However, when collecting taxes, it can be delivered in the form of silver ingots, such as the silver tax of "2254 Liang" for city ships.
The price of silver and copper coins is also rising gradually, from every two 1 to 2-3.
The price of rice was 300-600 per stone in the early Northern Song Dynasty, 600-700 in the middle period (during the reign of Renzong), which was about twice as high as that in the early Southern Song Dynasty. Therefore, it should be reasonable that the penetration of each stone is about 1 in Song Huizong in the late Northern Song Dynasty. According to the current rice price per kilogram of 2.5 yuan, a stone of rice in the Song Dynasty is 59.2 kilograms, which is 148 yuan, which is 1 copper coin, which is 148 yuan.
Then compare it with silver, that is to say, you can buy about 60 kilograms of rice with one or two silver.
In the history of more than 300 years in the Song Dynasty, the phenomenon of "pricing by silver" gradually developed. During the Northern Song Dynasty, silver was widely used in exchange with other commodities, but the record of pricing directly with silver was still sporadic and accidental.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, the records of using silver as the valuation standard to measure the value of various commodities and express the price of commodities increased greatly. During the Song Dynasty, the value scale function of silver experienced more than 100 years of gestation and accumulation, and was initially brought into play in the Southern Song Dynasty. 869 1(2009)05? 0 129-05 Since the Tang and Song Dynasties, the status of silver in China's monetary history and China's economic history has been rising, and its influence on the national economy and people's livelihood has been deepening.
The academic circles have conducted in-depth research on the use of silver in the Song Dynasty and its relationship with money, and achieved a series of important results.
However, there are still many disputes and questions about the degree of silver monetization in Song Dynasty. One of the main reasons is that there are some limitations in the excavation and interpretation of the historical materials of "taking silver as the value scale", which is the main performance of silver in Song Dynasty, so there are still great differences in the understanding of silver value scale. What does this article do? On the basis of collecting relevant information, ① As Mr. Peng Xinwei thought, in the Song Dynasty, "silver was only paid in large quantities.
There is no need to express the price. The area where the silver society circulated in the Southern Song Dynasty may be an exception. But in the eyes of the people, people don't use silver in their daily transactions, so it can't be said to be all-currency. "(History of Chinese Currency, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1958, p. 334) Gao Congming thinks:" Because silver plays an increasingly important role in the commodity currency economy in the Song Dynasty, it can be said that the monetization of silver began after the Song Dynasty, and the strengthening of the role of silver currency is an important symbol of the development of commodity economy in the Song Dynasty. " (Research on Currency and Currency Circulation in Song Dynasty, Hebei University Press, 2000, pp. 67 and 82). ② The Japanese scholar Dr. Kato Fan started from functions of money to discuss the pricing of ancient silver in China earlier. He didn't photocopy Song Yao Hui, nor did he bring the manuscript about food to Japan, and the first catalogue of Sikuquanshu and the sequels of four series were not published. The anthology of Song people is inconvenient to use, and the data collection is not enough (the circulation of silver in the Southern Song Dynasty and the relationship between silver and peace talks, Chinese economic history). In the aspect of pricing with silver in the Song Dynasty, the book gives three examples of using silver to express the price, and according to this, it is considered that gold and silver played the role of money in the Tang and Song Dynasties, but after all, there are not many examples of expressing the price. Since then, he "waited until these documents were published, and then repeatedly checked and inspected them. As a result, he often found that the research in previous years was not comprehensive and complete. "1944 wrote the article" Silver Circulation in Southern Song Dynasty and the Relationship between Silver and Peace ". But unfortunately, in this article, he did not discuss it according to the function of money. Among domestic scholars, Mr. Ma Li's article "On the Monetization of Silver in Song Dynasty" (L Series of History of Song, Liao and Jin Dynasties) systematically discusses the functions of money of Silver and supplements two important historical materials in terms of value scale. One is that in the Southern Song Dynasty, the envoys of the rulers had to be entertained with meals and snacks, and if they didn't eat them, they would be discounted. "If you discount money, let the deputy discount three taels of silver and five taels of San Qian." Total amount 17 yuan, in 600 yuan. Only five taels of silver, two taels of San Qian, and three hundred pence for every two officers. The Collection of Historical Materials on Currency in Song Dynasty (Zhonghua Book Company, 2004, 458 pages) edited by Mr. Wang Shengduo is devoted to the item "The use of gold and silver as a measure of value", which contains five kinds of historical materials, four of which have been discussed in Kato Fan and Ma Li, and the other is gold, which omits the materials used by Ma Li in Zhenjiang at the beginning of Longxing in the Southern Song Dynasty. Date of receipt: 2009? 05-05 Fund Project: This paper is the phased achievement of the National Social Science Fund Project "Urban and Rural Market Development and the Evolution of Currency Circulation Pattern in Song and Ming Dynasties" (project number: 2005/05). : 05052). About the author: Wang Wencheng (1966 ~), male, doctor of history, vice president of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences, researcher.
