to fasten to the end of a string of yarn or thread. Eventually miniature versions were used for trade and these became coins.

In the Eastern Zhou era (circa 770-220 BC) these three items, as well as cowrie shells and bronze imitations of cowrie shells, were used by different states as currency. These usually had some writing on them - specifying the city or state they were from.

By the late fourth century BC the most common were small round coins with Ban Liang written on them. Instead of the name of a place, this meant 1/2 ounce and signified the weight. When China was unified under the Qin Dynasty in the third century these coins spread throughout the land. They also shrunk so they weighed less than 1/2 ounce but the name stayed.

Despite unifying China, the Qin was a short lived dynasty and was replaced by the Western Han. In the early second century BC they changed the writing on the coin to Wu Zhu - this was five grains, another weight measure which reflected the actual weight of the coins.

Ban Liangs started with round holes but ended with square holes. All Wu Zhus and coins onwards have square holes. Either shape of hole will allow the coins to be put on a string which was the traditional Chinese way of storing and carrying coins. But square holes served another purpose. After being cast they had brought edges due to the flashing left over from the casting process. So many coins were placed on a square rod and then the edges were filed by a mint worker. Ban Liang had bevelled edges from one-sided casting molds but the Wu Zhus were much nicer with flat-sided edges which required smoothing.

to be continued

 

The Wu Zhu coins lasted until Wang Mang rebelled against the Western Han and set up his own dynasty - the Xin (7-23 AD) (used to be transliterated as Hs'in). But as it didn't last beyond him it is more commonly called the Wang Mang Interregnum.

Mang introduced several short lived coin reforms - most of them extremely complex with many denominations. One in 7 AD, another in 9, another in 14.

The Huo Chuan were the main denomination of his form of 14 AD and are by far his most common type. Thought they retained the weight and size of the Wu Zhus they had a different name on them - Huo Chuan for Wealth Coin or Money Coin.

While Mang was defeated in 23 AD and replaced by the Eastern Han, who resumed casting the Wu Zhu. However, his Huo Chuan are so common that some scholars believe they may have continued to have been made as late the 40s AD.

No actual Chinese cast coin has anything but characters on them. Similar objects exist with flowers or animals or people on them but they were charms or temple souvenirs and not real currently. I don't know why this is.

Interestingly though as Chinese characters are pictograms or ideograms based originally on objects, in some ways there are pictures on Chinese coins.

There are actually dozens of minor variations of the Huo Chuan based on whether it has dots or blobs on it, the form of the inner rims, the exact shape of the characters, etc. These appear to be maker symbols that indicated the mint or furnace where they way made and perhaps batches or issues, but the meaning of these details are lost to use today.

Yours is one of the two main types. The Chuan, on the left, lacks a long point at its top and so yours is Hartill 9.33 (also known as Schjoth 150).

SC

 

Thanks, that's the sort of thing Iam looking for.

 

Thanks. As you can guess, I know little about Chinese coinage but this daughter of mine has quite an interest in several aspects of life in Far East and has shown quite an interest in something from Ancient China. Not quite my cup of tea as although I have studied Latin and Greek and Ancient history and am comfortable in both the language and culture of Western Antiquity, I cannot read Chinese characters and my interest in China's history probably starts only in the mid 19th Century ( Opium War, Tai Ping Rebellion and maybe the later Boxer Rebellion). Thank you very much for your scholarly discourse. You have fed my daughter's interest and sparked an interest for me.

 

Wang Mang was an interesting character. Robert Tye wrote a wonderful article about his reign and coinage reforms. Here is a link:

https://anythinganywhere.com/info/tye/Wang Mang.htm

Read that article and your coin becomes a lot more interesting. I actually did a presentation on Wang Mang for the Iowa Numismatic Society. I did a printing and stapled a 2x2 of your exact coin, (higher grade, they were XF nice coins) to the front. Frank Robinson 20 years ago had large group lots of these in high grade available cheaply. I think I did 50 copies of the presentation, all numbered. I think I only gave out like 6. Not a lot of people in Iowa were interested in non-US coins. I still have the pile somewhere in the basement of the remaining ones.

