These pictures furnished the suit marks of the Chinese pack, and, copied again in Europe, without knowledge of their true significance, gave rise to the suits of coins, clubs, swords and cups of the early European game. Certain Chinese cards which have come down to the present time were imitated from Chinese paper notes which bore pictorial symbols of their value. Playing cards existed in China in or before the twelfth century, were introduced into Europe from China in the thirteenth century and were spread quickly from Europe over the civilized world.
Graphics in color are of objects in the Museum and Archive of Games Collection. The graphics are slightly edited copies from sketches accompanying the original text. The paper was scanned from a photocopy of the printed text, edited in a wordprocesser, then created as a Webpage. Words in Chinese with diacritical marks are tanscribed from his text, and are presented within the limitations imposed by HTML. His spelling and sentence structure have been maintained, but some punctuation has been altered. Note: For the most part, this is a direct transcription of the paper by Culin.