129 focuses on the historical materials of "pricing by silver" in the Song Dynasty, in order to help deepen the study of silver monetization in the Song Dynasty. First, the "silver pricing therapy" in the Northern Song Dynasty is because "nature does not produce money, just as nature does not produce bankers or exchange rates"? Yang Zhi, for silver, money is not a natural attribute, but a social attribute. Therefore, "money, as a value measure, is the intrinsic value measure of goods, that is, the inevitable manifestation of labor time" [2 1tpll2]. "Valuation by silver" means directly taking silver as the standard, using silver to measure the value of goods and wealth and express the price of goods. This is one of the main ways for silver to perform the function of value scale. It is of decisive significance to discuss whether the social role of silver has completed the transformation from commodity to currency and whether it has realized monetization. After checking the relevant literature, silver was used to exchange with many commodities at the beginning of the founding of the Song Dynasty. For example, in the second year (96 1), Song Ting "ordered Dr. Zuo Liu Xigu to buy alum in Jinzhou, and let the merchants lose gold, silver, silk, cotton, tea and money, and the official compensated them with alum". In the second year of Gande (964), Song Ting bought tea, saying that "besides the tea discount tax, the state officials know the city, Xu Min lost gold, silver, money and silks in the capital, and the official gave the coupons to tea instead", and so on. However, in the records of silver's participation in various commodity transactions, most of them did not leave a record of "pricing with silver". Even throughout the Northern Song Dynasty, there were few examples of "pricing by silver".
In my opinion, to some extent, the record of measuring wealth with silver may appear in the first year of Kangding (1040). At that time, Guo Wei, a prisoner in Huainan, said, "Sichuan Gorge doesn't produce silver, but people are raised to exchange silver for salt. In addition, the owners of salt distilleries also take silver as a discount, so vendors tend to go back to Beijing and Shaanxi for silver.
Officials must use silver to buy capital, which consumes both public and private funds. Please listen to the merchant of Yinjingshi or the border army of Shaanxi, give coupons to collect Sichuan and Shaanxi salt, or discount salt and wine for the New Year. Willing to invest money, two thousand as silver. Do it by decree. Few people have been to Baiyin Shaanxi, and 20 Jin of salt is given to 100 Jin, which is raised in Zhongfengxiang and Yongxing. Plof 183) According to this record, firstly, due to Xia Chuan's long-term collection of silver for salt and wine, Song Ting took silver as the standard to attract businessmen to the capital and the army in Shaanxi and Bianzhou, and implemented the method of exchanging copper coins for those who were willing to pay copper coins at a ratio of every two. Secondly, "add 20 Jin to 100 Jin of salt" means that the merchants who buy silver in Beijing and Shaanxi may be salt merchants in Sichuan, at least closely related to salt merchants.
