How did mahjong come from?
Mahjong's real name should be "Mojiang", which means 18 heroes of Water Margin. According to legend, there was a man named Wan Bingtiao at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty, who highly praised the Liangshan heroes written by Shi Naian. He wanted to let the dignitaries know the story of the Water Margin, and then he invented mahjong to love and protect the people and integrate the heroes of the Water Margin into this game. Mahjong takes 18 cards as the base, which means 18 heroes respectively. For example, nine of the cards are called "Nine Dragons", two are called "Shuang Bian" Hu Yanzhuo, and one cake is called "Black Cyclone" likui jy.
The reason why it is divided into three categories, namely, ten thousand, cake and strip, is to take the homonym of its own name. There are four cards in each category from one to nine, which is exactly 18 cards. Article 18 is gathered in Liangshan from all directions, so with the addition of east, west, south, north and noon, there are four cards for each party, and 2 cards are counted. These heroes are rich and poor, so if you add "fat" and "white" to symbolize wealth and poverty, and add eight cards, the whole deck will be 136 cards.
Later, all kinds of flower cards were added, and the whole deck was 144 cards. There is another folk joke that playing mahjong with a square table is not only four directions, but also refers to the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn and winter, with thirteen cards for each person, because there are thirteen weeks in a season. The four seasons are 52 weeks, and * * * 364 days, plus the one when you win, represents the last day of the year * * * 365 days, which is exactly one year. This is another kind of joke.
Origin II
Mahjong originated from the granary, and mahjong tiles originated from Taicang, Jiangsu, which is the conclusion drawn from the research of Suzhou essayist Gu Xinzhi.
Taicang was a royal granary in ancient times, where rice was stored all the year round for "transporting grain from the south to the north". When the granary is set up, the birds will be born. The soldiers who guarded the warehouse took pleasure in catching birds, and the warehouse officials changed their encouragement as a reward, and they were given bamboo cards to count the rewards. This board is engraved with words, which can be used as a tool for games; This brand is also a reward and has securities value, so it can be used to win or lose. This kind of game has been handed down and evolved into a mahjong card, which is today's mahjong. Its gameplay and terminology are all related to catching sparrows.
for example, tube, rope and ten thousand. The design of the barrel is a pictographic symbol (cross section) of the musket. Several barrels mean several muskets. Ropes are bundles of birds strung together in thin bundles, so one rope is a bird, and the other rope is like a bamboo knot, indicating the feet of birds. When the officials accept it, they count the birds' feet, and the soldiers gather the birds into a "bundle." Ten thousand, that is, the reward.
in addition, the wind direction is east, west, south and north, so the soil gun is weak, so the wind should be considered when launching? . In, that is, hit, so painted red. White, that is, whiteboard, is called empty gun. If you make a fortune, you will get rich. "bang",
that is, "bang", gunfire. The "Hu" that became a brand is actually a "stork"; As a kind of eagle, it has high bird-catching ability. With storks, you won't worry about catching sparrows, so every game is called "storks". In addition, the terms "eating" and "bar" in mahjong are almost always associated with catching sparrows.
then, how can the sparrow card be called "mahjong card"? Originally, the "birds" in Taicang dialect were called "mahjong", and "bird hunting" or "sparrow playing" were collectively called "playing mahjong", so the mahjong card was also called "mahjong card".
Origin III
The earliest record of mahjong in China was the Mahjong Classic written by Yang Danian in the Song Dynasty. The content is similar to that of mahjong today. Mahjong developed in the Qing Dynasty, and there was no "one bird" (one rope), and the seven characters were "Gong", "Hou", "Jiang", "Xiang", "Wen", "Wu" and "Bai". The Qing court suspected that these seven characters were related to anti-Qing and regaining sight, so it ordered them to be banned. During the Daoguang period, Chen Shimen, a scholar, traveled around in his brother's boat, and the crew on the boat was bored with gambling. Chen Shimen watched it day by day, so he had the idea of improving gambling tools. When the boat was sailing, the wind direction changed from time to time, so he changed the princes to the southeast and northwest winds. At that time, the monetary system for trading ships everywhere was that ten barrels were equivalent to one rope, and ten ropes were equivalent to ten thousand. Among them, the "barrel" is a copper coin with a hole in the middle, and the rope is to string a pile of copper coins together. So he used them in mahjong, but one string and two strings were easily confused. One day he saw the birds kept on the boat and had a brainwave to change one string into a "bird". Mahjong has taken shape at this point, but what should be changed to the word Wenwubai? Chen Shimen was heartbroken for this. Once, when the crew was playing chess, they fired a cannon at each other and said, "My cannon hits every shot.". When Chen Shimen heard this, he changed the hair of the civil and military to white hair, which is our mahjong today.
