Chinese burial money
The practice dates to the Shang dynasty when cowrie shells were used, in the belief that the money would be used in the afterlife as a bribe to Yan Wang (also known as Yama) for a more favourable spiritual destination.
[10] The imitation metal money found in these ancient tombs ended to be thin and fragile, and were typically made of lead and bronze.
They measure from 2.4 to 2.45 centimetres (0.94 to 0.96 in) in diameter with a thickness of 1.3 to 1.4 millimetres (0.051 to 0.055 in) and they contain the obverse inscription rù tǔ wéi ān (入土为安) which means "to be laid to rest", while the reverse is blank.
These coins are often excluded from numismatic reference books on Chinese coinage or talismans due to many taboos, as they were placed in the mouths of dead people and are considered unlucky and disturbing, and are undesired by most collectors.
[12] The argument used to dispute its typical attribution to the Manchu Qing dynasty period was that because simplified Chinese characters did not exist in a standardised form prior to their introduction by the Communist government of the People's Republic of China in the year 1956.
[5] In the book Han Material Culture written by the Sinologist Sophia-Karin Psarras it is stated that any representation of real life currency was considered legal tender that could be used as a medium of exchange in the afterlife.
[5] As these imitations of money made from clay had no actual value in "the world of the living" they would deter grave robbers from breaking in and "disturbing" the dead.
[5] Clay versions of the Warring States era Kingdom of Chu gold plate money (traditional Chinese: 泥「郢稱」(楚國黃金貨幣); simplified Chinese: 泥"郢称"(楚国黄金货币); pinyin: ní "yǐng chēng" ( chǔ guó huáng jīn huò bì )) are sometimes found buried in tombs of the late Zhou dynasty era, known as the Warring States period and even during later periods such as the Han dynasty.
[5] The Mawangdui site dates to the early Han dynasty period and the clay Ban Liang cash coins were discovered strung together.
1, which is the resting place of Xin Zhui (the Marquise of Dai), around 100,000 clay Ban Liang cash coins were recovered from the site.
[5] Clay Wu Zhu cash coins are quite frequently discovered in Han dynasty period graves, for example a Han dynasty period burial site located near the city of Shanghai's Fuquanshan (福泉山) site was discovered containing several hundreds of clay Wu Zhu cash coins inside of it.
[5] According to the American art historian Susan Erickson (of the Department of Art History, University of Michigan) in her 1994 article "Money Trees of the Eastern Han Dynasty", the Wu Zhu cash coin had special significance for the dead in China, as the Hanzi character "Zhu" (銖) could in this context also refer to the trunk of the 300 li (around 124,740 meters or 77.51 miles) tall fusang tree which in ancient Chinese mythology is considered to be an auspicious symbol that helps to guide the deceased on their journey to the heavens and eventually immortality in the afterlife.
[5] The clay imitations of money that were placed inside of the tombs could therefore be used by the dead to pay debts and taxes that are owed to the otherworldly (or "hell") government in the afterlife.
In 2015 Chinese archeologists uncovered 10 tonnes of bronze Wu Zhu cash coins from the Western Han dynasty (or around 2 million cash coins) alongside over ten thousand of other iron, bronze, and gold items in the Haihunhou cemetery near Nanchang, Jiangxi, among the other uncovered items were bamboo slips, wood tablets, as well as jade objects.
[5] This experiment is a rare case in the monetary history of China where clay cash coins were officially produced by a government for circulation and not exclusively for funeral use.
[5] During the Manchu Qing dynasty, which reigned over China until the early 20th century, clay versions of cash coins were continued to be produced as funerary money, for example clay versions of Qianlong Tongbao (乾隆通寶) cash coins are sometimes found in tombs and other burial sites dating to the Qing dynasty period.
[11] During the Western Han dynasty period it is estimated that over 1,000,000 catties (斤), which is over 248 metric tons, of gold currencies and coinages was in circulation in China at the time.
[5] Han dynasty Jinbing can display Chinese characters which have been identified as reading 齊 (qí), 土 (tǔ), 長 (cháng), 阮 (ruǎn), 吉 (jí), 馬 (mǎ), 租 (zū), 千 (qiān), 金 (jīn), 王 (wáng), and "V".
[5] Some inscriptions that have been found on clay Jinbing include feng nian tian (豐年田, "fields of bountiful harvest") and Zhiqian Baiwan (直錢百萬, "has a nominal value of 1,000,000 cash coins").
Money trees as a charm have been found in Southwest Chinese tombs from the Han dynasty, and are believed to have been placed there to help guide the dead to the afterlife and provide them with monetary support.
The earliest money trees, however, date to the Han dynasty in present-day Sichuan and a Taoist religious order named the Way of the Five Pecks of Rice.
Examples include Wang Mang's Xin dynasty era hwacheon (貨泉, 화천) cash have been unearthed in tombs in modern Korea there is minor evidence that these coins might have been used for the international trade of the time.
[30][31] And a Tây Sơn dynasty cash coin issued under Nguyễn Nhạc was found inside of the tomb of Thoại Ngọc Hầu and his two wives.
[12] After the imperial period ended Chinese and Vietnamese burial and ritual customs have changed, it became uncommon for both actual and imitations of currency to be buried together with deceased individuals.
[11] One hypothesis about the current situation where Hell Money have such high denomination states that it expanded to keep pace with the hyperinflation that occurred in China during the 1940s in the wake of World War II and that unlike the actual Chinese yuan, the denominations of Hell Money never declined, even after the Chinese economy was brought back under control following the surrender of Japan and a series of monetary reforms.