Buying silver is essentially buying Sichuan salt in different places. The method of adding salt is to reduce the price of salt and encourage businessmen to accept it.
Therefore, on the issue of silver and Sichuan salt, silver has the significance of measuring the value of Sichuan salt. Although this may be a temporary measure taken by Song Ting during the Song and Xia Wars in the first year of Kangding, when there was a shortage of silver in the northwest and the capital, the effect did not seem to be good.
But it should be said that while accepting copper coins and Sichuan, silver has unexpectedly become the pricing standard for salt sales in Beijing and Shaanxi. Since then, in June of the third year of Yuanfeng (1080), the third division said that after Hebei's convenient grain and grass were changed to the money-seeing method, it once again "did not set forage money, but reduced the cost of silk tea with silver". However, because merchants are unprofitable, they "increase forage and waste money" and once "valued it with silver, touch and silk". The forage money added here seems to be different from the forage money priced in copper coins and paid at a discount of "silver silk tea money". Moreover, because "uranium silk is not what Hebei businessmen need", it is possible that silver is actually used to "estimate" the value of forage. Of course, it is still difficult to rule out the possibility that both silver and forage are "estimated straight" with copper coins.
Compared with the previous case, this has happened for 40 years, but the meaning of "pricing in silver" still seems vague. At the end of the Northern Song Dynasty, the Jin people surrounded Kaifeng, and Song Ting was forced to promise huge amounts of gold and silver to kill the army. In Miscellaneous Son, Li Ruoshui recorded Steven Song's comments on the gold and silver of the Sui army: "I don't know the amount of gold and silver promised at the city gate. Seeing what the museum partner said, he knew so much, so he said bitterly that at the beginning, people didn't measure whether the court had it, so they promised it at random. Now that the national treasury is exhausted, where can I get it? " In this case, Jin people once said, "If you don't have time, take something else as a standard discount." Judging from this record, it seems that Jin people put silver in the position of value scale, taking the quantity of silver as the calculation standard, and allowed other commodities to discount to offset silver. However, when it was really difficult to include enough silver in Bianjing, the idea of Jin people was formally put into practice in Bianjing: Song Ting "calculated the number of gold silks based on the genus of elephant, jade, pearl, rhinoceros, brain, musk deer, Shen and sandalwood". Li Ruoshui's memory is true, and it did happen that the number of "golden threads" became the standard. Silver seems to play a role as a measure of value to some extent. Different from the above situation, there are countless examples of silver participating in the exchange and pricing other commodities together with copper coins in the exchange in the literature of the Northern Song Dynasty. For example, in the second year of Jingdezhen (1005), the tea law was changed, and "anyone who pays 5,000 yuan of gold, silver and cotton silk in the capital will be given real tea 1000." Gold, silk and millet are added to the Hebei side, such as the system of Jingshi, tea is added to 1000, and the two sides are added to 5000. The same is true of the edge and secondary edge of Hedong, with an increase of 86,000 people. The same is true on the edge of Shaanxi, "Four stagnates and sixty. ).
