provincial, the standard was
never uniform, and in many cases debased. Excessive issues lowered the
value of the coins, and for many years the average exchange was 1600
or more per tael. The rise in copper led to the melting down of all
the older and superior coins, and as for the same reason coining was
suspended, the result was an appreciation of the "cash," so that a
tael in 1909 exchanged for about 1220 cash or about 35 to a penny
English. Inasmuch as the "cash" bore no fixed relation to silver, and
was, moreover, of no uniform composition, it formed a sort of mongrel
standard of its own, varying with the volume in circulation.
(G.J.; X.)

V. HISTORY

(A)--_European Knowledge of China up to 1615._

_China as known to the Ancients._--The spacious seat of ancient
civilization which we call China has been distinguished by different
appellations, according as it was reached by the southern sea-route or
by the northern land-route traversing the longitude of Asia. In the
former aspect the name has nearly always been some form of the name
_Sin, Chin, Sinoe, China_. In the latter point of view the region in
question was known to the ancients as the land of the _Seres_, to the
middle ages as the empire of _Cathay_. The name of _Chin_ has been
supposed (doubtfully) to be derived from the dynasty of _Ts'in_, which a
little more than two centuries before the Christian era enjoyed a
vigorous existence, uniting all the Chinese provinces under its
authority, and extending its conquests far beyond those limits to the
south and the west. The mention of the _Chinas_ in ancient Sanskrit
literature, both in the laws of Manu and in the Mah[=a]bh[=a]rata, has
often been supposed to prove the application of the name long before the
predominance of the Ts'in dynasty. But the coupling of that name with
the _Daradas_, still surviving as the people of Dardistan, on the Indus,
suggests it as more probable that those _Chinas_ were a kindred race of
mountaineers, whose name as _Shinas_ in fact likewise remains applied to
a branch of the Dard races. Whether the _Sinim_ of the prophet Isaiah
should be interpreted of the Chinese is probably not susceptible of any
decision; by the context it appears certainly to indicate a people of
the extreme east or south. The name probably came to Europe through the
Arabs, who made the _China_ of the farther east into _Sin_, and perhaps
sometimes into _Thin_. Hence the _Thin_ of the a