Julian, thanks so much for your article. It's really good work.
"Julian Bradfield" <jcb@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote...
> Notes on Tam Wing Kwong, "The Game of Sparrow as played in China".
>
> [ This note is in the Big5 encoding. For those reading without
> Chinese fonts, the hanyu pinyin readings are given in square
> brackets. Readings outside square brackets are from the book, using
> the author's transcription of Cantonese.
> I can also post a GB version if desired. ]
The Big5 worked great for me. Thanks for all the, um, "kanji" - excellent
stuff! (^_^)
> The first surprise in this book is on the front cover. The cover shows
>
> 將 馬
>
> This is doubly interesting: it is the earliest use I've seen of 將
> [jiang4]
> `general' rather than 雀 [que4] `sparrow' as the second word in the
> name, and the only use I know of 馬 [ma3] `horse' rather than 麻 [ma2]
> `hemp' as the first.
Yes, most interesting! And I noticed that on the cover it says jiang4ma3,
while inside the book (which you mention later) it says ma3jiang4
(reversed). I guess that's attributable to the fact that Chinese can
sometimes be read right-to-left (especially when the characters can be
imagined to be at the head of a vertical column of characters).
> ...It says that since the 1st
> edition was published, the author has found that many foreigners need
> more explicit guidance on the ways of going out (i.e. different types
> of waiting),
Or perhaps it means more than that (it may also mean some special hands,
like All Green, for instance).
> The place of origin of the Game of Sparrow or Maa Jerg or Maa Jong
> is Ning-po, where the game made its first appearance some fifty
> years ago.
Circa 1872, which bears out Stanwick's work in The Playing Card.
> The sole object of this booklet is to represent to the foreign
> players the rules of scoring which are invariably accepted and
> observed by the players in most of the Chinese clubs in Hongkong,
Aha!
> The book proper starts:
>
> The Game of Sparrow or Maa Jerg 麻雀 [ma2que4], or Maa Jong 馬將
> [ma3jiang4], is played ...
See, reversed from the cover (jiang4ma3).
> In the description of
> bamboos, he says "From the figure of a sparrow, by which the 1 sog was
> original [sic] represented, and from which the name "Maa Jerg" (麻雀
> [ma2que4], meaning sparrow) has been derived, the figure of a stork,
> peacock or phoenix, or sometimes even that of a bamboo shoot, is often
> substituted."
I have to think that he's got this one not quite right. The earliest sets
didn't have a sparrow for the One Bam.
> he says that the 龍 [long2] Loeng `dragon' and 鳳
> [feng4] Foeng `phoenix' (given of course in the traditional forms) are
> the usual markings, but owing to Republican objections to the use of the
> Imperial dragon sign, these are sometimes substituted by the 中
> [zhong1] Joeng and 發 [fa1] Faad characters. Since the last Emperor's
> own set used zhong and fa, this argument doesn't sound terribly
> convincing!
Yes. Perhaps he had a theory and had not found any conflicting evidence,
so
stated it as fact.
> A question for the Cantonese speakers: Amy Lo's book uses "番子
> [fan1zi] Fan Jee" for the Honour tiles (Winds and Dragons), also
> presumably meaning doublers. Are both the fan1 characters possible for
> faan in Cantonese, as far as you're concerned?
Interesting. Perhaps the reliance on spoken communication about the game
(since the game's creator didn't write a definitive manual) resulted in
conflicting writings.
> The description of the preliminaries of the game follows some of the
> standard variations. At this point, the author emphasizes that the
> "cardinals are not properly located inasmuch as North and South are
> transposed", but does not offer any explanation.
He's talking about the "table as map" problem (a frequently asked question
from new players).
> The rules for Kongs ("杠 [gang4] Gong") are interesting. He says that
> when a Kong is declared, a replacement tile is taken from the dead
> wall, and columns moved from the live wall to the dead wall so that if
> there are n kongs declared, the dead wall has (7+n) columns -- so the
> dead wall *grows* as people make kongs! (He is unfortunately not
> perfectly clear about the half columns.)
He says that flowers aren't used, so he doesn't describe replacements for
flower tiles?
>Then he says that in the
> latest rules (presumably this is a 2nd edition addition) the rule is
> simply that each time a kong is declared, one column is moved on to
> the dead wall. Finally he remarks that some players still follow the
> rule that the dead wall should always be 7 columns or 14 tiles.
> I don't remember seeing such a growing dead wall rule elsewhere - does
> it occur in other books?