 

Definitely true, unfortunately. I had a handful of nice ID'd and labelled cash coins I took into a LCS in Nebraska and they didn't even want to make me an offer, they just said they don't deal with Asian coins. I understand that there are a lot of fears of counterfeits and such, so I understand where they are coming from since they presumably didn't know anything about the coins, but it would be cool to see more acceptance and enthusiasm for foreign coins here in the US.

 

You have received some good answers above which proves the value of Coin Talk. It was mentioned that

and we might note that Cash specialists continue to 'flyspeck' or subdivide all these coin by minor differences that mean little or nothing to people like me but seem quite important to them. I see the differences but have yet to decide I should care. For example, note below how the three legs on the left character are close to the same length on one compared to yours and the other one below. Note also that one of mine and yours show the T shape in that left character to have a flat top while the other shows a distinct bending to that line. Important? Not to me but every Cash coin seems to come with differences like these that real students can use to study the coins. All ancient coins will show minor variations caused by the way they were made and we all will differ on how far we go in assigning importance to these minor variations of style.

Wang Mang certainly was an interesting story in Chinese history. I encourage you to read up on him through the links provided.

Mine also came from Frank's group. The time to buy coins is when they are available.

 

You are very right. The coin has considerably more interest than before. Also Wang Mang sounds like quite a character and it is interesting to discover that China has had its reforming revolutionaries like the Gracchus brothers and met similar ends. Nihil novem sub solem. Thank you very much.

 

Yes, indeed. i already have.

 

I look back at what I was (would like to say smart but just lucky) from Frank and others years ago. Group lots of full XF silvered late Romans, large ban liang, Hormizd II in XF, etc etc. Just recently I helped myself to about 75 high grade Vahran V in various auctions. Today I do not see many for sale at all.

Ancient coins, from the 20 or so years I have been around them, are a feast or famine enterprise. Yes, there is a constant stream of onesies and twosies coming from collections being liquidated, but it is very much a hoard hobby. This is how I view it usually:

1. Wow, that is a nice coin. Pretty unusual to have more than one in an auction.
2. Holy crud, every auction has some of these. Prices coming down quick.
3. Man, how boring. I can buy group lots of 20 at a time. Yawn.
4. Geez, still around. Prices scraping the bottom of the barrel. Glad I wasn't a sucker buying these. Way too many for anyone to ever want to buy one again.....
5. Huh, um, where are the usual 5 group lots of X in this auction? Some other auction houses still have a few, but if I need any I will catch the next auction that surely will have tons of them again.
6. Six months later, coin is back up to price it was before hoard hit. Hmm, never did get one of them. Remember when I could get them in group lots for a quarter of today's price? Ah, the "good old days".

We live the "good old days" every year. Sure, things you wish you bought are gone now, but right in front of your eyes are coins that are RARE, yet they happen to be common in the marketplace right now for some reason. DO NOT get fooled. Long term, rare is rare, and the market can absorb the excess, it is just variable how long. Longest I ever saw was the Hormizd II pieces. That lasted for about a decade. I bought some group lots, and any singles in XF for less than $100 I was "stupid" and bought. Where are they today? Show me a true XF Hormizd II and it is at least $200 if you can find them. Those Vahran V I bought for $40 or less in groups are now $75-100 coins, and will increase.

Maybe multiples are not your thing, that is fine, but I just wanted to impress on people do not get suckered in by what today is seen as "common" to last forever. Buy what is available to buy when you can. Over 20 years there are TONS of coins I kick myself for not buying when they were "common" and I cannot find a signle example today. Look for a Type I Persian silver coin. NN had one in their auctions for about 10 auctions in a row, (I bought two). Try to find one available at any price right now. Read CT and other sites, learn your coins, and buy what you can when you can.

 

I agree.

