"The Lead. When the game is played by day, he who holds the red king, (Soorkh, the sun,) must lead that and any small card. Should he play the king alone, it is seized by the next player. The adversaries throw down each two common cards, and the trick is taken up. When the game is played by night, the white king, (Soofed, the moon,) is led in like manner. The cards are then played out at the option of him who leads, the adversaries throwing away their small cards, and no attention is paid to the following suit, unless when one of the adversaries, having a superior card of the suit led, chooses to play it to gain the trick.

"In order to guard a second-rate card which may enable you hereafter to recover the lead, it is customary to throw down a small one of that suit, and call the card you are desirous to have played. With this call the adversaries must comply. As in Whist, when the person who has the lead holds none but winning cards, they are thrown down. After the cards have been all played, the parties shuffle their tricks, and the last winner, drawing a card, challenges one of his adversaries to draw out any card from the heap before him, naming it the fourth or fifth, &c. from the top or bottom. The winner of this trick in like manner challenges his right-hand adversary. The number of cards in the possession of each party is then counted, and those who have fewest are obliged to purchase from an adversary to make up their deficiency of complement. The greatest winner at the end of four rounds has the game.

"The following terms used in the game may be acceptable to those who desire to understand it when played by natives: I think they unequivocally prove that Gunjeefu is of Persian or Arabian origin.

"From my observation of the game when played, I do not think it sufficiently interesting to cause its being preferred by Europeans to the cards in vogue in Europe. The number of the suits are too great, and the inconvenient form of the cards (the size and shape of which are represented by the plates [56]) are great objections. The Hindoostanee cards are made of paper, well varnished; the figures appropriately painted, and the ground and backs of every suit of one colour. The Slave standing before the King in No. 3, is the figure used as the spot or crest on all the common cards of that suit.... The tradition regarding the origin of the Hindoostanee cards is, that they were invented by a favorite sultana, or queen, to wean her husband from a bad habit he had acquired of pulling or eradicating his beard."

With respect to the word Gunjeefu, which, according to the preceding account, appears to be a general name for cards, I am informed that it is of Persian origin, and that it signifies both a pack of cards and the game. In Bengal, cards are more generally known by the name of Tas, which is a Hindoo word, than that by Gunjeefu, or Gangēefah, as it is otherwise written. From the reference, in the preceding account, to the 'Dictionary, Hindoostanee and English,' edited by the late Dr. Hunter, [57] I am inclined to think that Taj and Tas have the same signification, with reference to cards; and that the only difference between them consists in the pronunciation and mode of spelling. Now, the word Taj is said to signify a crown; but if it be also used figuratively for a king, the wearer of a crown—just as "crown" is figuratively used to signify empire or regal power—the Hindoo name for cards would be synonymous with "Kings." That cards were known in England by the name of the "Four Kings" has been already shown; and if my speculations on the terms Chartæ and Naipes be correct, it was by a name originally signifying four kings, or four viceroys, that cards were first known in Europe.

With regard to the game described in the preceding account, it appears to bear some resemblance to that which the French call "l'Ombre à trois,"—three-handed Ombre. [58] In both games the suits appear to be considered as ranged in two divisions: in the Hindostanee game, as the Red and the White; and in the European, as the Red and the Black. In the Hindostanee game there are eight suits, and six or three players; and when three play, the cards are dealt by fours. In the European game of four suits and forty cards—the tens, nines, and eights being omitted—there are three players, and the cards are dealt by threes. A person who can play at Ombre will scarcely fail to perceive several other points of similarity between the two games. From the terms used in the game of Ombre—Spadillo, Basto, Matador, Punto, &c.—there can scarcely be a doubt that the other nations of Western Europe derived their knowledge of it from the Spaniards. The Hon. Daines Barrington, in his 'Observations on the Antiquity of Card Playing in England,' derives the names of the game from the Spanish, "hombre," a man; and there is reason to believe that it was one of the oldest games at cards played at in Europe. If the game of cards were introduced into Europe by the Arabs, it is in Spain that we might first expect to find them. Pietro della Valle, in his Travels in the East, between 1614 and 1626, speaks of the people playing at cards, though differing from ours in the figures and number of suits; and Niebuhr, in his Travels, also speaks of the Arabians playing at cards, and says that the game is called Lab-el-Kammer. [59] It is, however, to be observed, that the game of cards is not once mentioned in the Arabian Nights; 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, it is believed, is not earlier than about the end of the fifteenth century, though many of the tales are of a much higher antiquity.

