ORIENTAL IVORY CARVINGS 101 



Chalif Haroun al-Rashid to Emperor Charlemagne, including 

 an ivory elephant, is listed in the inventory made in 1534 

 of the treasures accumulated in the Abbey of St. Denis, as 

 follows :* 



Ung jeu eomplet de schetz d'yvire, et trente tables 

 aussi d'yvire qui estoient a Charles maigne non prisez. 



Ung elephant aussi d'yvire taille a plusieurs person- 

 nages dessus et alentour luy aussi non prise. 



Ivory playing cards have been made in the Orient, both in 

 earlier centuries and at the present time. The collection of 

 Mr. Francis Douce, in England, is said to contain some such 

 cards of Hindu workmanship with gilded figures, and in 

 Persia also ivory has been used for this purpose occasionally. 

 In some sets of these Persian cards of the eighteenth and 

 nineteenth centuries the cards are not engraved with figures 

 but with groups of objects constituting numerals. A more 

 modern set, from the nineteenth century, bears elaborately 

 designed figures of potentates and knights, similar to our 

 court cards; one of these cards, however, shows a tiger 

 stretched out at full length and a rising sun. A curious en- 

 try in an old account dating from 1396 provides that 12 

 sous parisis shall be paid to Guiot Groslet as recompense for 

 "a case to hold the queen's [Isabella of Bavaria] cards, the 

 little ivory sticks and the rolls of parchment." Here we 

 evidently have an instance of the use of ivory counters to 

 mark the points in a card game.f 



The pieces used in playing the game of pachesi (from 

 pachis, twenty-five), a favourite diversion in India, and 

 popularized not long since in Europe and America, are 



*Bibl. Nat. MS. fr. 18766; fol. 15 of transcription in writer's library from the collection 

 of E. Molinier. 



fHenry Rene d'AUemagne, "Les Cartes k Jouer du Quatorzieme au Vingtieme Siecle," 

 Paris, 1906, pp. 4, 8, 16, 399. 



