Leaving out of consideration the pack of ten suits, with the emblems of the ten incarnations of Vichnou, as being of a mythological character, and probably not in common use for the purposes of gaming, it is evident from the other three packs, of eight suits each, that the cards known in Hindostan are not uniform in the marks of the different suits, though it is obvious that any game,--depending on sequences and the conventional value of the several cards,--which can be played with one of the packs, may be also played with either of the other two. The difference in the marks is, indeed, much less than is to be observed in old French, Spanish, and German cards, which present so many differences as to render it impossible to derive them from one original type. The mere mark or emblem, whatever it might originally signify, appears to have had no specific meaning or value, beyond what might be assigned to it by the conventional rules of the game; whether it were a sword or a chalice, a club or a piece of money, a heart or a diamond, a green leaf or a hawk's bell, in playing and counting the game, it was a "pip," and nothing more.
Whether the two packs of eight suits each, in the possession of the Royal Asiatic Society, are considered by the natives of Hindostan as consisting of two divisions of four suits each, as in the pack described in the extract from the 'Calcutta Magazine,' I have not been able to ascertain. In all the three packs the sword is to be found as the mark of one of the suits; and the _soofed_ and _soorkh_ of the one pack--silver coin and gold coin, figuratively the moon and the sun--I consider to be represented by the circular marks in the other two; and the oval in these is not unlike the mark of the suit named _Quimash_--merchandise--in the former. The mark of the suit _Burat_, see Plate II, No. 7--which is said to mean a royal diploma or assignment, corresponds very nearly with a parallelogram containing dots, as if meant for writing, in the pack formerly belonging to Capt. D. Cromline Smith; but though a parallelogram--crossed by two lines, and with the longest side vertical--also occurs in the other pack, its agreement with the _Burat_ is by no means so apparent. The marks of the suits _Taj_, a Crown, and _Chung_, a Harp.[60] (see Plate I, fig. 1, and Plate II, fig. 5,) I am unable to recognise, either by name or figure, in the other two packs; though I am inclined to think that, in one of them, the place of the _Taj_ is supplied by a kind of fruit, and in the other by a flower. It will be observed that, in the plate, the mark of the suit called _Chung_, a harp, is a bird. In the other two packs, the suits which I consider to be the substitutes of the _Chung_ have a mark which I have not been able to make out; but in one of them the Vizier, as in the _Chung_, is mounted on a single-humped camel. In the suit called _Gholam_, a slave--Plate I, fig. 4--I cannot make out what is intended for the mark,--whether the _Mahut_, who appears guiding the elephant, or the kind of mace carried by the Vizier; whatever may be the mark, I consider the suit to be represented by that with a white ground in Capt. D. C. Smith's cards, the mark of which is a grotesque head, as in both suits the Vizier is mounted on a bull. The corresponding suit in the other pack I conceive to be the one which has for its mark a man's head.