Leaving out of consideration the pack of ten suits, with the emblems of the ten incarnations of Vichnou, as being of a mythological character, and probably not in common use for the purposes of gaming, it is evident from the other three packs, of eight suits each, that the cards known in Hindostan are not uniform in the marks of the different suits, though it is obvious that any game,—depending on sequences and the conventional value of the several cards,—which can be played with one of the packs, may be also played with either of the other two. The difference in the marks is, indeed, much less than is to be observed in old French, Spanish, and German cards, which present so many differences as to render it impossible to derive them from one original type. The mere mark or emblem, whatever it might originally signify, appears to have had no specific meaning or value, beyond what might be assigned to it by the conventional rules of the game; whether it were a sword or a chalice, a club or a piece of money, a heart or a diamond, a green leaf or a hawk's bell, in playing and counting the game, it was a "pip," and nothing more.

Whether the two packs of eight suits each, in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, are considered by the natives of Hindostan as consisting of two divisions of four suits each, as in the pack described in the extract from the 'Calcutta Magazine,' I have not been able to ascertain. In all the three packs the sword is to be found as the mark of one of the suits; and the soofed and soorkh of the one pack—silver coin and gold coin, figuratively the moon and the sun—I consider to be represented by the circular marks in the other two; and the oval in these is not unlike the mark of the suit named Quimash—merchandise—in the former. The mark of the suit Burat, see Plate II, No. 7—which is said to mean a royal diploma or assignment, corresponds very nearly with a parallelogram containing dots, as if meant for writing, in the pack formerly belonging to Capt. D. Cromline Smith; but though a parallelogram—crossed by two lines, and with the longest side vertical—also occurs in the other pack, its agreement with the Burat is by no means so apparent. The marks of the suits Taj, a Crown, and Chung, a Harp. [60] (see Plate I, fig. 1, and Plate II, fig. 5,) I am unable to recognise, either by name or figure, in the other two packs; though I am inclined to think that, in one of them, the place of the Taj is supplied by a kind of fruit, and in the other by a flower. It will be observed that, in the plate, the mark of the suit called Chung, a harp, is a bird. In the other two packs, the suits which I consider to be the substitutes of the Chung have a mark which I have not been able to make out; but in one of them the Vizier, as in the Chung, is mounted on a single-humped camel. In the suit called Gholam, a slave—Plate I, fig. 4—I cannot make out what is intended for the mark,—whether the Mahut, who appears guiding the elephant, or the kind of mace carried by the Vizier; whatever may be the mark, I consider the suit to be represented by that with a white ground in Capt. D. C. Smith's cards, the mark of which is a grotesque head, as in both suits the Vizier is mounted on a bull. The corresponding suit in the other pack I conceive to be the one which has for its mark a man's head.

With respect to the marks of the several suits, in the different packs of Hindostanee cards, previously described,—what objects they graphically represent, what they might have been intended to signify by the person who devised them, and what allegorical meanings may have assigned to them by others,—much might be said; and a writer of quick imagination, and hieroglyphic wit, like Court de Gebelin, might readily find in them not only a summary of all the knowledge of the Hindoos—theological, moral, political, and scientific—but also a great deal more than they either knew or dreamt of. As I feel my inability to perform such a task, or rather to enjoy such pleasures of imagination; and as the present work does not afford space for so wide a discursus, I shall confine my observations to such marks as appear to have, both in their form and meaning, the greatest affinity with the marks to be found on early European cards. The marks in the pack consisting of ten suits, representing the incarnations of Vichnou, I shall only incidentally refer to, as I am of opinion that those cards are not such as either are or were generally used for the purposes of gaming, but are to be classed with those emblematic cards which have, at different periods, been devised in Europe for the purpose of insinuating knowledge into the minds of ingenious youth by way of pastime.