Facts and Speculations on the Origin and History of Playing Cards

by William Andrew Chatto

Now the very same change that has taken place in the second piece in chess—namely, from a male to a female—has also happened to the second principal figure in French and English cards. Among the oldest numeral cards that have yet been discovered no Queen is to be found; the three principal figures or coat cards being the King, the Knight, and the Valet or Knave. There was no Queen in the old Spanish pack of cards; nor was there usually in the German in the time of Heineken and Breitkopf. In the Spanish, the coat cards of each suit were the King (Rey), the Knight (Cavallo), and the Knave, groom, or attendant (Sota); in the German, the King (König), a chief officer (Ober), and a Subaltern (Unter). [23] The Italians, instead of making any change in the old coat cards, sometimes added the Queen to them, so that they had four instead of three, namely, Re, Reina, Cavallo, and Fante.

The following extracts from an Essay on the Indian Game of Chess, by Sir William Jones, printed in the second volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' seem to establish more clearly than anything that has been expressly written on the subject, either by Breitkopf or others, the affinity between cards and chess: "If evidence be required to prove that chess was invented by the Hindus, we may be satisfied with the testimony of the Persians; who, though as much inclined as other nations to appropriate the ingenious inventions of a foreign people, unanimously agree, that the game was imported from the west of India, together with the charming fables of Vishnusarman in the sixth century of our era. It seems to have been immemorially known in Hindustan by the name of Chaturanga, that is the FOUR angas, or members of an army, which are said, in the Amaracosha, to be elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers; and in this sense the word is frequently used by epic poets in their descriptions of real armies. By a natural corruption of the pure Sanscrit word, it was changed by the old Persians into Chatrang; but the Arabs, who soon after took possession of their country, had neither the initial nor final letter of that word in their alphabet, and consequently altered it further into Shatranj, [24] which found its way presently into the modern Persian, and at length into the dialects of India, where the true derivation of the name is known only to the learned. Thus has a very significant word in the sacred language of the Brahmans been transferred by successive changes into Axedras, Scacchi, Echecs, Chess; and, by a whimsical concurrence of circumstances, given birth to the English word check, and even a name to the Exchequer of Great Britain.

"Of this simple game, so exquisitely contrived, and so certainly invented in India, I cannot find any account in the classical writings of the Brahmans. It is indeed confidently asserted that Sanscrit books on Chess exist in this country; and if they can be procured at Benares, they will assuredly be sent to us. At present, I can only exhibit a description of a very ancient Indian game of the same kind; but more complex, and, in my opinion, more modern than the simple chess of the Persians. This game is also called Chaturanga, but more frequently Chaturaji, or the Four Kings, since it is played by four persons, representing as many princes, two allied armies combating on each side. The description is taken from the Bhawishya Puran, in which Yudhist'hir is represented conversing with Vyasa, who explains, at the king's request, the form of the fictitious warfare, and the principal rules of it. 'Having marked eight squares on all sides,' says the sage, 'place the red army to the east, the green to the south, the yellow to the west, and the black the north.'" [25]—It is worthy of remark, that these colours form the ground of four of the suits of one of the divisions of an eight-suit pack of Hindostanee cards.

It appears that in this game the moves were determined by casts with dice, as in backgammon, so that it was one of chance as well as skill. On this point Sir William Jones observes: "The use of dice may, perhaps, be justified in a representation of war, in which fortune has unquestionably a great share, but it seems to exclude Chess from the rank which has been assigned to it among the sciences, and to give the game before us the appearance of Whist, except that pieces are used only instead of cards, which are held concealed."

Though Sir William Jones mentions Whist in particular, it is yet apparent, from his own description, that the similarity of Chaturaji to any other game of cards played by four persons is precisely the same. This evidence of the similarity, between a game of cards and an ancient Indian game of chess, is the more important, as the fact appears to have forced itself upon the notice of the writer, rather than to have been sought for.

It may here be observed, that in the wardrobe accounts of Edward I, there is an item, of money paid for the use of the king for playing at the Four Kings—Quatuor Reges—and that it has been conjectured that the game was cards. The Hon. Daines Barrington, who appears to have been of this opinion, says: "the earliest mention of cards that I have yet stumbled upon is in Mr. Anstis's History of the Garter, where he cites the following passage from the Wardrobe Rolls, in the sixth year of Edward the First, [1278]: 'Waltero Sturton, ad opus regis ad ludendum ad quatuor reges viiis. vd.' From which entry Mr. Anstis with some probability conjectures, that playing cards were not unknown at the latter end of the thirteenth century; and perhaps what I shall add may carry with it some small confirmation of what he supposes." [26] As this is not the place to discuss the question, if playing cards were known in England so early as the reign of Edward I, it may be sufficient to remark that the substance of what Mr. Barrington has adduced in confirmation of Anstis's conjecture consists in a statement of the fact of Edward having been in Syria, and that he might have learned the game of cards there [27] —taking it for granted that cards were of Eastern invention, and known in Syria at that period,—and in a second-hand reference to Breitkopf for a passage in the Güldin Spil, wherein it is stated that a certain game—cards being unquestionably meant—first came into Germany about the year 1300.

From Sir William Jones's account of the game of Chaturanga or, more specifically, chaturaji—the Four Rajas, or Kings—there can scarcely be a doubt that the game of the Four Kings played at by Edward I, was chess, and that this name was a literal translation of the Indian one. Assuming this, then, as an established fact, we have evidence of the number four being associated in Europe at that period with the game of chess, which, as has been previously shown, bore so great a resemblance to a game of cards.

Now, whatever may have been the origin of the name of cards, it is undeniable that the idea of the number four is very generally associated with them; there are four suits, and in each suit there are four honours, reckoning the ace;—to say nothing of the very old game of All Fours, which may have originally meant winning in each of the four Angas or divisions, now represented by High, Low, Jack, and the Game. It is also certain that, in this country, cards were called the Books of the Four Kings, long before the passage relating to the game of Quatuor Reges, which might have suggested the name, appeared in Anstis's History of the Garter. They are so called by Sir Thomas Urquhart, in his translation of Rabelais, in chapter 22, book i, which contains an account of the games that Gargantua played at: "After supper, were brought into the room the fair wooden gospels, and the books of the Four Kings, that is to say, the tables and cards." [28] Cards are not indeed called the Books of the Four Kings in the original text of Rabelais; though it is certain that they were known in France by that name, and that the Valets or Knaves were also called fous—a term which, as Peignot remarks, corroborates Breitkopf's theory of the analogy between chess and cards. [29] Mrs. Piozzi, speaking of cards, in her Retrospection, published in 1801, says, "It is a well-known vulgarity in England to say, 'Come, Sir, will you have a stroke at the history of the Four Kings?' meaning, Will you play a game at cards?" A writer in Fraser's Magazine, for August, 1844, also calls cards the books of the Four Kings, as if they were well known by that name.