IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| Sino-Iranica : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
IRANO-SINICA—PAPER MONEY 561
he is assuredly wrong in the assertion that paper is not made in China from mulberry-trees. This fact he could have easily ascertained from S. JULIEN,1 who alludes to mulberry-tree paper twice, first, as "papier de racines et d'écorce de mûrier;" and, second, in speaking of the bark paper from Broussonetia,—" On emploie aussi pour le même usage l'écorce d'Hibiscus Rosa sinensis et de mûrier; ce dernier papier sert encore à recueillir les graines de vers à soie." What is understood by the latter process may be seen from plate i in Julien's earlier work on sericulture,' where the paper from the bark of the mulberry-tree is likewise mentioned.
The Ci 'fug , a treatise on paper, written by Su Yi-kien S A
toward the close of the tenth century, enumerates, among the various sorts of paper manufactured during his lifetime, paper from the bark of the mulberry-tree (sail p`i Kt A) made by the people of the north.3
Chinese paper money of mulberry-bark was known in the Islamic world in the beginning of the fourteenth century; that is, during the Mongol period. Accordingly it must have been manufactured in China during the Yüan dynasty. Ahmed Sibab Eddin, who died in Cairo in 1338 at the age of ninety-three, and left an important geographical work in thirty volumes, containing interesting information on China gathered from the lips of eye-witnesses, makes the following comment on paper money, in the translation of CH. SCHEFER 4 "On emploie dans le Khita, en guise de monnaie, des morceaux d'un papier de forme allongée fabriqué avec des filaments de mûriers sur lequel est imprimé le nom de l'empereur. Lorsqu'un de ces papiers est usé, on le porte aux officiers du prince et, moyennant une perte minime, on reçoit un autre billet en échange, ainsi que cela a lieu dans nos hôtels des monnaies, pour les matières d'or et d'argent que l'on y porte pour être converties en pièces monnayées."
And in another passage: "La monnaie des Chinois est faite de billets fabriqués avec l'écorce du mûrier. Il y en a de grands et de
1 Industries anciennes et modernes de l'empire chinois, pp. 145, 149 (Paris 1869).
a Résumé des principaux traités chinois sur la culture des mûriers et l'éducation des vers à soie, p. 98 (Paris, 1837). According to the notions of the Chinese, JULIEN remarks, everything made from hemp, like cord and weavings, is banished from the establishments where silkworms are reared, and our European paper would be very harmful to the latter. There seems to be a sympathetic relation between the silkworm feeding on the leaves of the mulberry and the mulberry paper on which the cocoons of the females are placed.
3 Ko ci kin yuan, Ch. 37, p. 6.
Relations des Musulmans avec les Chinois (Centenaire de l'Ecole des langues orientales vivantes, Paris, 1895, p. 17).
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