元代貨幣の貫文・錠両単位の別について : 黒城出土及び徽州契約文書を中心として

抄録

Two different units of paper money or chao, guanwen and dingliang, coexisted in the Yuan dynasty. In this paper, historical documents such as 'Heicheng chutuwenshu' [Heicheng Artifact Documents] and 'Huizhou qiyuewenshu' [Huizhou Contracts] are analyzed in order to reexamine these units. The generally-accepted view is that dingliang was a unit of the Yuan governmental currency derived from silver weighing, and was also in common use; on the other hand, guanwen functioned only as a printed unit on chao, and was rarely used. However, the documents suggest that the units functioned in different ways. First, there was a regional difference in public commerce, with dingliang being used in Dadu and the northwestern part of the Yuan, while guanwen were used in Jiangnan. Second, although guanwen was dominant in Jiangnan, dingliang was still used for government financial affairs. In other words, the monetary system of Yuan China had a multiplex structure. In terms of the overall development of currency in China, it therefore seems likely that the Yuan was an important era of transition from dingliang to a silver currency system. In addition, there seems to have been continuity in the public use of guanwen throughout the Song, (the Jin), the Yuan and the Ming dynasties from tenth to seventeenth centuries.