Ganjifa, the Playing Cards of India

Francis Cairns, 1982-06-01. Paperback. Good. Victoria and Albert Museum, 1982. A general survey, with a catalogue of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collection. Soft cover, 128 pp. Catalogue published to coincide with the exhibition of Indian playing cards at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood held from 3 March to 30 May 1982, as a part of the Festival of India. In good condition. Illustrated paper covers have light bumping and creasing to edges and corners with a bit of peeling to the edges. Binding tight. One of the plates has a small pin-prick sized hole in the middle of the page. Otherwise pages are lightly aged but clean and unmarked. Errata sheet laid-in. NOT Ex-Library. NO remainder marks. Contents include: Preface by Michael Dummett; Part I: Ganjifa : A General Survey: The Chitrakars; Notes on the History of Ganjifa; Ganjifa in India; The Ganjifa Systems of India; The Naqsh Game and its cards; Indo-European Games and Cards; The Making of Indian Playing Cards; The Art of Indian Playing Cards; The Card Players of India; Rules of the Ganjifa Game; Indian Playing Cards and the Occult; Chronological Table; Notes; Appendix: The Game of Ganjifa by Michael Dummett; Part II: Catalogue of Indian Playing Cards in the Victoria and Albert Museum; Concordance; Glossary; Bibliography. [From Foreword] Dr Rudolf von Leyden began collecting Indian playing cards in 1939, after a chance purchase one day in the Chor Bazaar of Bombay. This hobby soon developed into a serious study, and after writing some essays for popular publications he published the first comprehensive survey of the various kinds of Indian playing cards in the art historical journal Marg in 1949. More than thirty years of research followed, both in Indian and European collections and among the artist-craftsmen of India. His studies also ventured onto the shifting and uncertain ground of the general history of playing cards, the earlier period of which is even today no more than an accumulation of assumptions and conjectures, which, however, begin to point steadily towards the East as the place of origin for playing cards. In 1976 Dr von Leyden embarked upon a series of catalogues of important European collections of Indian playing cards. The present volume is one of five such undertakings; others deal with the collections of the Deutsches Spielkarten-Museum, Leinfelden (1977), of Sylvia Mann, Rye (1978), the Museum fur Volkerkunde, Vienna (1981), and the British Museum (in preparation). Purchases in recent years have enlarged and complemented the collection of Indian playing cards in the Victoria and Albert Museum, so that it stands today among the most representative collections in the world. We are most grateful to Dr von Leyden and Professor Dummett for their contributions to this monograph and catalogue, which we hope may initiate further research into this fascinating field of India's popular arts, and into the history of playing cards in general.