At Ras-el-Fyk, in Dafour, the hoe also serves as currency,[133] and in West Africa "axes serve as currency; these are too small to be really employed as an implement, but are doubtless the survival of a period not long past when real axes served as money."[134]
At the time when the Chinese made their great invasion into South-Eastern Asia (214 B.C.), they still were employing a bronze currency under the form of knives, which were 135 millimetres (5-2/5 ins.) in length, bearing on the blade the character _Minh_, and finished with a ring at the end of the handle for stringing them. Under the ninth dynasty (479-501 A.D.), they used knives of the same form and metal, but 180 mm. (7-1/5 ins.) in length, furnished with a large ring at the end of the handle and inscribed with the characters _Tsy Ku'-u Hoa_. Next the form of the knife was modified, the handle disappeared, and the ring was attached directly to the blade; but now, as weight was regarded of importance, its thickness was increased to preserve the full amount of metal, and the ring became a flat round plate pierced with a hole for the string.[135] Later on these knives became really a conventional currency,[136] and for convenience the blade was got rid of, and all that was now left of the original knife was the ring in the shape of a round plate pierced with a square hole. This is a brief history of the _sapec_ (more commonly known to us as _cash_), the only native coin of China, and which is found everywhere from Malaysia to Japan.[137]
[135] J. Silvestre, "Notes pour servir à la recherche et au classement des monnaies et des médailles de Annam et de la Cochin-Chine Française," _Excursions et Reconnaissances_, No. 15 (1883), p. 395.
[136] W. S. Ament, "The Ancient Coinage of China," _American Journ. Archæol._, iv., 1888, p. 284, Pls. XII., XIII.
[137] H. C. Millies, _Recherches sur les Monnaies des Indigènes de l'Archipel Indien et de la Péninsule Malaie_, 1871.
"Among the fishermen who dwelt along the shores of the Indian Ocean, from the Persian Gulf to the southern shores of Hindustan, Ceylon, and the Maldive Islands, it would appear that the fish-hook, to them the most important of all implements, passed as currency. In the course of time it became a true money, just as did the hoe in China. It still for a time retained its ancient form, but gradually became degraded into a single piece of double wire. These _larins_, made both of silver and bronze, were in use until the beginning of the last century, and bear legends in Arabic character. Had the process of degradation gone on without check, in course of time the double wire would probably have shrunk up into a bullet-shaped mass of metal, just as the Siamese silver coins are the outcome of a process of degradation from a piece of silver wire twisted into the form of a ring and doubled up, which probably originally formed some kind of ornament. The bullet-shaped _tical_ is now struck as a coin of European form. Just as, perhaps, the silver shells of Burmah became the multiple unit of a large number of real cowries, so the fish-hook made of real silver came into use as a multiple unit, when the bronze fish-hook had already become conventionalised into a true coin."[138]