LITMIR.BIZ

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[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.

CHAPTER II.

       INTRODUCTION OF CARDS INTO EUROPE.

       Table of Contents

      At what period Playing Cards first became known in Europe—whether as an original invention, or introduced from some other quarter of the world—has not yet been ascertained. From the silence, however, of all authorities by whom we might expect to find them distinctly named if they had been in common use, it may be fairly concluded, that, though they possibly might be known to a few persons before the year 1350, they did not begin to attract notice nor come into frequent use till towards the latter end of the fourteenth century. Packs of cards are distinctly mentioned by the name which they still retain in France—Jeux de Cartes—in an entry made in his book of accounts, about 1393, by Charles Poupart, treasurer of the household to Charles VI of France. Considering, then, this entry as an established fact in the history of cards, I shall now proceed to lay before the reader some of the grounds and evidences on which it has been asserted that cards were well known in Europe before that period.

      Several writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in discussing the lawfulness of card-playing, gratuitously assuming that the game was included under the general term Alea, [72] have spoken of cards as if they had been known from time immemorial. The easy mode of deriving aliquid de aliquo by means of a comprehensive genus, is of frequent use with those decisive characters who delight in settling cases of conscience with a strong hand; and who, enveloped in the dust of the Schools, lay vigorously about them, both right and left, with weapons borrowed from "the old Horse Armoury of the Fathers," and re-ground, for present use, on the Decretals. He who can discover cards, implicitè, as Olearius has it, [73] in St. Cyprian's tract, De Aleatoribus, or in the injunctions against gaming in the canons of any Council or Synod previous to 1390, will have no difficulty in finding "Roulette" and "E or O," implied under the general term Tabulæ. Having thus indicated the value of the hypothetic evidence in favour of cards being known in early times—because the game was subsequently comprehended under a schoolman's definition of the term Alea—it may be left to pass for what it is worth.

      Mons. Eloi Johanneau's proof that cards were known in the eleventh century, from the testimony of Papias, previously noticed, neither requires, nor indeed admits of serious refutation. If it could be shown that the word Naipe or Naibe was ever used in Spain or Italy to signify a painted cloth or a picture, before it was used to signify a Playing Card, its affinity with Nappe and Mappa might be admitted to be clearly established. John of Salisbury, who was born in the early part of the twelfth century, says not a word in his work 'De Nugis Curialium'—on the Trifling of Courtiers—which might indicate a knowledge of cards, although one of the chapters is especially devoted to an examination of the use and abuse of gaming. [74] Had cards formed one of the common pastimes of the courtiers of his age, it is

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