Table of Content
- Origin
- Ganjifa in India and Mughal Ganjifa
- Following is the eight-suited ganjifa pack of Akbar
- The structure of the pack
- Variations of ganjifa cards
- The game of naqsh or naksha
- Playing the cards
Origin
The etymology and origins of the word ‘Ganjifa’ are obscure. Ganj is a Persian word meaning 'treasure, treasury or hoard, (later) granary.
The word Ganjifa signifies playing cards and card games in India and Nepal, Iran, some Arab countries and Turkey. As far as we know, it occurs for the first time in Yusuf ibn Taghri-Birdis's Annals of Egypt and Syria, where it is mentioned in the tale of an incident which must have happened between 1399 and 1412, probably in Damascus, when a Mamluk officer, later to become Sultan, played kanjafah or kanjifah with his fellows and won a large sum of the money. There is good reason to believe that this brave Mamluk was gambling at cards, because the same word kanjafah appears in an inscription on a card of the famous Mamluk set of playing cards in the Topkapi Saray Museum in Istanbul. These cards were first published and described by L.A.Mayer in 1939, and have since been the focal point in discussion about the eastern origin of playing cards.
Indo-French Playing Cards: Handpainted by Ganjifa Artists
In 1514-15, Ahli Shirazi wrote Rubaiyat-i-ganjifa, a poem of 96 verses, naming the 8 suits and 96 cards of a ganjifa pack for the first time, probably in Tabriz, Iran. In 1525–30, eight lacquer paintings with ganjifa designs in the early Safavid style of Tabriz were made.
Ganjifa in India and Mughal Ganjifa
In 1527, Babur sent a pack of ganjifa cards as a gift to his friend in Sind, possibly an eight suited pack. Humayun’s sister, Begum Gulbadan, records a gambling party in 1545, where a possible game could include ganjifa cards. Several different types of ganjifa games must already have been developed in India by the 16th century; we learn this from a chapter on the games played by Akbar the Great, which his secretary, wazir and biographer, Abu'l Fazl, included in the Ain-i-Akbari, a book on the institutions and activities of the imperial court (c.1565). Abu'l Fazl describes in detail two packs of cards the (ganjifa or ganjafeh), with neatly tabulated descriptions of a twelve-suited and an eight-suited ganjifa pack with all the details of court cards and suit signs.
Following is the twelve-suited ganjifa pack of Akbar.
(Source - Leyden, Rudolf van. 1982. Ganjifa: The Playing Cards of India. A General Survey, with a Catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. London: The Museum.)
The first six suits are called bishbar (powerful) and the last six kambar (weak) 52. Abu'l Fazl indicated that this game came from the 'ancient sages'; this may mean that it was considered to be an old game, possibly going out of fashion at the time, and hence the need for Akbar 'to make some alterations in the cards'. An interesting fact here is the Sanskrit nomenclature of the suits is entirely Indian.
The eight-suited game described by Abu'l Fazl is a particularly elaborate version of the standard ganjifa which was also known in Iran at that time. ‘Only the sequence of the suits and some of their names have been changed, without altering the essential nature of the pack. It is likely that Akbar did not invert this game, as claimed by the often sycophantic Abu'l Fazl, but that he instructed his painters to illustrate all the cards in the pack with images of his own court. Alas! nothing survives of all this splendour.’
Following is the eight-suited ganjifa pack of Akbar:
(Source - Leyden, Rudolf van. 1982. Ganjifa: The Playing Cards of India. A General Survey, with a Catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. London: The Museum.)
The royal set of cards, painted probably on ivory by the imperial court artists, became the supreme model of Mughal ganjifa, aspired to by generations of rich patrons and their card- makers.
