Chapter I: Of the Origin and Name of Cards (3)

[45] "Apropos de bottes,"--"Now you speak of a _Gun_:" Moore, in his Life of Sheridan, observes that but a very imperfect report of Sheridan's celebrated speech on the impeachment of Warren Hastings is preserved. The following piquant passage relating to the East India Company, as then constituted and acting, occurs in a report of the speech published in an old Magazine, for February, 1787. "He remembered to have heard an honourable and learned gentleman (Mr. Dundas) remark, that there was something in the first frame and constitution of the Company, which extended the sordid principles of their origin over all their successive operations, connecting with their civil policy, and even with their boldest achievements, the meanness of a pedlar and the profligacy of pirates. Alike in the political and the military line could be observed auctioneering ambassadors and trading generals; and thus we saw a revolution brought about by affidavits; an army employed in executing an arrest; a town besieged on a note of hand; a prince dethroned for the balance of an account. Thus it was they exhibited a government which united the mock majesty of a bloody sceptre, and the little traffic of a merchant's counting-house, wielding a truncheon with one hand and picking a pocket with another."

[46] It is expressly stated that the cards of one of the packs are made of canvas, in a memorandum which accompanies them. This is the pack which is said to be a thousand years old. On first handling them they seemed to me to be made of thin veneers of wood.

[47] Though Mahometans might object to paint figured cards, it appears that they do "tolerate" them, and that very amply, by using them. See a description of the Gunjeefu, or cards used by the Moslems, at page 41.

[48] In a note to the article on Whist, in the Foreign Quarterly Review, No. 48, previously referred to, this pack of cards is noticed, and the suits are thus enumerated: "While this article was in the press, we have been favoured with a sight of two packs of cards in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society: and, as truth is more strange than fiction, one of these, consisting of TEN Suits, certainly does represent the TEN Avatars or incarnations of the VISTNOU, or Vishnava, sect.... The suits are:

1. The Fish.
2. The Tortoise.
3. The Boar.
4. The Lion.
5. The Monkey.
6. The Hatchet.
7. The Umbrella (or Bow.)
8. The Goat.
9. The Boodh.
10. The Horse.

"The Dwarf of the 5th Avatar is substituted by the Monkey; the Bow and Arrows of the 7th by the Cattashal or Umbrella, which gives precisely the same outline; and the Goat there, as often elsewhere, takes the place of the Plough."

On the pack of eight cards, which was probably one of those previously noticed in the present volume, the writer of the article makes the following observations: "The other pack has eight suits, of eight cards and two court cards each; eighty in all. [The number of cards, inclusive of the honours, in each suit, is twelve, as has been previously observed.] The Parallelogram, Sword, Flower, and Vase, answer to the Carreau, Espada, Club, and Copa of European suits: the Barrel (?), the Garland (?), and two kinds of Chakra (quoit) complete the set."--The Sword is plain enough, and so is the parallelogram. The Flower and the Cup, I confess, I have not been able to make out; and I question much if the Parallelogram--which in another pack, subsequently described, represents a royal diploma or mandate--be the original of the Carreau or Diamond on European cards. The "two kinds of Chakra" are simply two circular marks.

[49] Engravings of those subjects, as well as their description, will be found in 'Religions de l'Antiquité, considerées principalement dans leurs formes symboliques et mythologiques; ouvrage traduit de l'Allemand du Dr. Frederic Creutzer, par J. D. Guigniant.' Planches, premier cahier, p. 11, 8vo; Paris, 1825.

[50] "Espèce de roue enflammée, symbole de la force vivante qui pénètre et meut l'univers."

[51] The Institutions of Moses and those of the Hindoos compared. By Joseph Priestly, LL.D. p. 56. 8vo. Philadelphia, 1799.

[52] Beshbur.

[53] Kumbur.

[54] The names of the suits are thus explained: _Taj_, a crown. _Soofed_, white, abbreviated from the original appellation, _zur-i-soofed_, a silver coin; figuratively, the moon. _Shumsher_, a sabre. _Gholam_, a slave. _Chung_, a harp. _Soorkh_, red, or _zur-i-soorkh_, gold coin; figuratively, the sun. _Burat_, a royal diploma, or assignment. _Quimash_, merchandize.

[55] In cutting for the deal, _Taj_ is the highest suit, and the rest have precedence, after that suit, in the order above recited.

[56] "By an oversight of the engraver, a native Bengalee artist, the Moon in No. 2, Plate I, is represented as crescent instead of full. [The error has been _faithfully retained_ in our fac-similes.] The price of the pack was two rupees."

[57] "In the Dictionary Hindostanee and English, edited by the late Dr. Hunter, the names of the Eight Suits of Cards are to be found under the word _Taj_, the name of the first suit."--On the authority of a gentleman of eminent attainments in Hindostanee literature, I am informed that there is no _Sanscrit_ word for Playing Cards.