Here, whether it is the monopoly material tea sold by Song Ting or the gold, silver and cotton silk exchanged by merchants with tea, it is first priced with copper coins and then exchanged. For another example, in the fourth year of Tiansheng (1026), Huainan sent letters from Fang Zhongxun and Yuan Wailang, juxtaposing "Guanzhuang 140 of Guandiwei counties in Minhou". The ripe field covers an area of 84 mu 1375 hectare, and when the estimated amount is 350,000 yuan, it is clearly stipulated that it can "show the money" or "on condition that the military gold and silver wire can be discounted at the market price, and it can pay the full price or listen to it if it is willing". The official land sold by Song Ting and the gold, silver and silk paid by tenants when they bought it were also priced with copper coins before being exchanged. From this point of view, although silver has been widely involved in market exchange in the Northern Song Dynasty, it may be used as a standard and scale to measure the value of goods sporadically and accidentally, which has the significance of "pricing with silver" to some extent. However, the record of direct "pricing with silver" is limited, and the background of related cases is also somewhat special. If we use this to judge whether silver has fulfilled the function of value scale, it really seems that the basis is not sufficient. Second, the "silver pricing" in the Southern Song Dynasty If the case of "silver pricing" in the Northern Song Dynasty is relatively rare, the situation in the Southern Song Dynasty has undergone major changes. After entering the Southern Song Dynasty, the records of direct "pricing by silver" increased obviously. Among them, the most typical transaction of buying horses and horses in the Southern Song Dynasty was a record of calculating the prices of various commodities with silver for a long time. At the beginning of the Southern Song Dynasty, the demand for horses in the Song Dynasty increased sharply, the trade between Guangzhou and Malaysia was unprecedentedly active, the price of horses rose sharply, and the amount of gold and silver increased accordingly. However, in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty, the money and goods used by city horses were all over money, silk, gold, silver and salt. They are neither dedicated to silver nor have a clear price for silver.
After seven years in Shaoxing (1 137), horses are still bought with gold, silver, brocade, jade and salt, and silver is the main measure of horse prices.
At this time, although "five taels of gold, two hundred and fifty taels of gold, four hundred and twenty taels of brocade and four hundred and twenty taels of salt in Lianzhou are used every year, five hundred horses are obtained". However, "Ma Bi is four feet two inches high, and its direct price is forty-two silver. The height increases by twelve taels of silver per inch, and it is as high as sixty or seventy taels. Locals, especially fond of the army, study their origin or Jinbo 22 "FSLLVMs-4". In the twenty-first year of Shaoxing (1 15 1), the court ordered the commanders in Guangxi to donate 50 Jin of gold, 300 Jin of platinum, 200 Jin of brocade, 4,000 Jin of Lianzhou salt, 500 horses in Hengshan village, and the good horses were five feet tall. Not only does the number of horses in the market not decrease, but also the price of horses does not decrease, and only silver is used to calculate the price of horses. According to last week's records, they are all "priced in silver" 1. In the thirty-second year of Shaoxing (1 162), some changes have taken place in horses in Guangxi, with many disadvantages. The main changes and shortcomings are as follows: "Every time I get familiar with barbarians, I will get the support of silver. "Or vessels, made of collar silver. Today, there are many silversmiths selling silver and buying copper in the center. In the Yuan (original) method, one reed salt is 150 Jin, which is calculated at 50% discount on silver. Now two reeds are divided into three reeds, which is converted into 1520 silver. Yuan (original) horse is 36 taels of silver for every four feet and one inch, and the height is increased by 12 taels of red (feet), with 20% discount for every taels of silver and 20% discount for money. This shows that there are still currencies, gold and silver salts exchanged between Guangzhou and Malaysia. And the price is calculated in silver. When actually paying salt, the price of salt is also calculated in silver. Correspondingly, the "Longwangwang Chicken" trafficked by horses from Dali was also recorded as "one chicken straight and one silver" [10 1 1. Not only that, this material also shows that this was not learned by the Song people from the Ministry, nor was it caused by the influence outside the jurisdiction of the Song Dynasty, but the horse buyers in the Song Dynasty took the lead in calculating the horse value and buying the horse value with money. Therefore, Song Ting bought horses with "collar silver" in the form of money, while the horse sellers in Dali wanted silverware in the form of commodities, and the collar silver obtained from selling horses often had to be sold and cast into utensils. As a result, the horse racing society in Dali simply cast a silver collar-shaped "Nanma City Gold One or Two" with copper to measure the weight of gold and silver from selling horses. In addition to the constant use of silver to express the prices of various commodities in the trade between Guangzhou and Malaysia, there were also records of using silver to calculate the price of grain in the Southern Song Dynasty. Chun Xijian (1174 ~1189) "Zhou Jun paid 720 taels of silver at the age of seven, and the edge was not the place of origin, so he often transported rice and wheat back to Jinzhou. One meter and one silver, how many thousands a year? The outline is a tribute. "However, Zhang Changshi, Zhi County, started four classes in two years, using 5000 rice and wheat, and only completed the task of providing 700 taels.
