CHESS AND PLAYING-CARDS. 685 



reaii blocks be regarded as representing- tlie unbroken or masculine 

 lines and the broken or feminine lines the trigrams will form a record 

 of the throws when three blocks are used, and the hexagrams when 

 six blocks are taken. From this I regard the divinatory use of the 

 nyout blocks in connection with the handbook as illustrating the origin 

 of the Chinese Boole of Divinatio7i, to which the handbook presents an 

 almost perfect parallel.' As it appears from the foreign names of the 

 stave-throws in Korea that the system is foreign and non-Chinese, con- 

 firmation is afforded of the theory of the foreign origin of the Book of 

 Divination advanced by Professor 

 Terrien de Lacouperie. A detailed ac- 

 count of nyout is given by the writer in 

 his work on Korean Games. 



The game of nyout may be regarded 

 as the prototype of a large class of com- 

 mon games, such as the Game of 

 Goose, Backgammon, Pachisi, and 

 Chess. It is clearly divinatory in its 

 associations, the diagram representing 

 the world with its four quarters. The 

 mimber, by means of which 2)lace is de- North 



termined, is discovered by tossing the Fig. 5. 



blocks or staves. ^^^ ^'^^ kwa or ei«ht diagrams, 



' ■ ACCORDING TO FUH-HI. 



The assumption that the nyout staves 



were derived from arrows, suggested by From Mayer's CWnese Reader'a Han,lbo.,k. 



Mr. Gushing, is based upon evidence 



furnished by corresponding American games; for example, in the 

 Kiowa game of Zohn ahl, ISTo. 3, where three of the staves bear marks 

 like arrow feathering. In throwing the long nyout staves it is custom- 

 ary to hold three crosswise over the other (Plate 1, fig. 3), in somewhat 

 the same manner as in the Zuni game of Sho-U-toe. (Compare fig. 112.) 

 2. Gaming arrows.^ Kiowa Indians. Indian Territory, United 

 States. 



'I am informed that in the system of fortune-telling known in Japan as yeki 

 (No. 65), in which splints are ordinarily used, three small hlocks are sometimes 

 tossed to determine the diagrams. In this method, known as Aral shin yeki, from 

 Aral, the name of the reputed inventor, three r(>ctangular blocks, called sangi, about 

 3 inches in length, made of some hard wood — cherry, or, preferably, ebony — are em- 

 ])loyed. Two of the ojtposite long sides are plain. The two other opposite faces are 

 marked with vermilion ink in Chinese characters: On one, T'in, "Heaven;" one, Ti, 

 "Earth," and tll(^ other Yan, "Man." The determinations are made according to 

 the positions in which the marked sides fall one to another, which are referred to a 

 special treatise. Another similar method employed in Japan, also attributed to 

 Aral, is by means of three ancient "cash" or coins, which are tossed from a tortoise 

 shell. My informant, Mr. K. Wadamori, of Tokio, himself a iieki gakusha or "yeki 

 scholar," tells me that dots are frequently employed in Japan in noting the diagrams, 

 as in the Malagassy sikiddy. 



2 Lent by Stewart Culin. Reproductions made by Mr. Cushing from originals in 

 the United States National Museum (Cat. No. 152913). Collected by James Mooney. 