Time and again coin hoards are discovered. Prices drop. The collector market absorbs the coins, and prices being to climb again. Over the decades that I have been collecting not only ancient, but world coins as well, this rule applies almost universally.

 

Many thanks. However I recommend people use this link:

https://www.academia.edu/356703/Wang_Mang

as it restores the illustrations from the original text, and also incorporates a few revisions.

Regarding value – as I recall - these coins fell from about $15 a pop prior to China opening up to a wholesale price of 29 cents each for minty ones when it did (if buying per thousand).

Regarding the narrow mindedness of Ohio citizenry. Seems nothing special to me. What the www has primarily taught me is the world itself is way more narrow minded than I ever previously suspected.

Note further that I have no plans to remain active on CoinTalk henceforward, so the above link also represents a future point of contact

Regards (and goodbye)

Rob T

 

Please enjoy my overly simplified history of the fascinating tale of Wang Mang:


Wang Mang was born into the fringes of a very rich family. He didn’t like spending money. He hated people who spent lots of money, so he hated all rich people. He devoted his life to scholarship and became a really neat guy and was popular with the people.

Wang Mang was a really neat guy until he was forced into exile because he sat in the wrong seat at an important feast with the Emperor. While in exile, he stayed on the down-low to prevent any appearance of defying the Imperial family because he liked living. However, over 400,000 people still thought he was a really neat guy, so they made a petition to the imperial family to bring him back. Since that was kinda like everyone in the captial city, the imperial family invited him back. But Wang Mang was a changed man....

He convinced everyone that his political rivals were corrupt infidels that must be killed. He convinced everyone that he totally didn’t kill anyone nor wished death on anyone. (Like literally “cross my heart and hope to die” stuff.) Then he took everyone’s money and promised the poor that he would redistribute it. Then he convinced everyone that he would totally not take over the empire if a baby was made emperor instead of the dozens of more-legitimate candidates. But of course, nobody saw it coming...

When he took over the empire, everyone was like **surpised Pikachu face**. Then Wang Mang said “I am going to make a whole bunch of changes for your own good and you are going to like them.” And then the people were like “We don’t like change though. We’d rather starve to death.” And so they started starving to death

And Wang Mang was like **surprised Pikachu face**

So Wang Mang said “you are either going to like it or you are going to die.” And some of the people were like “death sounds like an okay option”, and the rest were like “oh okay, living is pretty neat.” So lots of people died

Then people decided that they didn’t like dying, so they started a revolution. Civil servants found out that money was pretty neato and became hella corrupt. More people died

Then the revolutionaries discovered a guy related to the Han Dynasty, and they said “this guy is our Lord and Savior. We want him to be in charge. Everything will be good again.”

Apparently these peeps were quite convincing, because the revolt became a million strong.

At this point, a famine was raging, so a million people flocked to the capital in search of food there. There wasn’t any, so most of the people starved to death.

Oh the revolutionaries have arrived. They stormed the palace, killing everyone that seemed to have the slightest bit of support for Wang Mang. They found Wang Mang in a tower doing drugs, so they cut him up, ate him, and put his head in a museum, which burned down a few hundred years later.

Oh, and spoiler alert, all of the money Wang Mang took from the rich before he took over the empire was still in his vault when he died. No redistribution actually happened because that would have been inconvenient. Also, between 30% and 50% of China’s population died.

So moral of the story? Wang Mang was the OG Stalin before being Stalin was cool.

The End.

A hoard of Huo Quans I bought a couple years ago:

 

Accidental marks (random raised bumps) and minor character variations mean very little to me, and I place little importance on them. I place more importance on intentional variations.

An interesting variation is in style. The left coin has very thick and soft character strokes, whereas the one on the right has sharp strokes. That indicates that the left coin is an unofficial issue while the right coin is an official issue.

 

A few minor comments:

I’m not sure of the veracity of this theory.Some have also suggested that jade disks (“Bi”) were the inspiration for round coins with a round hole. The shape is more congruent to the coins than the whorls. What the round coins are supposed to represent may never be known for sure.