So the speaker played a theory, which made an official lose and talked about Zhao's hegemony.
Obviously, selling rice and wheat 1 obtaining 1 two pieces of silver here is not a specific exchange of silver and grain, but an annual silver tribute. In normal years, the price of L grain is 1 two silver.
Based on this, you can get 1,200 taels of silver for selling 1,000 tablets, and 5,200 taels of grain will be consumed for paying 720 taels of tribute. Of course, you will be demoted. Copper used for minting money is a special commodity. When Song Tingzhi was in Zhezong, he bought copper with silver. In the Southern Song Dynasty, it was further developed. Even using the silver refined by pit smelting talents to buy copper became a routine measure for the company to increase copper casting money and raise some pit smelting money in the Southern Song Dynasty. In the frequent exchange of silver and copper, it is inevitable to use silver to calculate the copper price.
On the 26th day of the first month of the 9th year of Dadao (1 173), Yao was sent to the whole state of France and was ordered to handle the smelting of silver and copper.
After he took office, he implemented the method of "paying for copper" in mines such as Kushan, and the locals mined it at their own expense.
The method is that when buying copper, the government pays silver, stipulating that pit households "sell net copper to officials and calculate labor costs." Take four catties of copper, and ask for one or two ounces of official silver. Point, Q. What we are talking about here is obviously not a specific exchange, not a specific event of 4 kg of copper for 1 two silver, but a regulation applicable to all copper purchases. Song Ting officially announced to the pit owner the offer for purchasing copper: 4 Jin of copper and "labor fee" 1 2 silver. In the exchange of silver and copper, silver measures the cost and price of copper by universal equivalent. Furthermore, under the condition of copper coins or currency, silver and copper coins have formed an exchange relationship. Therefore, in the exchange of money, there is even a record of the amount of silver and copper coins. For example, at the end of Shaoxing, Song approved the General Administration of Huguang to "send a trip to Sichuan in 29 years, intercept and allocate 500,000 yuan, and count more than 150,000 taels of silver" n94t).
The 500,000 yuan that Song Ting wants to allocate to Huguang is money, but measured by silver, it is equivalent to more than 654.38+05,000 silver. In addition, the folk use of silver pricing is also more common in records. For example, it is carefully recorded that "Changsha tea set uses 300 or 500 white gold stars for each pair", and Song man-made ships use 13 1, "the wood on the top of the mast has a straight silver edge 520"14? Oh). Another example is "Yixing Branch undertakes services and has excellent medical skills".
His asking price for a house call is "5000 yuan", not including medicine.
After seeing the doctor, the patient "won 100 taels without giving 520 taels of silver as medicine, but he will be fine in a few days after taking medicine" [15( 17 1). Obviously, Duan Chengwu's medicinal silver is priced, and he and his patients also bargain with the price of silver. More importantly, silver was also used to summarize the value of various commodities in the Southern Song Dynasty. In the article "On the Monetization of Silver in Song Dynasty", Ma Li quoted various examples of the reception of gold envoys in Southern Song Dynasty, which is exactly the case.
When talking about the Shaoxing period (1131~162), Zhou Mi also said: "From beginning to end, the officials who paid the tongzhi gold people wasted 1300 yuan and 36 pieces of kapok. At least look carefully, the total price of gold, kapok, white cloth and wine here is measured by the weight of silver. Coincidentally, when the envoys of the Jin Dynasty entered the Song Dynasty, Song Ting cited an example. He once again said, "Give tea and wine a name, give seven clothes each, and pay a pair of * * * to fold fifty taels of silver." Judging from the text, it was Song Ting who "folded" tea, wine, famous fruits, clothes and teeth into silver, carelessly.
