Ganjifa

Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game or type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them. The form prevalent in Odisha is Ganjapa.

Ganjifa cards are circular or rectangular, and traditionally hand-painted by artisans. The game became popular at the Mughal court, and lavish sets were made, from materials such as precious stone-inlaid ivory or tortoise shell (darbar kalam). The game later spread to the general public, whereupon cheaper sets (bazâr kalam) would be made from materials such as wood, palm leaf, stiffened cloth or pasteboard. Typically Ganjifa cards have coloured backgrounds, with each suit having a different colour. Different types exist, and the designs, number of suits, and physical size of the cards can vary considerably. With the exception of Mamluk Kanjifa and the Chads of Mysore, each suit contains ten pip cards and two court cards, the king and the vizier or minister. The backs of the cards are typically a uniform colour, without patterning.

The earliest origins of the cards remain uncertain, but Ganjifa cards as they are known today are believed to have originated in Persia. The first syllable is attributed to the Persian word 'ganj' meaning treasure. Gen. Houtum-Schindler suggested to Stewart Culin that the last two syllables in the word 'Ganjifa' may be derived from the Chinese chi-p'ai, meaning playing cards In a related passage Chatto explains that an early Chinese term was 'ya-pae', meaning 'bone ticket', and that the term 'che-pae' came later, meaning literally 'paper ticket'(1848: 58). These different terms could account for the different spellings and pronunciations of 'Ganjifa'. Rolf Zimmermann goes further in his 2006 article, and suggests that the first syllable of the word Ganjifa could come from 'Han' as in Han Chinese, and thus 'Ganjifa' would mean 'han-chi-pai', or 'Chinese playing cards'. These remain unproved theories, but it is interesting to note that the 18th century traveller Carsten Niebuhr claimed to have seen Arabian merchants in Bombay playing with Chinese cards. In the 19th century Jean Louis Burckhardt visited Mecca and wrote that 'cards are played in almost every Arab coffee-house (they use small Chinese cards)'.

...
Wikipedia