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영어

The purpose of this thesis is to clarify the meanings of the characters carved in the Three-Hole Spade coins which have been assumed as the currency in the late Warring Country Period. The characters carved in the Three-Hole Spade coins have been recognized as the places in which the coins were minted out. Most of the places in the ancient writings were found as the places in the Zhao State and some of them were found to belong to the State of ZhongShan, State of Yan, State of Wei, and State of Qi. Then, a question can be provoked: What was the original State which minted the Three-Hold Spade coins? According to those scholars who have researched the ancient writings about these coins, there have been four kinds of theories: State of Qin Mint Theory, State of Zhao Mint Theory, State of ZhongShan Mint Theory, and State of Wei Mint Theory. Generally State of Zhao Mint Theory has been accepted, and recently, State of ZhongShan Mint Theory has been studied actively. But it is still incapable of turning over the Zhao State Mint Theory. According to Xi-Quan Huang who is an excellent scholar on the studies about the coins, there have been known 36 types of places in which the Three-Hold coins have been minted out. However, according to the writer of this thesis who analyzed and synthesized the published writings, three places 、陽薦、陽晉-are not three different places but the same one, and naturally the total numbers of the places carved in the Three-Hold Spade coins were not 36 but 34.