In addition, there are similar records in the books of the Song Dynasty. The materials converted into silver include clothes and often given examples, such as red brocade, silk, transparent back, saddle saddle, horse, scattered horse, silk, miscellaneous silk, bowl cover and so on. Similarly, a similar situation happened among the people in the Song Dynasty. For example, in the twenty-second year of Shaoxing, if a monk rushed to Xishan Guangfu Hospital, it would be spring (state).
In the middle of the night, a monk asked for an audience, which surprised him. Monk's Day: Someone is very poor and can only get a few taels of silver in his mantle, so people will steal it. The cloak here is not necessarily silverware, especially when it is combined with "a poor man", which means it is the property of a wandering monk. Therefore, the money he carries with him for food, clothing, housing and transportation can be valued in silver, which is worth "several taels". In Yuan Fan Shi, Yuan Cai also warned people that "people have brothers, sons and nephews living together, while patients who are privately rich and worried about analysis buy gold and silver and hide them. This is a big fool. If it is calculated by 100,000 gold and silver, it will be used to buy real estate, and the annual income will be 1 10,000 "prj larvae". Here, it seems that "if you count every hundred gold and silver" is not only to measure and express the total value of family property with silver, but even to measure the value of "floating wealth" such as copper coins with silver. Obviously, after entering the Southern Song Dynasty, the phenomenon of direct "pricing with silver" is no longer a sporadic accident.
In the literature of the Song Dynasty, there have been a lot of records in which silver is used as the evaluation standard, the value of many commodities is measured by silver, or the price of commodities is directly expressed by silver. Three. "Silver Pricing": a long process from subtle to obvious. Through further excavation and textual research of relevant historical materials, we can clearly see that 132 saw that there were many records of "pricing with silver" in the Song Dynasty. Especially in the Southern Song Dynasty, not only in the horse market trade between Lingnan and Dali, the value of horse, salt, silk and other commodities was measured by silver for a long time, but also in the mainland, such as grain, copper (even copper coins), tea sets, wood, medicines and other commodities, and even the amount of family wealth was measured by silver. The historical materials of "focusing on silver" are not as thin as those quoted by Kato Fan in the Study of Gold and Silver in Tang and Song Dynasties, nor are they limited to the two items added by Ma Li in On the Monetization of Silver in Song Dynasty. On this basis, combined with the formation of the relationship between silver and currency exchange in Song Dynasty, the difference between silver and silk and other commodities became increasingly prominent, and silver was gradually used in commodity exchange. It can be seen that the social role of silver in the relationship between commodity and currency in Song Dynasty has been transformed from commodity to currency and realized monetization. Since then, silver is no longer just an ordinary commodity, but a special commodity currency. Even silver in the form of ornaments plays the role of currency storage, which is a kind of currency storage. For example, in the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty, "Hang Street, from Wuwenlou North to Guanxiang South Street, has more than two rows of gold and silver salt banknotes leading to trading shops, with gold and silver utensils and cash in front, which is called seeing money piles". The main purpose of this kind of silverware placed in front of the mat is no longer a vessel for people to watch, but a "pile of money" for guests to exchange and calculate tea and salt bills. Therefore, when Xin Qiji was in Song Xiaozong, facing the "Jiangyou Famine", he "ordered all officials to give money and silverware, called officials, Confucian scholars, merchants and citizens to give thousands of objects, borrowed money, and took charge of transportation without taking a penny. Finally, he sent money to the city, so he even came, and it was straight. In the second year of Qingyuan (1 196), when Chen Qian was the general manager of Huguang, he also "settled Yan Fu's loss, used people who admired luxury, returned gold and silver, and stored them in the city army".
In fact, they have used gold and silver as money to buy grain and "military reserves" and put silver with currency storage function back into circulation. However, it needs to be emphasized that from the historical data of "pricing by silver" in the Song Dynasty, it can be seen that there are few records of "pricing by silver" in the Northern Song Dynasty, which are sporadic, accidental and vague in meaning.
