The Ramirez Copy.

[Arte Mexicano, y Declaracion de la Doctrina.]

Manuscript, 1. 1 [extraneous], 11. 9-94, in a handwriting of the sixteenth century, 4°.

The following notes I take from Icazbalceta's Apuntes (Addiciones y correcciones), p. 150, no. 88:

"The volume begins with a leaf upon which there is a note, in Mexican, in much more modern characters, and which undoubtedly does not belong to the original manuscript. The work begins with 1 9, a part of chapter 5 of the first part; in addition to II. 1–8, there are also lacking 11. 13-14; the first part terminates on the verso of 1. 23; 11. 46-47 are lacking. Between the 48th and 49th there is no leap in the numbering of the leaves, but there seems to be one in the text. On the verso of the 64th ends the second part, and the beginning of the third. The grammar ends with three lines on 1. 78, and then continues as follows:

"Declaration de los diez mandamientos en lengua mexicana muy copiosa en lenguaje y en materia hecha el año de 1563.

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A [há] viente años, o poco mas que hize vna doctrina xpiana en esta lengua mexicana la qual tiene muchos Religiosos en q puse la declaraçiō de los diez mandamientos cada vno dellos en tres pūtos. . . . Despues aca he entedido y procurado de saber las cosas particulares en que estes naturales quebrantan cada vno de los mandimentos y por tanto acorde este año de 1563 ampriar la dicha declaracion, etc.

"This continues as far as page [sic] 88, occupying the recto and a single line on the verso."

Prologo.

En los principios quando esta gente mexicana cōmēço a reçebir la sicta comonio hize vna doctrina que contienen las Reglas q en de guardar los que quieren dignamente llegarse a la sancta comunió es esta que ua al principio deste quaderno a cerca de trienta años q se hizo esta diuulgada ē muchas partes desta nueua España y agora mucuamente la torne a emendar este año de 1563.

On the recto of leaf [sic] 98 is:

Fin del dialogo. Siguiense las quatro orationes para cōsolar los efermos. Actus uera contricionis.

"The manuscript ends with 9 lines on the verso of 1. 94. The rest of the page is filled with a paragraph in Mexican, in an entirely different kind of writing.

"Inasmuch as this manuscript bears in various places the date of 1563, we must consider it as later than that in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Comparing it with the long extract which Sr. Ramirez made from the

latter copy, the most notable difference is that the one I have in view lacks the Platica and the reply thereto with which the copy in Paris ends, this being replaced by the Declaracion de los mandamentos.

"That this Arte, or another by the same author, was printed at Mexico in the year 1555, as some say, is a statement I have always doubted, and now I doubt it still more, seeing that in this manuscript of 1563 nothing is said of its having been printed eight years before, whereas the author does relate the history of his book. One thing is certain, nobody says that he has seen the edition of 1555, and the opinion favorable to its existence is based, so far as I know, merely on a passage, not very clear, in the additions to the Bibliotheca Universa Franciscana of Fr. Juan de San Antonio."

Sr. Icazbalceta had already given an earlier and shorter description of this manuscript in the main body of the Apuntes, p. 79, no. 88, where it was classed as anonymous. Subsequent to this Sr. Ramirez sent him from Paris a long description of the manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which is also given in the Apuntes, no. 88 (Addiciones y Correcciones, pp. 148-150). He then entered into this longer description of the Ramirez copy. In his first account Sr. Icazbalceta has this note after the paragraph beginning a [há] viente años, etc.:

"This reference carries us back to 1543. But on the verso of 1. 88 reference is made to another date still farther back-that is to say, 1532 or 1534, since it says ha cerca de treinta años. Thus there is no doubt the manuscript is by some one of the first missionaries.”

In the sale catalogue of the collection belonging to Sr. Ramirez, Bib. Mex., London, 1880, no. 604, this manuscript is titled and described as follows:

Arte para apprendes la lengua Mexicana.

Manuscript of the 16th century, ll. 9–94, 4°.

"After the grammar we have five leaves of an exhortation of a father to his son and his reply and two pages of geographical explanations, the first in Mexican and the last in Spanish.

"It has unquestionably belonged to one of the first missionaries of Mexico. Four copies are known to exist of this work-one in possession of M. Aubin, in Paris; a second copy is in the National Library of Paris, a third in possession of Mr. Pinart, and the fourth is the present copy.