A couple examples of Chinese bronze spinning whorls:



An example of a Jade “Bi” disk:

The Ban Liangs weren’t comonly used throughout China until the unification of Qin in 221 BC. They were used with increased frequency as the Qin state conquered more and more of its neighboring states. Round coins with a round hole as a type are scarce (most of the inscriptions are quite rare), which means the states that issued them were conquered soon after they first began being made and superceded by Ban Liangs. Before the states of Yan and Qi (NE China) were conquered, the concept of the Ban Liang had spread to them, and they started producing round coins with square holes.

Until the unification of Qin, knife coins of various types, square-foot spades, and ant-nose coins were used with great regularity, possibly more frequently than Ban Liangs.

The Wu Zhus were introduced in 117 BC. From about 180 BC to then, Ban Liangs were cast to a fairly consistent standard, but to one about 50% or less of their inscribed value.

Very, very few Ban Liangs are known with round holes. The fact that examples of such exist implies that they were originally modeled after the round coins with round holes, but their scarcity implies that the Qin decided that the square hole made manufacture much more efficient. The earliest Ban Liangs that can be dated are dated to 378 BC.

Here are a couple examples with round holes. These are the only two I have ever seen.



This example in my collection has a roundish hole, but I believe it was intended to be square. It never went on a square peg though.



And this is a Qin State/Qin Dynasty example that shows clear evidence of having been shoved onto a square peg. It is one of the earliest known examples that shows this.

Huo Quan moulds have been found whose inscriptions date them to up to 40 AD. There is a clear difference in style/size/weight/etc. between official Huo Quans issued between 14 and 23 AD and unofficial ones issued between 23 and 40 AD.

 

This is a key point that think applies to any and all coinage. Be it Huo Chuans, Wu Zhu, Kai Yuan, Northern Song, or late Roman like FEL TEMP REPARATIO, or anything else.

The biggest challenge this of course raises is that we simply don't always know what is important and what is not! Some features obviously imply things while others do not. But as outsiders, sometimes removed by thousands of years, it can be hard to be sure which is which.

This is further complicated by the fact that while intentional variations are extremely important, as they were, well intentional, and must convey certain information, some unintentional variations are important in that they can be considered diagnostic variations - in other words variations that definitely tell us something even if they weren't intentional.

And of course we often don't know for sure what was intentional. Do two far-removed mints in China use different characters to signal that they are different mints? This was certainly the case in the Qing era. Or is it simply that they had different though distinguishable styles? Hard to be sure for some of the earlier coinage.

With something like late Roman FEL TEMP REPARATIO Falling horsemen it can be easier. There are some changes that appear to be deliberate: the direction the fallen horseman faces; some purely artistic/stylistic elements that are diagnostic (i.e. we can look and say - product of the Rome mint or the Alexandria mint - by overall 'feel"); and yet there are also elements that appear unintentional and are un-diagnostic and simply reveal the variation by engraver and die - is the hat tall or short, is the brim wide or narrow?

It also, as you know, takes time to train the eye. Once you point out how important that blob on the edge of the rim of the Huo Chuans is to a newcomer of course they will start looking for every inconsistency or "pattern" in the reverse field too. It takes a while to see enough examples to realize that one is common and appears to be statistically significant, while many other little dots and blobs turn out to be one off nothings.

Anyway, long post but I find myself thinking a lot about this exact issue and am fascinated how the same intellectual issue applies to such diverse types of coinage.

SC

 

You are absolutely right. I first saw the spinning whorls / loom weights argument made in Peng Xinwei. I would have to check back to see which he said - it might have been loom weights and I made the mistake on spinning whorls - not sure and not sure what Chinese loom weights are like. (Interestingly I have seen, and in fact own, almost identical looking weights that came from Roman and Near Eastern contexts. Interesting how identical these utilitarian objects can be.)

Other authors do mention, as you point out, the jade discs as another possibility. I am curious as to what is know about their use an origin?

SC