The third is the game of guessing the name of the successful candidate at the Governmental Literary Examinations. Upon them all the peculiar literary traditions of the Chinese people have left their imprint.
CASE VI.
KNUCKLE-BONES AND DICE, DOMINOES, EVOLUTION OF PLAYING CARDS, CHINESE PLAYING CARDS, PARCHESI, PATOLI, AND KAB.
No method of appealing to chance is more common than that of tossing some object in the air and deciding the result by its fall. A coin is often used at the present day, and many natural and artificial objects have found currency for this purpose. Nuts, cowrie shells, and the knuckle-bones of animals have been used from the earliest times, and the last, the knuckle-bones, have become the parent of many of our modern games. The American Indians across the entire continent played a game with marked plum-stones and other objects which had many points of resemblance with games played by other people with dotted cubical dice. The specimens of such games here exhibited comprise the game played with marked bone discs in a wooden bowl by the Penobscot Indians of Oldtown, Me., contributed by Chief Joseph Nicolar; a set of marked plum-stones and the basket and tallies used by the Sioux, and a similar set of marked bone and wooden pieces, with the basket, from the Arapahoes. Among the Pueblo Indians of the southwestern United States blocks of wood are used in the same manner as dice, and among the Arabs of northern Africa numerical values are attributed to the throws made with four and six similar pieces of reed. In India, cowries are used. Sortilege is also practised with the implements that are used in games. In China, the cleft root stock of the bamboo is commonly employed in fortune-telling, and the blocks, which form part of the accessories of nearly all Chinese temples, may be seen upon the altar of the Chinese God of War, commonly appealed to by Chinese gamblers, erected in this Section. Knuckle-bones or astragali present a most interesting subject for investigation. From a prehistoric knuckle-bone of terra-cotta from Cuzco, Peru (No. 340), in the collection of Señor Montes in this building it appears that they were used by the ancient Peruvians. The Peruvian Indians at the present day use four knuckle-bones as dice in a game. It is known in Kechua as tava, a word meaning four, which should not in the opinion of Señor Montes be confounded with the Spanish word for knuckle-bone, taba, from which he does not think it was derived.
Knuckle-bones were used in games in old Egypt, as was shown by the ivory specimens found with other gaming implements in the tomb of Queen Hatasu, B. C. 1600, and are constantly referred to by the Greek and Latin authors. Numerical values were attributed to each of the four throws, which among the Romans were designated as Supinum, Pronum, Planum, and Tortuosum, and estimated as three, five, one, and six. Among the Arabs, and at the present day throughout western Asia, the four sides receive the names of ranks of human society; thus among the Persians, according to Dr. Hyde, they are called Duzd, “thief,” Dibban, “peasant,” Vezir, and Shah, and so with the Turks, Syrians, Armenians, and other peoples. A pair of natural bones from the right and left leg of the sheep are commonly used, which among the Syrians of Damascus are designated respectively as yisr and yemene, “left and right.” The transition from these kabat, as the Arabs call them, from kab meaning “ankle” or “ankle-bone,” to the cubical dotted dice was an easy one. The same numerical values and social designations were attributed to four sides of the cubical dice, as are given to the knuckle-bones, and it is curious to note that the significant throws with cubical dice in China are those that bear the numbers assigned to the astragali throws. The modern East Indian dice which are exhibited will be seen from the arrangement of the “threes” to be made in pairs, like the natural astragali, and the pair receives in India the name of kabatain, the dual of kab, the name which is also applied to the pair of astragali. The Syrian dice used in Towla, or backgammon, are marked in the same way, as well as the Japanese dice used in the similar game of Sugoroku or “double sixes.” A pair of ancient Roman dice which I purchased in Florence show that the Romans practised the same arrangement, and are especially significant. The invention of the cubical dotted die must have occurred at a comparatively early time. The oldest die of which I have any knowledge is displayed in this collection, a large pottery die from the Greek colony of Naucratis, Egypt, belonging, according to the discoverer, Mr. Flinders Petrie, to 600 B. C. The dice found in Babylonia and Egypt appear to have been associated with foreign influences.
Dice were carried over from India to China, where we find the next stage in their development. Here the twenty-one possible throws with two dice are each given a name, and in the case of the double sixes, double aces, double fours, and three and ace, these names are those of the triune powers of Heaven, Earth, and Man, and the Harmony that unites them. This change in nomenclature, in which the social terms of Shah, Vizier, etc., were replaced with cosmical ones, is characteristic of the way in which China adapts and absorbs foreign ideas. A game with two dice remains the principal dice game in China at the present day. In it the twenty-one possible throws are divided into two series, one consisting of the throws 6
6, 1
1, 4
4, 3
1, 5
5, 3
3, 2
2, 5
6, 4
6, 1
6, 1
5, called man, “civil,” and the other, 5
4, 6
3, 5
3, 6
2, 4
3, 5
2, 4
2, 3
2, 1
4, and 1
2, designated as mò, or “military.” In the twelfth century, according to Chinese records, dotted tablets, i. e., dominoes, were invented. Chinese dominoes consist of 21 pieces representing the 21 throws with two dice of which the 11 pieces of the man series are usually duplicated to form a complete set, which numbers 32 dominoes. In southern China, long wooden dominoes are employed. When paper was used instead of wood we have the playing card.
The subject of Chinese playing cards has been illustrated in an admirable and exhaustive manner by W. H. Wilkinson, Esq., H. B. M. Consul at Swatow, who has lent for exhibition a series of Chinese cards, dice, and dominoes collected at no less than fourteen different cities in China, from Peking on the north, and Tai yuan, down along the coast at Nanking, Shanghai, Ningpo, Wenchow, Fuchow, Swatow, Canton, to Hongkong. Cards are also shown from various places along the Yellow River, from Chung King eastward to Nanking. The cards in this collection are arranged according to the symbols or marks distinguishing them, which Mr. Wilkinson divides into four classes, according as they are derived:
1. From the sapek or cash, and its multiples.
2. Through dominoes from dice.
3. From the Chinese Chess game.
4. From other sources.