The Numismatic Chronicle 171 Offprint - Royal Numismatic Society

THE CONFUCIAN MESSAGE ON VIETNAMESE COINS 403
wanted to put him on the throne during the attempted coup of 6 August 1866. All
the mandarins and scholars who had supported the prince were then dismissed. 247 No
wonder that scholars saw him as being illegitimate, guilty of fratricide, and out to
punish those who conformed to the fundamental teaching of Confucius that ‘The one
who sees what is just and yet does not act, lacks courage’ (jian yi bu wei wu yong ye
見義不為無勇也). 248 He thus became the illegitimate, fraticidal emperor of traitors
and cowards. In these circumstances, of increasing pressure from the French and
hesitation by the government, the moral maxims selected for the coins were a form
of a self-justifi cation – or propaganda – as manifested in the references to Cheng of
Zhou and to Taizong, founder of the Tang dynasty, to the Mandate of Heaven and
to the virtue of sincerity (Ch. cheng; Viet. thành). Not all the maxims, however, can
have been considered by the educated men to be a veritable homage from vice to
virtue.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
ACV Thierry, François, Amulettes de Chine et du Vietnam, rites magiques
et symbolique de la Chine ancienne, Paris, 1987.
AMM Thierry, François, Les collections monétaires VII, Monnaies
d’Extrême Orient, Administration des Monnaies et Médailles, 2 vols,
Paris. 1986.
AS Miura Gosen 三浦吾泉, Annan senpu 安南錢譜, 3 vols, Tokyo
1965–1971.
Balázs Balázs Étienne, La Bureaucratie céleste, Recherches sur l’économie
et la société de la Chine traditionnelle, Paris, 1978.
Barker Barker, Allan, The Historical cash coins of Viêt Nam, I-Offi cial and
semi-offi cial coins, Singapore, 2004.
CAC Thierry, François, Amulettes de Chine, Catalogue, Paris, 2008.
Ciyuan Zhu Jianmin 朱建民 (ed.), Zengxiu Ciyuan 增修辭源, 2 vols, Taipei,
1981.
CMV Thierry, François, Catalogue des monnaies vietnamiennes, Paris,
1988.
CMVS Thierry, François, Catalogue des monnaies vietnamiennes,
Supplément, Paris, 2002.
Daxue Confucius, Daxue 大學, « La grande Étude », texte chinois et traduction
in Séraphin Couvreur S. J., in Les Quatre Livres, Hokienfou, 1895,
reprint Taizhong 1972, pp. 1–45.
DNTL Đại Nam thực lục, Chính biên, Nhà xuất bản khoa học xã hội, Hanoi,
1968.
Đỗ Đỗ Văn Ninh, Tiền cổ Việt Nam, Hanoi, 1992.
247 On this period, see Tsuboi, L’Empire vietnamien face à la France et à la Chine, pp. 127–46;
Thierry, ‘Monnaies et circulation monétaire au Vietnam dans l’ère Tự Đức (1848–1883)’, pp. 268–70.
248 Lunyu, II-24, p. 83.