Re: Mahjong 'Cash' in red, green and blue, but why?

On Jan 29, 5:25 pm, al <a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Dec 22 2007, 10:55 pm, al <a...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>
> > NAQ # 6
> > My Never-Asked-Question: why mahjong Cash in colors (red, green and
> > blue)?
>
A simple answer is this. Gold is gold color; silver is silver color;
copper is copper and no metal is red, green and  / or blue. Cash was
meant to be metal coin. therefore red, green and blue circle-symbols
in mahjong were NOT CASH.

> > Who first chose the exact English term "CASH" for the mahjong circle
> > symbol which had been called by the Chinese, as ping (pancake),
>
"Ping" was slang.

> I just read Steward Culin's The Game of Ma-Jong (Elliott Avedon
> Musuem). He described the suits as "ping, sok and man" Ity seems
> strange to me. Ping does not belong to the southern Cantonese dialect,
> as I know and speak it. Level is more like "ping", while "beng" could
> be referred to as "cake". He might have mixed the term with Himly's
> "ping" of Northern dialect.
>
Ping sounds like a word that mean "level" or "undisturbed".

> Culin did realize Chinese games terminology is full of slang and is
> "elusive", as he  had acknowledged.
>
> Slang is key word to note. Historians who gathered their mahjong
> history from Chinese natives and recorded their knowledge in slang-
> verbatim.  Unknowingly they left out real meanings of the pieces and
> the game's purpose or true history as a whole.
>
I can appreciate the situation. There was so little knowledge of the
subject. Nothing existed in writing except many different names heard.
Those early historians did well for what they have done with what was
available for that strange game.

What I can not understand is why people of today refuse to see the
mistakes made by people 150 years ago.

> Unfortunately, 150 years ago when these foreign historians were
> writing their new found knowledge, no Chinese was around to read the
> work in English and none was able to correct anything.
>
But even now, the supposedly official version of the history is not
yet officially translated. Only the diagrams have been taken and
matched with text from somewhere else by other authors.
Why don't historians of East and West get together and clarify some
questions now?

> Of course, it was a good thing somebody from the outside world took an
> interest at the game. The people in China had neglected the game's
> history for ages. The traditional oral learning and [..]
> left a lot of confusion about mahjong.
>
> >[..]
> [..]
> > The reason I ask is because I would like to know where he found CASH
> > in colors, red, green and blue, if he had ever seen them.
>
Nowhere.
> > [..] Were and are the circles actually
> > mistaken in name?
>
That is obviously so.
> The circular shape was intended as symbol. It was mistaken for actual
> cash which in turned was given slang names in various regions in
> China. The first error in the writing of mahjong history was in
> treating a symbolic representation or allegory as an actual object.

The apple in the Garden of Eden was a symbol; it was not meant to be
an actual real apple you can sink your teeth into.
"Cash" for mahjong's circles may be said to be the "sin" of wrongful
translation.
++++++++++
> The next mistake follows naturally in treating the other symbols as
> multiples (again forgetting the fact that they are representations of
> something else).[..]
>
> The colors in term of symbolism represent Heaven, Earth ans Man. [..]
>
> The circle represents a CYCLE. A cycle represents TIME. [..] [Heaven],
Earth and Man in the UNIVERSE change. All
> changes repeat in cycles like CIRCLES..
>
Zhong-fa-bai is a cycle of LIFE (where BIRTH is a lucky change, GROWTH
is a healthy change, and DEATH is a disappearing change); life
recycles.
++++++++
>  Divination is a way to anticipate changes. The bamboo strips were
> used as a tool to randomize or synchronize the hexagram oracle. The
> application is for tens of thousands of questions. Just "sok" it to
> it. (Recall by definition "sou3" or "sok" is to demand, to ask, to
> search and to exact" [answers]).
> [..]
> [..][..]
Divination influence Chinese life and culture thousands years.
>
> >        http://www.taopage.org/iching/iching_symbols.html
> > +++++++++
>
 Cheers....al