Divining arrows, represented by bamboo splints, are used in Japan as well as in China, and are nearly identical in both countries. Fifty sticks are kept in a quiver or a tube of cane, resembling the shape of the modern dicebox. “The splints vary in length,” says Mr. Culin, who describes them in “Korean Games” (page 26), “from two to four inches.” One person consults the oracle, which is interpreted by a “Baru,” or fortune-teller, as described in “Our Neighbourhood,” by Mr. Purcell: “Having rattled his rods together by rolling them between his palms, he raises them to his forehead.” The sticks are then laid out in order on a table, and their meaning is deciphered through referring to the “Book of Oracular Responses,” or through the “inspiration of the magi, who declares that he passes one hour daily in a trance, during which he receives instruction as to the prognostication he must deliver.”
There is another Japanese game called Hayku-Niu-Isshu, or the Poems on One Hundred Arts. For this there are two hundred cards, that are kept in boxes especially provided for them. On each card is printed or written either the first or the last half of one of the hundred poems that give their name to the game, which all well-educated Japanese are supposed to know by heart. “The one hundred cards having the latter half of the poems written on them are dealt and are laid out in rows, face upwards, before the players, one of whom is appointed reader. He holds the remaining hundred and reads them aloud in whatever order they fall. Skill in the game consists in remembering the line following the one read and rapidly finding the card on which it is written. Especially must each one watch his own and pick it up before it is seized by another. If an opponent is nimble he snatches the card from the careless player, giving several from his own hand, and the one who is first able to match and discard all of his cards wins the game. The players usually range themselves on opposite lines and play against each other.” Such is the account of the game given by Miss Alice Mabel Bacon in “Japanese Girls and Women” (page 22).
The cards of this set in the author’s possession are rather small, being two by two and a half inches, or a trifle larger than the Flower pack. They are arranged in small wooden boxes, with a description of the rules of the game printed on the top; the lid moves up and down in a groove. The verses are written in fine running characters on a white ground.
In Hindustan we find strange circular cards that have strayed far from the arrow shape, and seem much more to resemble the European pips. There are eight suits, indicated by the colour of the background, on which are depicted Men, Bullocks, Elephants, and Tigers. The Money and Cup suits may be traced in two of the emblems, the former painted like a double ring, and it is questionable if these cards were ever intended for divining purposes, since they seem to be used purely for amusement.
Persian cards are about two inches by one and a half square. The suits are shown, like those of Cashmere, by the colours of the background. They have nothing in common with the arrow-shaped Korean, Chinese, or North American divination cards, but rather incline to the emblematic figures of the temple of Thoth as retained by the Tarots, for every card displays a symbolic representative figure. These cards are rare even in Persia, and only two incomplete sets are in the writer’s collection, one of which contains six, and the other eighteen, cards.
Three of these cards have black backgrounds on which is displayed a white and yellow animal of a species unidentified. The third card of the set shows a great dragon with a forked tail twisted around a lion. Three of the cards have green grounds, on which are seated figures, and one of them so closely resembles the Emperor, or Osiris, of the Tarots in position and design that it seems it must have been derived from that figure. Of the other two, one resembles the Atout called the Empress, and the other is a seated male figure, in the attitude of some of those in the Tarot pack. Four cards have black grounds sprinkled with dots of yellow. These four all show dragons or mythical animals, and are alike in every respect, which is not always the case with the other designs even when of kindred suits. As none of the Atouts have animals depicted on them except in a subordinate way, it would seem that some of the Persian cards are original, while others may have been copied. Another green suit has only two cards, although there might be more if the pack were complete. The ground is semé, like the last, with orange-coloured flecks, and displays a seated figure with an attendant, its peculiarity being that this King has his legs folded under him in Oriental fashion, while the figures on all the other cards are seated like the Egyptian gods. Two cards have gold grounds, and on them are two standing figures, one beating a drum, the other man holding what may be a magician’s rod or, perhaps, a flute. There are three cards of a dull yellow hue flecked with brown dots. These closely resemble the Atouts, as one of the seated figures holds up a circle or the Money mark, like the Queen of Dinari; and against the knees of the other a child leans, recalling Isis with Osiris. The eighteenth card is the Joker, and shows a likeness of the late Shah of Persia. It was brought from that kingdom in 1904. These cards do not seem all to have belonged to the same pack, for five of them have been much more used than the others. The Persians are secretive about their games, probably because the religion of Mahomet, following that of the Jews, forbids any representation of the human form. Therefore, games bearing such an emblem must be used in private, and descriptions of them are not readily obtained by foreigners. The cards themselves offer an interesting problem, since they retain the emblematic figures without any pip cards, and they stand alone in this respect in Asia, where the pip or arrow cards are more generally to be found than the figure cards. But, then, the Persians use the cup or vase for divining purposes, as a rule, although in some parts the arrows or rods of divination are common. There are also “sticks” found among the common people that seem to be used in this way, but the natives are chary of describing their purpose, so no trustworthy account of them can be offered.
CHAPTER XVII
CHESS AND OTHER GAMES