Thien Ung Thong Bao

Whereas Tran Tan Cong Bao is among one of the most noted rebel coins, the rebel Tran Cao is one of the more notable rebels, though his coins are less so. In the year 1516 Tran Cao appeared in Hai Duong province claiming he was both the great grandson of king Tran Tong as well as the living incarnation of the Buddha.  He gathered a large army who's soldiers are said to have dressed in black and shaved their heads. In 1517 he stormed the capital of Hanoi and proclaimed himself as king under the name of Thien Ung.

The only mention of Thien Ung in the literature is a coin listed in Toda, and was thought by some to possibly be a misinterpretation of one of the earlier Thien Khanh coins. These coins have irregular calligraphy and the emperor's given name was also Tran Cao. Recently the coin bearing the legend of Thien Ung Thong Bao shown in the figure above emerged in Shanghai, China reportedly found in a coin hoard dug up in a field in Vietnam. It seems that Toda may have been right about the existence of a Thien Ung Thong Bao coin.

Examination of the patina on the front and back revealed that the coin was genuine and very old. The top and bottom characters were examined with great care to insure that they had not been altered by carving or the addition of materials.
 

Further confirmation of the coin's authenticity comes from a rubbing of another piece discovered in an old Japanese auction catalog. The figure on the right compares rubbings from both the catalog and the current piece, and the two are so similar that it appears they were cast from the same mother coin. Both coins have a break in the left part of the top stroke of the 'Thien' and a break in the lower right part of the inner rim. The two cannot be the same coin because the outer rims are offset differently. If they were cast from the same mother coin, and they are old based on the patina, the coins cannot be forgeries.

Its also important to determine if the coin could be from 1517 to 1521. The distinctive Thong Bao style with a pinched 'Thong' and a hooked right foot 'Bao' was used on official Vietnamese coins from about 1459 to 1540 and is the style of the period. The calligraphy of the 'Thong' and 'Bao' are excellent and exactly match one of the Quang Thieu varieties found in Gosen, while the 'Thien' and 'Ung' are less pleasing. One possibility is that after Tran Cao took control of the government he wanted to quickly legitimize his reign by casting the Thien Ung coin. Carving quality master cashes used for manufacture takes time, so a quick mother coin was made from an existing Quang Thieu piece as Quang Thieu was the current reign (1516 - 1526). The slight upward curve on the left of the second horizontal stroke of the 'Thien' supports this because such a feature is common for the characters 'Quang' and 'Dai', but not 'Thien'.
 

Dr. R. Allan Barker
Singapore
February 2, 2000

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