"The late Mr. Ramirez had an opportunity of comparing the first two copies with his own, and, according to his judgment, the oldest copy is that in possession of Mr. Aubin, the next in date that of the National Library, and the most modern the present."

In my marked and priced copy of the Ramirez sale catalogue it is said to have been sold to "Stevens" for 19l. 158. I presume Stevens, the London bookseller, is meant. At all events, I saw this copy of the Olmos manuscript Arte, or what I then and now suppose to be the same, in the Bancroft Library, San Francisco, in the spring of 1883. As stated above, I did not then realize the advantage of describing manuscripts which had been printed, and hence my notes are not in great detail.

These are the four known manuscripts of Olmos' Arte Mexicana. A fifth is mentioned by Siméon in his Introduction to the Grammaire Nahuatl as being in the Bibliothèque Nationale de Madrid, the only notice I have seen in regard to it; and if Beristain were always reliable we could add still another copy, a sixth, to the list. In his Biblioteca Hispano-Americana Septentrional he says:

"There is in the library of the Santa Iglesea of Toledo a manuscript of the Arte y Vocabulario Megicanos of P. Olmos, and the original was seen by Sr. Eguiara in the pueblo of Tlanepantla. Betancourt asserts that the works in Huasteca are preserved in Özolvama, a town in Tampico. I have seen the greater number of the works in Mexican in the library of the College of San Gregory, in Mexico."

CHINESE ORIGIN OF PLAYING CARDS

BY W. H. WILKINSON

The current Chinese term for both dominoes and cards is p'ai (pronounced "pie," as in Tipperary). There is no essential difference between cards and dominoes in China; what are known among foreigners, owing to a superficial resemblance, as "domi

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*FIG. 1 (%).

noes are used for the most part precisely as we use cards, and the same game will appear either in the form of a pack of, it may be, coarsely printed slips of pasteboard or as highly finished tablets" dominoes," in short-of ivory and ebony neatly fitted

* The coloring of the objects illustrated in this paper is represented by heraldic symbolism, the dotted signifying yellow or gold; vertical lines, red; oblique, green; horizontal, blue.

into a sandalwood box. Where a distinction in language has to be made, cards of millboard are styled chih pai, “paper p‘ai,” and dominoes ya p'ai or ku p'ai, "p'ai of ivory" or "bone."

Literary Chinamen of today will use in writing but not in speech two other terms, yü-p'u, “slips,” and yeh-tză, “leaves.” These are the names of two old Chinese gambling games, the first of which was in vogue as early as the third century of our era, while the second was at the height of its popularity about the tenth. Some foreign writers have maintained that both these games were played with cards. Williams, for instance, in his Syllabic Dictionary, s. v. p'u, translates the former term by "an old name for playing cards," while Schlegel, as quoted by van der Linde, plainly identifies yeh-tzu with the cards of today. If either of these authorities is correct, playing cards of some kind can be proved to have been in use in China several centuries before their appearance in Europe. The records of the Tsin dynasty, for example, state that a well-known worthy, T'ao K'an (259-334 A. D.), "flung into the river the winecups and yü-p'u of his subordinates, remarking, Yu-p'u is a game for drovers and swineherds.'" Yang Kuo chung, brother of the notorious Yang Kuei-fei, mistress of the Emperor Ming Huang, played yü-p'u with the imperial gambler in the palace A. D. 750. In 951 T'ai-tsu, the "High Ancestor" of the Later Chou, assembled his nobles to play together at this game for "embroidered rugs and damask and gauze of sorts." Forty years later yü-p'u was put under a ban and all players of it threatened with the headsman, after which the game appears very naturally to have fallen into desuetude.

Yü-p'u, however, pace Dr. Williams, was not a card game. Originally, so far as we can judge, it was nothing more or less than the modern poker dice, or something closely resembling it. Five dice were used, colored black above and white below (or perhaps having three of the faces black and three white), and one or more of the black faces was marked with a 2-spot, and similarly one or more of the white. The highest throw was five blacks," the hound," counting 16; the next was "the cock," two

*Geschichte des Schachspiels, ii, pp. 381, sqq.