This goes a little way to backing up Millington on his "kong box" thing.
> Then we come to the scoring. In this book, the base points are 10.
> The scoring table is confusing, because he conflates the 2 or 4 points
> for fishing the eyes with the 2 or 4 points for dragons and own/round
> wind pairs, and gives the score separately for each of the possible
> types of open or closed pairs. But if I follow it correctly, it is the
> standard (e.g. Millington) scoring for pairs.
So there we have it. It's CC, not HKOS. Too bad for Cofa.
> The doubles are a pretty standard set, including things like gathering
> plum blossom from the roof, snatching the moon from the bottom of the
> sea, and so on. He has "all green".
I think this is one of those later additions he mentioned.
> Appendix A concerns the flowers.
>
> Tam lists four examples of the inscriptions that appear on flower
> tiles, without translations (all in traditional forms, of course):
This is a treasure trove of Chinese characters, suitable for copying and
pasting. Thanks very much for this! (Since we also have zhongwen.com, we
can look up characters there, but it's always great to have a character
that
can be simply used in Word documents - and it's always great to have
pronunciations.)
>琴 [qin2] Kum 棋 [qi2] Kei 書 [shu1] Sh"u 畫 [hua4] Waa
>(lute/stringed instrument, chess, book, painting)
I had a question recently from someone who had a set with these four
tiles.
I was able to identify qin, qi, and shu, but his set had a different
"painting" character - one that is apparently no longer in use. You can
see
the tile on my BB (http://www.sloperama.com/majexchange/bulletinbd.htm).
> Appendix B is the promised history of maa jong, explaining his strange
> version of the name. He says his aim is to dispel the nonsense written
> by Americans claiming that Mah-Jong dates from Confucian times;
It isn't only Americans who make this claim...
> At about the fall of the Tang Dynasty,
907AD
> gamblers used to settle up
> points won or lost between them by means of maas (馬 [ma3] meaning
> horses) which were of paper or wood made to represent the numbers 1
> to 9 and also 10 and multiples thereof, the last of which were
> indicated by pictures of horses, lions, elephants and rhinoceroses.
>
> This is new to me, but I don't know the prehistory of Mah-Jong at all
> well - is this part of the standard account?
The "standard accounts" of the games played prior to the 19th century do
not
mention monetary denominations used for gambling purposes or chips used
for
keeping score. (Those standard accounts are usually quite terse.)
>Anyway, he says that
> these cards combined with dominoes to produce "Maa Due (馬吊
> [ma3diao4])".
I guess he's saying that the concept of that earlier card game was put
together with the concept of dominoes in some way to produce Matiao.
Thierry
wrote here on this board a year or two ago that Matiao (a 4-suited game
that
was played with 40 cards) came about later than the three-suited money
cards
(like 1368-1644 or so).
> In the Ming Dynasty (明朝 [ming2chao2]), the game developed to what
> was then called Muoh Hwo cards (抹和牌 [mo4 huo2/he2 pai2 (*)]) which
> also
> had in the set maans, cashes and sogs. Players later added to the
> set 3 kinds of Aces on which were printed flowers called Hwas (花牌
> [hua1pai2], Flower cards), and others added four more kinds "Teens,
> Deis, Yuns and Hwos" called Jongs (將 [jiang4] Generals). At this
> stage, the game was given the name of Hwa Jong (flowers and
> generals).
>
> [ (*) I'm guessing the pinyin here - I have no idea which readings of
> these two characters are the correct ones. Help, anyone? ]
We've been calling it Mo He Pai. I don't recall the source. Probably MJM.
> He then asserts that Maa Jong is an amalgamation of Maa Due (ma-diao)
> and Hwa Jong.
>
> Finally, he says that the game was confined to the nobility until the
> fall of the Ming dynasty,
1644 AD. So when he says "the game" he must mean Shuh Qian Yeh-Pu (a game
played with 48 cards). I think it does the reader a disservice for someone
like Tam Wing Kwong to use a term like "the game" without being specific.
Since there were numerous precursor games that were played in the period
prior to the 19th century, I wish he hadn't simply said "the game" in
reference to the game(s) played back then - the casual reader might assume
he meant mah-jongg.
> He doesn't here say when recognizable Mah-Jong emerged, but in the
> introduction he said "about fifty years ago" in Ningpo.
Which is bolstered by the sets depicted in Stanwick's articles.
Cheers - Tom
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