After the Southern Song Dynasty, not only the number of related records increased greatly, but also the coverage was obviously expanded and the meaning was more clear. This shows from one side that the emergence of "pricing by silver" in Song Dynasty did not happen overnight, but went through a long process from microcosmic to obvious. In this process, silver, like silk, grain, tea, salt, rhinoceros, medicine and land, has long been widely used in exchange with other commodities.
But in the exchange, copper coins are used for pricing, not silver. Therefore, in the third year of Chengping (1000), Wang Yuou said: "When there are many husband's department stores, there must be owners. Precious jade, heavy treasure, stuck in the stream of millet and silk, needs to be used, but it is too wet and thin. Those who have the right to trade are the rich. " Yan (Volume 17) In the second year of Kangding (A.D. 104 1 year), Li Gou also said in "The Strategy of Riching the Country": "Jade, gold and silver are of great value and should not be lightly used.
But it is not easy for Chunbu to be a hundred kings. "1"2310916 Volume Ten For people, it is found that gold and silver have the characteristics of "their tools can be used to make leather, but they can be made without consumption", and the price of gold and silver has gone up because of the chasing up and down and widespread use, and even the problem of "officials increasing fees and people destroying production" may occur. It is suggested that a clear system should be established to use gold and silver up and down. Obviously, under such circumstances, the use of silver is becoming more and more popular, but there is still a long way to go before "pricing with silver".
Even if there is a record of "pricing with silver", it can only be a sporadic phenomenon and does not have the significance of using silver as currency. However, in this long process, there have also been two records with important turning points. One is the ten years of Xining (1077). In front of Song Shenzong, "public and private money is empty, and those who consume money are to blame." Shen Kuo expounded his point of view and put forward the suggestion of using gold and silver as materials.
He said: "In ancient times, gold, silver, pearls, jade, turtles and shellfish were all things of money, not just money. Today's gold and silver are more expensive than gold and silver all over the world. They only regard it as a device rather than a coin. The people are poor and there are few people who make equipment, so the price is light.
Today, the person who should lose money loses money. If it is overestimated, it will be subject to it. It is the same when it comes out. Then the road to money will be wider and the benefits of money will be slightly divided. Although Shen Kuo's suggestion can be carried out without historical data, it at least shows that people were more or less aware of the problem of using silver as currency at that time, which shows that it is not far from the frequent phenomenon of "pricing with silver". Secondly, nearly 100 years after Shen Kuo put forward this proposal, that is, six years after Dadao (1 170), officials in the Southern Song Dynasty thought: "Coins can be used when nothing happens, but not when something happens. Or if there are policemen at the border, it will be difficult to make money and the price of silver will increase. You can go anywhere with silver instead of money. After hundreds of years, when people already think that it is difficult to sell money and it is impossible to replace money with silver, silver and copper coins have reached the point where it is difficult to distinguish each other. In addition to "pricing by money", a large number of "pricing by silver" appeared in the Song Dynasty, which is a natural thing. Therefore, "silver pricing" appeared in the Song Dynasty. Experienced a long-term accumulation, from small to large process.
In this process, the Northern Song Dynasty mainly belonged to the stage of brewing and accumulation, and "pricing by silver" began to sprout, which was not obvious enough.
However, it was after the brewing and accumulation of the Northern Song Dynasty that "silver pricing" appeared more frequently in the Southern Song Dynasty. Song people began to use silver as a standard to measure the value of goods and wealth and express the price of goods. Just because there are not many historical materials about "pricing by silver", it seems that it is inevitable to deny the monetization of silver in the Northern Song Dynasty and ignore the long accumulation in the early stage of silver monetization, and only explain the monetization of silver in the entire Song Dynasty with historical materials from the Southern Song Dynasty.