| Original Message: Worm money? |
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Hi Danny, Not a bead, and probably not - in any real sense of the word - money. Some dealers and collectors do try to claim that things like this had a monetary function, but most of the reliable people (Robert Wicks for instance) would dispute this. Until the advent of Chinese coinage most of Southeast Asia operated quite satisfactorily with a barter system of exchange. The early coins that were "minted" from around the middle of the first millennium in places like Tircul Burma and Dvaravati Thailand (a nice one attached) often derive from South Asian currency models, but I suspect that in most cases they were used more as tokens of value, often for religious ceremonies, than as money with a fixed market exchange. Some of these tokens, especially in Sumatra, are wonderfully inventive (I'll attach, if I can find it, a tin token that probably dates from the eighteenth century - it's a fish with a human head). The worm might possibly have had some such function as a token too, but I'd be quite sceptical even of this. All the best, Will All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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