CHINA
As an original land of the card, China is the place of probable invention of the playing cards.
According to the ancient narrations, the card and its production process were invented in the second century AC in China. In that period, the eunuch, Ts'ai Lun presented the first sheets of such material to the emperor. The factors, which allow this development possible, are the raw materials together with the constant flows of pure water. Besides, the experiment was favoured by the elaboration of handmade techniques deriving from a Chinese alchemical knowledge.
Since the second century AD, the inscriptions on the card have been discovered.
Regarding the playing card, instead, the scarcity of sources and the difficulty of language interpretation still leave many obsure sides in the history of the first Chinese cards.
Towards the end of 1800s, Stuart Culin and, the Sinologist, Sir William Henry Wilkinson did profound researches in this sphere.
Wilkinson reports that the modern Chinese term which indicates either domino or playing card is p'ai. It does not exist, accordingly, the difference between the cards and the domino in China, the term p’ai implied ‘those flat and squared things which people use for playing’.
The Chinese domino, marked with points as well as dices (from which it possibly derives) was probably used originally for divinatory practice. It is composed of 21 pieces, the synthesis of the combinations of two dices, eleven of these are doubled, in order to obtain a game with 32 pieces.
If a linguistic distinction is possible, this is bound to the term chih p'ai, or ‘p’ai of card’ and ya p'ai or ku p'ai, otherwise ‘p’ai of “ivory”’ or ‘of “bone”’. In fact, the same games are made either with cards or with tesserae (more or less similar to the mah jong, which can be played either with the cards or with the tiles). Some sources maintain that the cards should be attached with small boards to permit the game also in the case of strong wind, while others believe that it is more likely that the cards were nothing but a reduced size of the boards.
In Wilkinson’s day, in the written language also the terms yü-p'u e yeh-tzâ were used repectively ‘strip’ and ‘sheets’. With these terms people set two Chinese games, the first of which already known in the third century AD, while the second became famous in the tenth century AD.
Wilkinson confirmed that these cards had their antique origine. These were the products originally made in shape of rolls, then in texts with detachable page to allow an easier consultation. The use for the motive of entertainment would have – consequently – caused a riduction of the sheets’s dimensions (the origin is ascribable in the half of the eighth century).
The cards with the figures corresponding with a coin is inspired by an antique local monetization. The ku p'ai were, in fact, the cards based on three suits, which Wilkinson identified with Jian (or Qian) ‘coin, money’, Tiao or ‘wands, long objects’ and Wan ‘myriads, 10,000, tens of thousands’.
The series of these cards was completed through other three subjects: Qian Wan (‘Thousand Myriads’, or ‘Old Thousand’); Hong Hua, ‘the red flower’ and Bai Hua, the ‘white flower’ for 120 cards totally. Some series had a different number of cards (similar to the jolly of our modern decks), which could vary up to 6 cards more.
Wilkinson affirmed that the name of this game could also be Ma Jue, later in the western countries it was changed to mah jong. Wilkinson described also a third style of antique cards, (lat chi ‘a tattered card’, for Culin), which similar to the game of ku p’ai with four suits.
These were Wen (or ‘Cash’, the antique Chinese punched coin, with lower value), Suo (‘cord’ or ‘ribbons’, which was used for keeping coins together), Wan (‘myriads’ or ’10,000’), and Shi (‘tens’ or ‘10’). According to Wilkinson they could represent Coins; Ribbons, Rouleaux and Lakh (or ‘hundreds of thousands’. For Culin, instead, were: Coins, Ribbons, Tens of thousands and Tens.
Wen, the suit of money, is figured with a designed symbol on the coin (the pinned Cash); Suo, or ‘ribbons’ represent the punched coin inserted in the thread (ancestor of a modern purse) in a series of parallel lines; Wan, which is the ‘myriads’ or ‘multitudes’ inspired by a series of Chinese tales, transcribed in the fourteenth century, Shui-hu Chuan, interpreted as ‘the margin of water’, in this same suit the values are not indicated by symbols, but by Chinese numbers (from 1 to 9); sometimes this suit is substituted by guan (in cantonese gun), or ‘perforate’ ‘pass through’ or ‘cord of thousand coins’. The ideograms of these two terms can be treated interchangeably.
The deck was, furthermore, composed of other two subjects: the ‘White Flower’ and the ‘Red Flower’. They resemble the suit of Wan, in fact, they are inspired by the very same series of tales.
A special card of the deck is Gui (Gwai in cantonese), interpreted as ‘demon’ o ‘ghost’, represented by a male personage (the only one in colour) with traditional Chinese dress. The numeral values of the cards tally from 1 to 9.
It is not clear which game had given origin to the other, between the ku p’ai and the lat chi, although it is possible that both of them derived from the same style more antique.
The group of cards inspired by ‘coins’ also takes part of the style of 4 suits, called Hakka and the Vietnamese cards Bâ´t.
The suits of Chinese cards can be trasformed, in the Western World, into traditional suits of common playing cards: the Cords similar to sticks, later become Swords and Wands; the Circles or Balls, instead, represent the Golds; while the Tens of thousands become the Cups, probably for the wrong interpretation of relative ideograms.
About the twelfth century, the first decks of cardboard were created to substitute the tesserea of bone and of ivory, and in 1120, the emperor introduced the game on boards bringing back various symbols of virtue.
Some Chinese cards, successively, have the same name given to the chess, Keu-ma-pou or ‘chariots, horses and guns’, in this case a harmony is possible with such a game.
How could these cards arrive in Europe?
It is still Sir Wilkinson who can give us an answer, through the intermediary of the first adventurers who confronted a long trip during the twelfth and the thirteenth century.
He confirmed that in the note of the Zani referred to a certain Abbé Tressan, who showed him – in Paris – a deck of Chinese cards, telling him he had obtained them from a Venetian, the first to bring the cards to Europe. Perhaps Niccolò Polo, with his brother, Matteo, returned from China in 1269, or – why not? – the famous Marco Polo…
According to Wilkinson, there are many coincidences between the first European decks and the ku p'ai, and their principles are also similar to the game of Tarots; in fact, ku p'ai includes also a certain number of emblematic cards.
The name of different suits has a logic in the Chinese games, on the contrary, in Europe there is none. There has been an attempt to find a connection between various social classes (wands/peasants; pentacles/merchants; swords/nobility and cups /clergy) and, furthermore, to bring the suits back to the symbols of virtue (Strength, Charity, Justice and Faith), but none of these explanations are as satisfied as the connection with the Chinese cards.
The sign of Italian Pentacles is almost identical with that of Chinese Cash, and the Wands which appeared in Italy in the sixteenth century, also called Pillars, have a great similarity with the card ku p'ai, in which can also represent the image of Swords. As regards the Cups, instead, it is likely that it is a Chinese hieroglyphic abbreviation of wan, seen from a western eye (that is from right to left, and not left to right as that of use in Chinese) and if turned upside down it can symbolize a cup.
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Moreover, in Ku p’ai there were three unnumbered cards, as well as in European decks.
Also the numeration of 22 Great Arcana of Tarots could be borrowed from the Chinese cards, which in turn – as we have seen – dig their roots in the game of dices and domino. The latter has exactly 21 combinations possible to those to be added “zero”, which in the domino it was represented in a white card, used exactly with the same value of the Fool of Tarots.
Our first journey with Tarots on the research of their roots in China is concluded like this, and it is already time to set off for another magical place… India and her cards.