Mahjong, known as "the quintessence of Chinese culture", has been popular for a long time, but its origin still seems to puzzle many people. In the first issue of Bookstore magazine in 25, there was an article "On Mahjong", in which the author felt that today, Mahjong is still "unknown". Is this really the case? Let's first sort out some popular theories about the origin of mahjong.
The origin theory of mahjong can be divided into "Lake Theory", "Zheng He Theory", "Taicang Stork Theory" and "Ningbo Theory". The school of "Hu Shuo", represented by Dai Mingshi, a writer in Qing Dynasty, and Qu Duizhi, a historian in the Republic of China, thinks that "Mahjong should be mistaken for a horse, and a horse will come from a horse hanging." Song Jiang is the most famous figure in the image of Liangshan hero who is full of the highest heaven and the earth, and he is called "lake", which means water margin. According to some names in mahjong, such as Beifeng and Suo, and the fact that some people can play mahjong along the coast of East Africa, Zheng He said that it was invented by Zheng He during his seven voyages to the West. It is said that sailors drift at sea all the year round, and gradually play this popular game in their spare time; Moreover, when it became a card, it was called "He" (Yin Hu), which coincided with the name of Sambo's adult. The "Taicang Stork School", which was all the rage a few years ago, concluded that the birthplace of mahjong was Taicang, Jiangsu Province, on the grounds that it was once a royal granary for storing rice. Because of the sparrow disaster, there were games of playing sparrows, including rope-drum cakes, which were first popular among soldiers, and then slowly spread to the people. When it became a brand, it was called "Stork" (sound Hu). The stork is a kind of eagle. I think the sparrow will be finished when it sees the eagle, so when someone calls out the word "stork" and becomes a card, the other families can only bow down and catch it. The argument is novel and the evidence is sufficient, and those who make peace for a while are numerous. The Ningbo faction used the art of sneaking into Chen Cang. Ningbo people, who have always been good at merchants, believe in getting the first Mover. While others are still arguing about the origin of mahjong, smart Ningbo people have quietly built a mahjong museum next to Tianyi Pavilion, and said that Ningbo is the real origin of mahjong.
In today's society, economic benefits are emphasized. Just one Shangri-La has three provinces and seven counties in Sichuan, Yunnan and Tibet fighting over their ownership, not to mention the quintessence of mahjong! Therefore, the Ningbo faction has quite attracted a few words. There are many people who are addicted to textual research and history in China, but no one has been able to make a final conclusion about the origin of mahjong, which is caused by being unfamiliar with dialects. The news of woo in Water Margin spread to Liangshan, and there were many discussions at one time, but likui jy, who had no heart, shouted loudly: "woo, woo, woo!" This word "bird" is pronounced as "bird" in CCTV's "Water Margin" series. Anyone who is familiar with Wu dialect knows that this word is pronounced as "D I m 4", which is the same as "Dick", because the writer of the book is a Qiantang person. The author's hometown also belongs to the Wu dialect area. I remember that when I was a child, there was an A Si in the village. One day, the villagers played with it, and put a charcoal book "A Si Bird's Hair Four" on the beam of the brigade barn. A Si was furious when he saw it, and he picked up a bald broom to fight hard with everyone. A Si's education level is not high enough, but they also know that this bird is a "cock", and jokes are not allowed. In likui jy's mouth, he became a real bird. If so, many "bird officials" in Water Margin are no different from those at all levels in the era of Shao Haoshi in ancient Tanguo. Such a unified pronunciation will inevitably lead to "Wu Shuyan said". This shows the differences between the northern and southern dialects.
However, due to the "bird" sound in Wu dialect, the horse tag that prevailed in the late Ming Dynasty naturally became "Ma Bird" in Wu population. "Ma bird" is what northerners call a sparrow. As for the emergence of "horse hanging" and "hemp bird", which comes first, or whether it is the same brand's transliteration, it is still inconclusive. The fundamental reason why there are different opinions on the origin of mahjong is that many people are not quite sure how sparrows are converted into "mahjong".