Card playing seems to have been a very popular pastime during the 17th and 18th centuries at the innumerable Indian courts, from the imperial darbar in Delhi, to the palaces and houses of sultans, nawabs, subahdars, rajas, jagirdars and their vassals and retainers. We must not forget the zenanas, where ganjifa was certainly played as a relief from institutional boredom. Poets and philosophers wrote about ganjifa, artists made beautiful cards, and first the ruling classes and then the lower orders played ganjifa games with various types of cards. The classic Mughal ganjifa with ninety-six cards and the standard eight suits spread all over India.The game was carried along by the spread of Mughal culture, penetrating both different regions and new social strata.
Chang Kanchan (Mughal Ganjifa), set of 96 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Miniature Chang Kanchan
The structure of the pack
A pack (thoka in Orissa, petika in Mysore) of Mughal ganjifa consists of 96 cards in eight suits (baji, rang, jati) of twelve cards (waraq, patra, patrika) each. The Indian ganjifa has two court cards, shah or mir (king) and wazir (minister); these are the two leading figures in oriental chess, which may well have been carried over into the court cards of ganjifa. The ten numeral cards have different values in each of the two halves of the pack. In four suits the sequence of the cards is mir, wazir, ten, nine and so forth, with the one or ace being the lowest. In the other four suits the sequence runs from mir and wazir to the one and down to the ten as the lowest card. The same contrary feature is known in several European card games. The division (bheda) with the tens high is called 'bish- bar' (strong) or, in Maharashtra, 'dahele-bandibaji' (ten-high- suit), while the other bheda is called 'kambar' (weak) or 'ekka- bandibaji' (one-high-suit). Bish- bar includes taj (crown or a symbol of the regalia of the imperial Mughal court), safed (white or silver- essentially a silver coin), shamsher (sword- representing the palace guard), ghulam (slave/servant, also soldier); while kambar includes chang (a stringed instrument resembling a small harp), surkh (red or gold), barat (a document, firman or hundi -cheque, draft- and, as such, represents the chancellery or daftar) , qimash (stands for the palace stores or the chamberlain's office).
Variations of ganjifa cards
Bird and animal ganjifas were especially popular in Rajasthan, bird sets were also made in bazar kalam for the general market in Rajasthan and in Orissa, where they call such sets ‘cadhei sara’. A few cards of a flower ganjifa, possibly of Kashmiri origin, have also survived.
Bird's Ganjifa, set of 120 handpainted Ganjifa cards By Sawant Bhonsle
Animal Ganjifa, set of 120 handpainted Ganjifa cards by Sawant Bhonsle
In the course of time, attempts were made to introduce Hindu themes into the scheme of playing cards. The eight-suited ganjifa is called ath rangi sara in Orissa. It retains the suit names and signs of Mughal ganjifa in a transmogrified form, but replaces the figures on the court cards with those of Hindu divinities and heroes. In the ashtamala sara the eight heroic deeds of the young Krishna are depicted on the wazir cards in a most animated fashion. The large Ramayana set from Parlakhemundi, in which the narrative is depicted in a comic-book manner on its eighty numeral cards. The dikapalas, the eight guardians of the regions, readily lent themselves to another Hindu adaptation of the eight-suited ganjifa. There are two sets that depict the animal vahanas of the dikapalas, such as the , such as the elephant (Indra), ram (Agni), buffalo (Yama), antelope (Vayu), etc. The close relationship with animal ganjifas is evident. An engraved ivory set from Travancore (Kerala), has the saptarishis and their wife Arundhat; heading the eight suits.
There are other Mughal ganiifas which were expanded to ten and twelve suits by the addition of fancy suits such as the bottle, cup, peacock and flower suits in the gul aur bulbul (rose and bird) ganjifa or the charming animal suits, both from Banaganapalli, a small principality (nawabi) in the southern Deccan.
