User:Donald Trung/Horse coins

Target article: Horse coin.

Original draft


Horse coins (Traditional Chinese: 馬錢; Simplified Chinese: 马钱; Pinyin: mǎ qián) are a type of Chinese numismatic charm that originated in the Song dynasty presumably as gambling tokens although many literary figures wrote about these coins their usage has always been failed to be mentioned by them, most horse coins tend to be round coins 3 centimeters in diameter with a circular or square hole in the middle of the coin. The horses featured on horse coins are depicted in various positions such as lying on the ground sleep, turning their head while neighing, or galloping forward with their tails rising high. it is currently unknown how horse coins were actually used though it is speculated that Chinese horse coins were actually used as game board pieces or gambling counters. Horse coins are most often manufactured from copper or bronze, but in a few documented cases they may also be made from animal horns or ivory. The horse coins produced during the Song dynasty are considered to be those of the best quality and craftsmanship and tend be made from better metal than the horse coins produced after. Some horse coins would feature the name of the famous horses they depicted. It is estimated that there are over three hundred variants of the horse coin. Some horse coins contained only an image of a horse while others also included an image of the rider and others had inscriptions which identify the horse or rider. During the beginning of the year of the horse in 2002 Chinese researchers Jian Ning and Wang Liyan of the National Museum of Chinese History wrote articles on horse coins the "China Cultural Relics Newspaper", the researchers noted that they found it a pity that the holes in the coins covered the saddles of the horses as this could've revealed more about ancient horse culture. Horse coins from the Song dynasty are the horse coins that are produced at the highest quality while horse coins from subsequent dynasties tend to be inferior compared to them.

Horse coins often depicted famous horses from Chinese history, while commemorative horse coins would also feature riders, such as the horse coin that features “General Yue Yi of the State of Yan” commemorating the event that a Yan general attempted to conquer the city of Jimo. It is rare for horse coins to also feature images of horses in armour but a few rare examples from the Song dynasty exist (and it is even rarer for these coins to also feature a saddle) as well as some from the Mongol Yuan dynasty that feature horses wearing typical Mongolian horse armour. As horse coins from the Yuan dynasty are extremely rare there hasn't been much research undertaken in determining their usage and origins.

Expansion process (status)

 * , busy importing all information from Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek / Primal Trek, and I really mean ALL information other than descriptions of images (and a very small note reserved for the Kaiyuan Tongbao article) into the Yansheng Coin article, before the expansion will be launched this article draft needs to be finished as it's linked as a "Main article" in the (provisional) draft. --Donald Trung (talk) 10:45, 26 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Ongoing. --Donald Trung (talk) 06:20, 2 May 2018 (UTC)


 * ✅, as I am unable to find any other English, Vietnamese, Low-Saxon, Dutch, Spanish, German, or French sources on the subject. As my knowledge of Simplified Chinese characters isn't as sufficient as I would like I would have to suspend this project for the time being but as for "general lines" covering this subject it's mostly complete and equal/at par with other online English language sources on horse coins such as Gary Ashkenazy's Primaltrek / Primal Trek and others. As I can't seem to find any books on Chinese numismatic charms in any nearby libraries I think that cataloguing and describing every Chinese numismatic charm on Wikipedia should take precedent and I will consider this article to be effectively "complete" for the simple reason that all information on the subject previously on other websites is now available on Wikipedia which is basically my "good enough" status for measuring. --Donald Trung (talk) 20:29, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Redirects

 * 1) REDIRECT Horse coin


 * 1) Horse coins
 * 2) Horse Coin
 * 3) Horse Coins
 * 4) Chinese horse coins
 * 5) Chinese Horse coins
 * 6) Horse charms
 * 7) Horse Charms
 * 8) Horse charm
 * 9) Horse Charm
 * 10) Chinese Horse charms
 * 11) Chinese Horse Charms
 * 12) Chinese Horse charm
 * 13) Chinese Horse Charm
 * 14) 馬錢
 * 15) Horse amulets
 * 16) Horse Amulets
 * 17) Horse amulet
 * 18) Horse Amulet
 * 19) Chinese Horse amulets
 * 20) Chinese Horse Amulets
 * 21) Chinese Horse amulet
 * 22) Chinese Horse Amulet
 * 23) Ma qian
 * 24) Mǎ qián