"A sparrow is also one of the leaves," as recorded in "Clearing Banknotes, Gambling and Forking Sparrows". Take it as a blog, saying' fork sparrow'. Every one hundred and thirty-six, such as "tube", "rope" and "ten thousand", said "east, south, west and north" and "dragon, phoenix and white", is also called "middle, fat and white". It started in Ningbo, Zhejiang Province, and then spread like wildfire, covering the north and south. "
Xu Ke decided that the birthplace of mahjong was Ningbo, but now it seems that it is by no means rash. According to the researcher of Tianyige, the inventor of mahjong was Chen Yu Men, a native of Ningbo:
"The prevalence of horse-hanging in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties aroused strong social repercussions. Because it is used for gambling, many people of insight all regard it as a scourge, and have written articles to sincerely admonish it. People also feel the limitations and shortcomings of horse crane. There are as many as 12 touch cards, and it is extremely inconvenient to hold the combination. Cards are made of paper and are easily worn out: most of the players are boatmen and fishermen at sea to solve the boring life at sea, but the wind at sea is strong and the cards are easily blown away. Therefore, it is inevitable to transform the horse crane. ..... Horse-hanging cards, which were popular in the north and south of the Yangtze River, were sorted out by Mr. Chen Yu Men in Ningbo during the Xianfeng period of Qing Dynasty and became the basic mahjong cards that are still popular today. Chen Yu Gate (1817-1878), a famous political key, had little intelligence and studied English with Yang Qitang. In the twenty-ninth year of Daoguang (1849), he paid tribute to the cabinet book and added three titles. Chen Yu gate' make friends and travel widely, Gin has no empty days', and is very fond of playing, playing cards in be adept at. He felt that there were many inconveniences in playing cards. In the third year of Tongzhi (1846), he changed it to bamboo bone, and inherited 18 cards of Wanhe, Suo and Drum, * * *. Yi Honghua was green hair, white flowers were white boards, and cheaters were red ones, each with 4 cards and 12 cards of * *, adding' East, South and Red'. As a result, 136 mahjong tiles were popular at that time. Mahjong after the integration and transformation of Chen Yu Gate is the inheritance and development of the previous generation of Bo Opera, and its playing style has also changed from complicated to simple. Once it came out, it prevailed in the north and south. According to the history, after the five-port trade, most of the sea ships gathered in Jiangxia, Ningbo, which was more prosperous than Shanghai. Merchants from all provinces gathered in Jiangxia, and more and more people practiced mahjong, which extended to Tianjin and Shanghai commercial ports and spread to the whole country through them.
......
Mahjong was introduced to the west from China, first in the United States. Ge Kunhua, a native of Xiuning, Anhui Province, worked in the American Consulate in Shanghai for two years, and then worked in the British Consulate in Ningbo for 15 years. He has a close relationship with Chen Yu Gate and other people, and is proficient in card games, including poems such as "Zongbo" and "Playing and Throwing for Promotion". After Gekunhua went to teach at Harvard University in the United States, he became the first China professor in the United States. He first spread mahjong to American intellectuals, and it became popular on Harvard campus, so that when Hu Shi went to the United States for the first time, he was surprised to see many professors at Harvard who were proficient in mahjong and were keen on it ... "
From this passage, it can be seen that it was not so much that Chen Yu invented mahjong as that he improved it, changed the cards that were easily damaged and blown away by the wind into dominoes, and based on the special situation of Ningbo Port, he touched and touched the cards in the past. The author agrees with Xu Ke's theory of Ningbo because the confusing word "mahjong" is not a problem at all in Ningbo dialect. I am also familiar with Yongyin and know that the word "sparrow" is pronounced as "mahjong" in dialects from Yuyao to Zhenhai, including Ningbo! Wu di pronounced the sparrow as "Ma Di Ɣ o", and the card he played was also called "Ma diǎo". Ningbo people made improvements, and this new style of play began to spread with the sound of "Mahjong". Mahjong is actually a sparrow, which is the most powerful proof that mahjong comes from Ningbo. If you still don't believe me, you can go and see the mahjong halls in Hong Kong and Japan, which are still called "sparrow halls", which proves that mahjong is a sparrow. And there is only one place where sparrows are called mahjong. In this way, the name of "Mahjong" can only be spread from Ningbo.
Ningbo Mahjong has become a national quintessence, which is naturally something to be proud of. However, we should also see that Ningbo Mahjong is just a disguised inheritance, and some people have expanded it. It is further said that Ningbo uses sparrows as the name of this game because Ningbo people know that land is coming as long as they see sparrows when sailing. This is nonsense. Sparrows never fly long distances, and they have no ambition to thrive. If you can see sparrows on the sea, it's a bit like an old woman selling melons. The "sparrow" in Ningbo should be the "hemp bird" from Wu Yinzhong, that is, the "horse tag" that has been handed down all the time. What needs to be explained is that the word "He" when mahjong becomes a card now should also come from the word "He" in the silent and touching cards of Ma Diao. The word "He" in Yong Yin doesn't pronounce "Hu", but in many Wu dialect areas, "Hu, Wu and He" are all pronounced "Wu Shang" regardless of whether they are monks or Hu Shang. According to this clue, will the birthplace of Ma Diao (Ma Bird) and "He" also be the Wu dialect area? To be tested.
Like Water Margin, mahjong has a history of hundreds of years from its initial appearance to its final outstanding formation. Chen Yu Gate has contributed greatly to the improvement and development of Mahjong with its unique vision. However, since then, mahjong has made countless Chinese people frustrated and addicted to it, and it also has the crime of poisoning the world. According to the popular evaluation method in China, maybe Chen Yu should be divided into four or six groups?