M. Pauthier Assumes As A Mean 400,000 Yin, At 18 Taels, Which Will Give
7,200,000 Taels; Or, At 6s. 7d. To The Tael, 2,370,000l. But This
Amount Being In Chao Or Paper-Currency, Which At Its Highest Valuation
Was Worth Only 50 Per Cent.
Of the nominal value of the notes, we must
halve the sum, giving the salt revenue on Pauthier's assumptions =
1,185,000l.
Pauthier has also endeavoured to present a table of the whole revenue of
Kiang-Che under the Mongols, amounting to 12,955,710 paper taels, or
2,132,294l., including the salt revenue. This would leave only
947,294l. for the other sources of revenue, but the fact is that several
of these are left blank, and among others one so important as the
sea-customs. However, even making the extravagant supposition that the
sea-customs and other omitted items were equal in amount to the whole of
the other sources of revenue, salt included, the total would be only
4,264,585l.
Marco's amount, as he gives it, is, I think, unquestionably a huge
exaggeration, though I do not suppose an intentional one. In spite of his
professed rendering of the amounts in gold, I have little doubt that his
tomans really represent paper-currency, and that to get a valuation in
gold, his total has to be divided at the very least by two. We may then
compare his total of 290 tomans of paper ting with Pauthier's 130 tomans
of paper ting, excluding sea-customs and some other items. No nearer
comparison is practicable; and besides the sources of doubt already
indicated, it remains uncertain what in either calculation are the limits
of the province intended. For the bounds of Kiang-Che seem to have varied
greatly, sometimes including and sometimes excluding Fo-kien.
I may observe that Rashiduddin reports, on the authority of the Mongol
minister Pulad Chingsang, that the whole of Manzi brought in a revenue of
"900 tomans." This Quatremere renders "nine million pieces of gold,"
presumably meaning dinars. It is unfortunate that there should be
uncertainty here again as to the unit. If it were the dinar the whole
revenue of Manzi would be about 5,850,000l., whereas if the unit were,
as in the case of Polo's toman, the ting, the revenue would be nearly
30,000,000 sterling!
It does appear that in China a toman of some denomination of money near
the dinar was known in account. For Friar Odoric states the revenue of
Yang-chau in tomans of Balish, the latter unit being, as he explains,
a sum in paper-currency equivalent to a florin and a half (or something
more than a dinar); perhaps, however, only the liang or tael (see vol.
i. pp. 426-7).
It is this calculation of the Kinsay revenue which Marco is supposed to be
expounding to his fellow-prisoner on the title-page of this volume. [See
P. Hoang, Commerce Public du Sel, Shanghai, 1898, Liang-tahe-yen, pp.
6-7.
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