Mr. Chatto describes several packs of Hindostanee cards, among others some owned by the Royal Asiatic Society and preserved in their Museum. One of these packs consists of ten and others of eight suits. “In each suit, when complete, the number of cards is twelve; that is, two coat cards, or honours, and ten others whose numerical value is expressed by the number of marks upon them. The cards of all the packs are circular; the diameter of the largest is two and three quarter inches, and of the smallest about two and an eighth inches.” The material of which they are formed is supposed to be canvas, and indeed it is expressly stated in a memorandum that accompanies them that such is the case, but they appear to be made of thin veneers of wood. One of these packs formerly belonged to Capt. D. Cromline Smith, to whom they were presented about 1815 by a high-caste Brahmin, who considered them a great curiosity, and supposed that they were a thousand years old. These cards resemble a pack now owned by Mr. de Forest that he bought in Cashmere within a few years, and that have been reproduced for this work. The Brahmin’s pack, says Mr. Chatto, “consists of eight suits, each suit containing two honours and ten common cards,—in all ninety-six cards. In all the suits the King is mounted on an elephant, and in six the Vizir, or second honour, is on horseback; but in the blue suit, the emblem or mark of which is a red spot with a yellow centre, he rides a tiger; and in the white suit, the mark of which appears like a grotesque or fiendish head, he is mounted on a bull. The backs of all the cards are green. The following are the colours of the ground on which the figures are painted in the several suits, together with the different marks by which the suits and the respective value of the common cards were also distinguished:—

COLOURS.MARKS.
1. Fawn.Something like a pineapple in a shallow cup.
2. Black.A red spot with a white centre.
3. Brown.A “tulwar,” or sword.
4. White.A grotesque kind of head.
5. Green.Something like a parasol without a handle, and with two broken ribs sticking through the top.
6. Blue.A red spot with a yellow centre.
7. Red.A parallelogram with dots on it as if to represent writing.
8. Yellow.An oval.”

Plate 5.

Mr. Chatto mentions other packs with red backs, one of them containing ten suits, and all seemingly distinguished more by the coloured background than the emblem of the suit, which is sometimes entirely omitted, particularly in the court cards. The games to be played are complicated and difficult to understand, although one of them is said to resemble l’Ombre, the favourite game in Spain. The tradition regarding the origin of Hindostanee cards, as given by Mr. Chatto, is “that they were invented by a favourite Sultana or Queen to wean her husband from a bad habit he had acquired of pulling or eradicating his beard.” The game of cards is not mentioned in the Arabian Nights, remarks Mr. Chatto, “and from this silence it may be concluded that at the time when those tales were compiled card-playing was not a popular pastime in Arabia. The compilation of these tales, it is believed, is not earlier than about the end of the fifteenth century, although some of them are of a much higher antiquity.”

CASHMERE.

The cards from Cashmere, which belong to Mr. de Forest and are reproduced for this work, differ but slightly from those described by Mr. Chatto. The Cashmere cards are circular in shape, as well as the Hindostanee, and are of about the same size, being two inches in diameter. The emblems on the Cashmere cards differ considerably from those described by Mr. Chatto, and only the court or figure cards bear a general resemblance to those that formerly belonged to Capt. D. Cromline Smith.

The Cashmere cards seem to be made of thin slices of wood, overlaid with a composition of some sort, and so thickly covered with paint and varnish that the original material is entirely concealed. This pack contains thirty-six cards of three suits; namely, ten pip and two court cards in each suit. A large purple flower on a red ground, placed within circles of yellow, ornaments the backs, which are probably intended to be precisely the same; but to an experienced gamester there would be no difficulty in distinguishing one card from another, even with the face of it concealed, as the design, though uniform, differs slightly on each card.

The three suits are not only marked by the emblems of pips, but, like the Hindostanee cards, the backgrounds are vividly painted in some uniform colour upon which the design is displayed, and this colour marks the suits distinctly even when the emblem is omitted, which in some cases is done either by design or accident. The white suit is headed by a King mounted on an elephant, and a Vizir on a bull. There are no emblems on these two cards by which to distinguish the suit. The ten pip cards show tiny figures of men clothed in loosely fitting red garments and wearing red turbans on their heads. These figures are represented kneeling, with their hands clasped in the attitude of prayer. They are dotted over the surface of the cards and grouped as the corresponding pips are in the other suits, and generally face each other, except in number eight, in which all the figures look the same way and to the left side. Another suit is distinguished by a dark-blue ground, on which small yellow disks, surrounded by circles of red, are painted. This suit may correspond with a “moon” suit mentioned by Mr. Chatto among the Hindostanee cards, and it is also noticeable as it closely resembles the “money” used as an emblem on Italian and Spanish cards. The court cards of this suit show a man mounted on a tiger and bearing the distinctive emblem uplifted in his right hand. The position of this man is closely copied on the Spanish cards, although in them he is represented on horseback. The second honour shows two tigers seated on a cross-legged bench gazing over their shoulders at two attendants, who wave what appear to be staves or fans. Between these tigers is a large “moon-face,” which seems to mark the suit. If this be the case, it would point to the origin of the money emblem. The pips on the rest of the suit are carelessly executed circles, and the features, which would show it to be intended for the moon, are omitted. The outline of this mark may have been followed on the cards that were first introduced into Europe, and may readily have become changed during the lapse of years. The “moon” mark on the Hindostanee cards has gradually extended both East and West, one that closely resembles it being found on the Chinese cards, and partly followed on the wooden cubes of the Alaska Indians.