The ten-suited dashavatara ganjifa is most likely a Hinduized form of the Mughal ganjifa. The structure and the rules of play of both games are essentially the same. The wazirs in many dashavatara packs are horsemen. This makes some sense in a secular pack in which the dignitary next to the king could be seen as a mounted figure, but it makes little sense in cards with mythological themes. The pack has ten suits, each of which represents one of the ten incarnations (avatara) of Vishnu. In accordance with the usual tendency to proliferation, the Orissan pack was expanded to twelve suits by the addition of a Ganesha and a Skanda suit, and to sixteen and twenty suits by the addition of further divinities. These larger packs are still used in actual play.
Dashavtar Ganjifa, set of 120 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Miniature Dashavtar Ganjifa set of 120 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Each suit (rang, varna, baji, jati) has two court cards, a raja (Sanskrit nrupa) and a mantri or pradhan (minister, counsellor), and ten numeral cards with suit signs (chinha). The first five suits are 'weak' with the aces high and the tens low (ekka-bandibaji: 'aces-strong-suit'), while the last five suits are 'strong' with the tens high (daheli bandibaji). The raja card of the Balarama or Krishna suit is the lead card (aftab, arka) during the day, and the raja of the Ramachandra suit during the night. The iconography of dashavatara ganjifas follows the established popular imagery. But the composition and sequence of the list of avataras are not uniform, varying according to the divergent texts of the Puranas. in the eighth and ninth positions - Balarama, Krishna, Buddha and Jagannatha change places in accordance with regional beliefs or preferences. The following groupings exist: Rajasthan and Nepal, Northern Deccan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, Southern Deccan and Mysore, West Bengal and Orissa.
The ten incarnations are depicted using the following symbols- Matsya (fish), Kurma (turtle), Varaha (boar or shanka), Narasimha (lion or chakra), Vamana (kamandala or chakri), Parshurama (axe), Rama (bow and arrows or monkeys), Balarama ( the plough - hala, pestle or club- musala or cows), Krishna (chakra , cows or small heads with a peacock-feather crown, and lotus flowers), Buddha (lotus- padma, conch- shanka or a small crowned head), Kalki (swords or houses).
There are various other variations of Hindu ganjifa cards and also some with depictions of Jain tirthankaras.
Aryadev Playing Card, set of 52 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Dhanalaxmi Ganjifa set of 108 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Ganpati Playing Cards 54 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Modern ganjifa cards depict a variety of themes, like Indian musical instruments, based on certain historical figures, Rashi (zodiac) , Navagraha (the 9 planets) etc.
Indian Musical Ganjifa, set of 120 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Shivaji Playing Cards 54 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Rashi Ganjifa set of 144 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Navagraha Ganjifa set of 108 card by Sawant Bhonsle
The game of naqsh or naksha
The normal Indian ganjifa game is a trick-making game without trumps, in which the number of cards won and not their values counts towards victory; and of course any other type of game could be played with these standard cards. Gambling games have been popular in India from time immemorial, first with dice and later with cards, as was demonstrated by the ladies of Humayun's court. One of the gambling games played with cards, called naqsh or naksha. Naqsh means design, shape or pattern and designates any winning combination of cards. The naqsh game is very much like baccarat or vingt-et-un, in which a combination of cards in one's hands must come to a total of 17 or 21 in order to win the stakes. There are also other winning combinations such as pairs and triples pairs plus aces, which qualify for a share in the stakes.
Naqsh can be played with any standard Indian or European pack consisting of 96, 84, 80, 48, 40 or 36 cards. Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa have special naqsh packs. Even today, gambling games like naqsh are played especially during the festival season between Dashehra and Diwali in October or November, under the auspices of Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune.
The card
Indigenous Indian playing cards are circular, measuring in diameter from about 20mm and 32 to 34 mm to 120mm. Only Indian cards seem to have adopted the round shape as standard. The Mamluk cards of Egypt and the early Persian cards were rectangular, as were European cards from the beginning. Indian card makers used the rectangular shape occasionally, especially for high quality Mughal ganjifa sets. A relationship between coins and the circular shape of Indian playing cards is possible. Oval ganjifa cards are also found.
