Catalogue of the collection of playing cards bequeathed to the Trustees of the British museum by the late Lady Charlotte Schreiber.

186

CATALOGUE OF CARDS.

This order (except that 2 sometimes counts before 4) is the same for
both dice and dominoes: indeed it seems open to considerable doubt
whether we should not, from the peculiar standpoint of the Chinese,
regard dice, equally with dominoes, as playing cards. As this seems to
verge on paradox it shall not be pressed, but it may be conveniently
noted here that Chinese dice are sold not in pairs but in sets of six,
and that the ace and four spot are coloured red, the other spots black.
Both peculiarities are copied into the dominoes or cards derived from
them. [See Nos. 1-8.]
2. Chinese chess requires a commander-in-chief (chiang or shway), two
aides (shih), two elephants (hsiang), two chariots (chii), two horses (ma),
two cannons (p'ao), and five soldiers (tsu or ping). The first five correspond, some imperfectly, some exactly, to our king, queen, bishop, rook,
and knight respectively, the last to our pawns; the cannon has no
counterpart in the European game. The various pieces are not distinguished, as with us, by carved conventional figures, but are merely so
many draughtsmen, as it were, labelled each with its name in a single
word or " character." These characters are borrowed by the cardmakers
as marks for their cards, so that in a game like Keemapow [Nos. 10, 11]
we have 4 packs of 28 cards, being the king, queen, bishop: rook, knight,
cannon: and pawn, in 4 colours. The name Keemapow, properly Chiimap'ao, is simply " rook, knight, and cannon."
3. Until this present year (1890) no Chinese Government has
succeeded in passing into currency any coin except the base compound of
copper, lead, and sand known to foreigners as the cash. This coin, worth
in the provinces about I-th of a penny, is some three-fourths of an inch
in diameter, with a square hole in the centre, above and below and on
either side of which is a character or word. The hole is for convenience
in stringing the cash together, a thousand of the cash so strung being
called a tiao or " string." Cards would originally, in China at all events,
have been so many tokens representing sums of money, for which, and
with which, the gamblers were playing. Each then would be labelled as
representing one, two, or more cash, or so many tens, hundreds, thousands,
or even myriads, of cash. From this to the use of cash, and their decimal
multiples tens, hundreds, strings, and myriads, as mere marks of suits,
resembling our diamonds or the German bells, would be but a step. Hence
in games like Khanhoo, which we should be inclined to regard (from their
general diffusion) as indigenous to China and of some antiquity, cash,
myriads and strings appear, in one form or another, as simple suit-marks
[See Nos. 15-25]. We say, in one form or another, because while the
suits of cash and strings are represented pictorially, by a conventional
arrangement corresponding to, for instance, our,% for the five of
diamonds, the suit of myriads is indicated by its character 3 (wan) preceded
by a numeral, much as H.9 stands with us for the nine of hearts.
4. The " set form of words," which is a favourite device of West of
China cardmakers, varies with the pack. It will be found more fully
explained below, in the description of packs 30-33.