Hell money

Hell money is a form of joss paper printed to resemble legal tender bank notes. The notes are not an officially recognized currency or legal tender since their sole intended purpose is to be offered as burnt-offerings to the deceased as often practiced by the Chinese and several East Asian cultures. This faux money has been in use since at least the late 19th century and possibly much earlier. Early 20th century examples took the resemblance of minor commercial currency of the type issued by businesses across China until the mid-1940s.

The identification of this type of joss paper as "hell bank notes" or "hell money" and singling them out is largely a Western construct, since these items are simply regarded as yet another form of joss paper (冥幣, 陰司紙, 紙錢, or 金紙) in East Asian cultures and have no special name or status.

The word hell on hell bank notes refers to Diyu (simplified Chinese: 地狱; traditional Chinese: 地獄; pinyin: dìyù, "underworld prison"; also 地府, dìfǔ, "underworld court"). These words are printed on some notes. In traditional Chinese belief, it is thought to be where the souls of the dead are first judged by the Lord of the Earthly Court, Yan Wang. After this particular judgement, they are either escorted to heaven or sent into the maze of underworld levels and chambers to atone for their sins. People believe that even in the earthly court, spirits need to use money.

A popular story says that the word hell was introduced to China by Christian missionaries, who preached that all non-Christian Chinese people would "go to hell" after death. The word "Hell" was thus misinterpreted to be the proper English term for the afterlife and hence adopted as such. Some printed notes attempt to correct this by omitting the word "hell" and sometimes replacing it with "heaven" or "paradise". These particular bills are usually found in joss packs meant to be burned for Chinese deities, and usually have the same design as hell bank notes but with different colours.

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Wikipedia