Round Playing Card, set of 52 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Double Figure Playing Cards, handpainted Ganjifa cards
Oval Playing Card, set of 52 handpainted Ganjifa cards
Indian cards usually have their backs painted plain red or orange. Orissan cards have yellow, green, blue and black backs and, increasingly in recent years, reddish brown backs, ren- dered in cheap paint made from the ubiquitous red earth or lal mati. Occasionally one finds the backs decorated with a rim line or a small central flower ornament. Fully ornamented backs are found on expensively made cards from Kashmir, Nirmal and Parlakhemundi. Different materials including ivory, tortoise-shell, mother-of-pearl, inlaid or enamelled precious metals, wooden tablets, thin transparent wafers of lack for the more expensive cards, and used waste paper, waste textile fabrics, layered, starched and burnished, paper mache, leather, fish scales and stylographed palm leaf. There are various steps involved in the process of card manufacture - including preparing the base, using colors made of powdered seashells, mixed with glues, palm juice or natural resin and applied by brushes made of animal hair. In Sawantwadi, Maharashtra and other places - yellow is made from natural ochre, blue from indigo, green from a mixture of yellow and blue, brown from red earth, black from soot, vermillion from mercury oxide -sindoor, white from lime.
The process of making cards is shared by the whole family of chitrakar - men, women and children. The women do the preparatory work, the junior artists paint the pip cards and senior artists paint the figure cards. They first apply the background color, apply the details in different colours and do a black outline. Cards of different quality are produced in every card-making workshop: elaborate darbar kalam cards in larger size and with richer figure work for discriminating customers, and simpler bazar kalam ones for the man in the street. Painters are generally called chitrakar, patua, patidar, etc.
Indian playing cards are packed in painted boxes, whose beauty often matches that of the cards within. Each region has evolved its own distinctive type. The boxes are made of light wood, covered with a layer of paper or cloth or simply primed and painted. All boxes have a sliding lid. Allowing for variations and imitations, each region of India has a typical design.
Playing the cards
People from all social classes play card games in India. We have references in the form of two miniatures that have come to light, both showing a Mewar ruler playing cards with his courtiers.
Some of the Marathi books of the last century show Brahmins playing Dashavatara ganjifa, and on one Orissan card box two prosperous-looking gentlemen are shown at play.
Ganjifa rules apply to games played with the eight-suited pack as well as with the ten and more-suited packs. They vary regionally, though the fundamental principles remain the same. Ganjifa is a trick-making game. Three cards are distributed to the players and the deal rotates in an anti-clockwise direction. The aftab cards open the game; a low card is played with the leading card and makes two tricks in one go. The first player must play his top cards in sequence first and then he draws the high cards of the others in order to establish more high cards in his hand. The players who follow him do the same. Special rules regulate the passing of the lead. The skill of play lies in memorizing each card played, because it is essential to retain high cards for the last tricks. The loser in one round owes the number of cards lost to the winners, who have the right to exchange low against high value cards with him in the next deal. Different variations of card games have their own rules.
Even today, Ganjifa cards are handmade and hand-painted by skilled craftsmen in different regions of India like Odisha, Mysore, Nirmal, Sawantwadi, Rajasthan, Kashmir, Bishnupur, and Sheopur. They are not just used as playing cards now, but as collectibles, decor pieces, etc., and the ganjifa painting style is also now depicted on various objects like boxes, trays, bookmarks, keychains and much more.
Check out our entire collection of ganjifa art.
Thus, Ganjifa cards are not any mere card game meant for entertainment, they are a testimony to the various dynastic, political, cultural, religious and artistic phases in Indian history.
Check out our other blogs on Ganjifa
Jaipur Ganjifa set of 120 card by Sawant Bhonsle
Ashtalakshmi: Holy Abundance in Mysore Ganjifa Cards by Hemalatha B
(Source - Leyden, Rudolf van. 1982. Ganjifa: The Playing Cards of India. A General Survey, with a Catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. London: The Museum.)
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