682 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



{h) Reproduction of native picture; Korean boys playing Nyout.^ 

 The national game of Korea. Two, three, or four persons play, mov- 

 ing- objects used as men around a circuit, according- to throws made 

 with four blocks of wood used as dice. The circuit (fig. 1) is marked 

 with twenty-nine points, twenty of which are arranged equally distant 

 in a circle, within which is a cross composed of nine stations. The 

 blocks ordinarily used are called pam-nyout or " chestnut nyouV (Plate 1, 

 fig. 1 ), white and fiat on one side and black and convex on the other. 

 The pieces or men, called mal (Chinese, wm), "horses,"^ may consist of 

 any convenient stick or stone. The throws count as follows: 



4 white sides up, nyoul, ^4 

 4 black sides up, mo, = 5 

 3 wliito sides up, kel, = 3 

 2 white sides up, kdi, =2 

 1 white side up, /o =1 



A throw of nyout or mo entitles the player to another throw, which he 

 makes before moving his piece. The one who shall play first is deter- 

 mined by throwing the blocks, the highest leading. The players enter 

 their men on the mark next on the left of the large circle at the top of 

 the diagram, and move around against the sun. The ol)ject of the game 

 is to get from one to four horses around the circuit and out again at tlie 

 top. If a player throws so that one of his men falls upon another of 

 his own he may double up the two pieces and thereafter take them 

 around as one piece, they counting as two in the game. If a player's 

 piece fiills upon an opponent's the latter is said to be " caught," and is 

 sent back to the beginning, and must be started again as at first. The 

 captor is given another throw. Partners are permitted to move each 

 other's pieces. In opening the game, if a player's man falls upon the 

 large circle B, on the left, he returns to the goal by the radii B E, E A. 

 If he overthrows the mark B he must continue on to C. At this point 

 he returns by the diameter C A, but if he overthrows he must con- 

 tinue on to D and around the circuit to A, the going-out i)lace. 



ters, reading as four lines of a verse, inscribed in the circles. Children frequently 

 play ujion a circuit drawn upon the ground. In the picture of the game (Plate 2) 

 the boys are represented as throwing the blocks through a cuff, which one of them 

 has removed for the purpose. This is done to render the result of the throws more 

 a matter of chance than of skill, and is a substitute for a ring of straw, about 

 2 inches in diameter, affixed to the end of a stick about a foot long, which is stuck 

 in the center of the ring for the same purpose. The selection of the wood for the 

 sticks is not a matter of individn;il caprice. They are usually made of the wood of 

 a thick bushy tree, like the pruuus, called ssa-7-i, used in China for bows, whence 

 the game is called .la-ri-nyout. Another yvood, jiak-fal-na-viou, defined as a very hard 

 wood of which mallets are made, is sometimes used, but the former is preferred. 



'Stewart Culin, Korean Games, Philadelphia, 189.5. 



2The term mci, or horses, applied to men or pieces in a game, is of high antiquity 

 in China, and was also given to the counters employed in the classical Chinese 

 game of Tan u or "pitch pot" (pitching arrows or arrow-lots into a pot), described 

 in the Li Ki. 