[58] A particular account of the mode of playing the game of "L'Hombre à trois," will be found in the first volume of the 'Académie des Jeux.' The author observes, "Il est inutile de s'arrêter à l'etymologie du jeu de l'hombre; il suffit de dire que les Espagnols en sont les auteurs, et qu'il se sent du flegme de la nation dont il tire son origine." According to the same authority, "_La Quadrille_ n'est, à proprement parler, que l'hombre à quatre, qui n'a pas, à la verité, la beauté, ni ne demande pas une si grande attention que l'hombre à trois; mais aussi faut-il convenir qu'il est plus amusant et plus recréatif."

[59] Barrington's Observations on the Antiquity of Card-playing in England.--Archæologia, vol. viii, 1787.

[60] Chung is also the Chinese name for a kind of harp.--In three other packs of Hindostanee cards, of the same kind, which I have had an opportunity of examining, the harp occurs both in the honours and the numeral cards. I suspect that the bird has been substituted through a mistake of the native artist who engraved the cards. In one of the packs just alluded to, the cards are not circular, but rectangular, like European cards, but of much smaller size. In another pack of Hindostanee cards which I have seen, the marks in all the eight suits are birds; in four of the suits, they are all of the same form--something like that of a starling--but differing in their colour; in three others they are all geese, and of the same colour, so that the suit is only to be distinguished by the ground on which they are painted. The mark of the eighth suit is a peacock.

[61] These are still the marks of the suits in Spain: "Copas, Espadas, Oros, y Bastos." The "Oros," literally golden money, are also called _Dineros_, that is, money in general. The same marks are also to be found on old Italian cards, and the names for them were, Coppe, Spade, Danari, and Bastoni. The discrepancy between the names, Spades and Clubs, and the marks of these suits, in English cards, will be noticed in its proper place.

[62] Religions de l'Antiquité; traduction Française de Guigniant.

[63] Von Hammer's Mines of the East.

[64] This is Mr. Colebrooke's conclusion. Sir John Malcolm gives a different account, the correctness of which may be very justly doubted, both as regards the present time and the past: "The four divisions of Hindoos, viz. the priests, soldiers, merchants, and labourers, appear to have existed in every human society, at a certain stage of civilization; but in India alone have they been maintained for _several thousand years_ with prescriptive vigour."--Essay on the Bhills (Beels) by Sir John Malcolm, in the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. i, p. 65, 1824.

[65] Innocentio Ringhieri, Cento Ginochi liberali et d'Ingegno, p. 132. 4to. Bologna, 1551.

[66] The Life of St. Francis Xavier, by Father Bouhours: translated by John Dryden, pp. 71, 203, 697.

[67] "The 6th October, [1592] they met with a Malacca ship of 700 tons, which, after her main-yard was shot through, yielded.... They found on board fifteen pieces of brass cannon, 300 butts of Canary and Nipar or Palm-wine, with very strong raisin wine; all sorts of haberdashery-wares, as hats, red knit caps, and stockings of Spanish wool; velvets, taffeties, camblets, and silks; abundance of suckets, rice, Venice glasses, counterfeit stones (brought by an Indian from Venice, to cheat the Indians), _Playing Cards_, and two or three packs of French paper." The prize was taken in the Straits of Malacca; and the articles of European manufacture appear to have been brought to Malacca by the Portuguese.--The Naval Chronicle; or Voyages of the most celebrated English Navigators, vol. i, p. 392. 8vo. 1760.

[68] Burnes's Travels into Bokhara, vol. ii, p. 169. Second edit. 1835.

[69] Card-playing appears to be a very common amusement in Hindostan.--"I could remind or perhaps inform the fashionable gamesters of St. James's Street, that before England ever saw a dice-box, many a main has been won and lost under a palm-tree, in Malacca, by the half-naked Malays, with wooden and painted dice; and that he could not pass through a bazaar in this country [Hindostan] without seeing many parties playing with cards, most cheaply supplied to them by leaves of the cocoa-nut or palm-tree, dried, and their distinctive characters traced with an iron style.... At the corner of every street you may see the Gentoo-bearers gambling over chalked-out squares, with small stones for men, and with wooden dice; or Coolies playing with cards of the palm-leaf. Nay, in a pagoda under the very shadow of the idol, I have seen Brahmins playing with regular packs of Chinese cards."--Sketches of India: written by an Officer for Fireside Travellers at Home, pp. 68 and 100. Fourth edition, 1826.

[70] For the reference to the Ching-tsze-tung, and the explanation of the passage relating to cards, I am indebted to Mr. S. Birch, of the British Museum.

[71] "Second Mémoire sur les Relations politiques des Rois de France avec les Empereurs Mongols," dans le Journal Asiatique, de Septembre, 1822, p. 62.