A Mercantile Sycee of Southern Song Dynasty

Stephen Tai
Jan.27, 1998

The shown sycee (Length: 72mm, Width: 27mm, Height: 12mm, Weight:187g, i.e. 5 Taels) with 2 identical stamps lining parallelly between the two sides of its waist, each stamp has 4 incuse characters, read as: Jen Hua Yin Ji, which means 'The Genuine Flowery Silver’s Remark'.

Peculiarities:

The shape of such a sycee is a regular standard adopted by Song and Yuan Dynasty.
There are other sycee of similar shape, size, and weight, inscribed with silversmith’s name only, all of them have been authenticated as coming from the latter period of Southern Song Dynasty(1127-1276), and serving mainly for mercantile purpose.
In Southern Song Dynasty merchants had classified silver sycee into 11 classes, in accordance with their purity levels ranking from 100% to 97.5%. Hua Yin ('Flowery Silver) was the first class above all. Needless to say, the shown sycee intended to prove itself as finest silver by such remarks.
Flowery Silver, its meaning, also illustrates the wrinkles or waves shown on the surface of sycee, people then considered only fine silvers were enable to bear such signs.
The incuse scripts with which the shown sycee was stamped, is different from the chops struck on most sycee in Ching Dynasty (please look at the page of 'Chinese Sycee Examples'), and also, unlike the engraved characters often seen on the sycee from Ming (lease look the page of 'A Tax Sycee in Late Ming Dynasty'), Yuan Dynasty, or earlier to Tang Dynasty.

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