The origin of dominoes is related to dice. It is likely that a domino tile could replace a throw of two dice. However mathematically these are not equivalent. First in dice doubles happen with a 50% lower probability than a non-double, so mathematically there should have been 36 domino tiles – doubles one tile each, all the rest tiles – two each. And, secondly, if someone has already drawn a tile and placed it on the table, the probability of drawing the same tile decreases (and if there was only one, it disappears altogether), but the probability of a particular dice throw does not decrease with time. But this is only a mathematical digression. There was no probability theory back then.
Since the ones and fours on the dice are red, the dominoes also follow this tradition. But why were they red on the dice? There is a legend that one of the emperors during a game of dice had to roll 4 and 1 to win. And this was exactly the combination he got, so he happily ordered all fours and ones to be painted in red – the color of success. Another explanation is more symbolic. One and four are the unluckiest values on the dice. One is the smallest, and the number “four” in Chinese is consonant with the word “death”, so it has the same fame as the number “thirteen” in Europe. In order to at least somehow balance the unhappiness of these values, they could be painted red – the color of happiness. Although we may never know why. A thousand years ago there might have been a game where one and four played some special role. Because of this, the dice began to be colored like this. The game is gone and forgotten, but the colors remain.
There is at least one known dice game that has the same suits as dominoes – Throwing Heaven and Nines. Rules were that a banker threw the dice, and the player had to throw out the same or higher combination in the same suit. There were two suits – civil (文, Wen) and military (武, Wu) and they were the same as described earlier.
Civil-Military, or Wen-Wu, is a well-known philosophical couple since the time of Confucius, which over time organically combined with the Yin-Yang philosophy. The Civil was associated with creativity and peaceful rule, while the military was associated with destruction, power and rule in times of war. Dao De Jing (chapter 31) mentions “left” and “right” as the types of government, indicating that two ministers existed that time – the Civil and the Military one, who sat on the opposite sides near the emperor. The Civilian was always given preference. Also there are more civilians than warriors, and perhaps this is one of the reasons why the number of civilian tiles was doubled.
Before the Civilian/Military division, the same suits were called Hua (華) and Yi (夷) – Chinese and Barbarians. Chinese personified culture, and the barbarians opposed them ( By the way a similar division existed in the ancient Greece). But with the advent of the Qing dynasty, who were not ethnically Chinese, the division into Chinese and barbarians could offend the ruling dynasty, so they decided to call the same suits civil and military.
By what principle the values got to one suit or another is not completely clear, but you can try to understand it. First, all doubles are classified as civilians. Perhaps the love of symmetry plays a role here – “doubles should double” .
The highest double – six-six – symbolizes heaven, the highest of all. Heaven in Chinese philosophy is not just a blue thing above the head. Heaven is mentioned in various philosophical or religious texts as a source of wisdom or truth. One can even say that in this vision Heaven is God.
The lowest double – one-one – symbolizes the earth, the lowest of all. Earth, although it is an important philosophical concept, still does not play such a significant role for the Chinese as Heaven, that is, they do not have an analogue of the pair Uranus-Gaia from Greek mythology, or Nut-Geb from Egyptian mythology.
But combined with the double four-four which symbolizes a Man, the triad of Heaven-Earth-Man appears, an idea often mentioned in Chinese books, including the Book of Changes. I will not delve into Chinese philosophy itself, but now it is not surprising that in the civil suit the highest place is occupied by Heaven ([6:6]), after Heaven comes Earth ([1:1]), and then comes Man ([4: 4]). Why the double [4:4] stands for a Man is not exactly clear. Perhaps this is due to the fact that a Man is between Heaven and Earth. Or maybe because the fours are red, symbolizing human blood. Or maybe the symmetry of the fours itself played a role. And maybe – a person is mortal. And, as already mentioned, in the Chinese language the number “four” is consonant with the word “death”.
The next value is [3:1]: Harmony. Why so is not completely clear. Perhaps it is also a philosophical idea that Heaven, Earth and Man (three) should live in harmony as one. Hence the meaning of three-one as a Harmony. Although many modern Chinese call this domino simply “Goose”, due to its distant resemblance to the white goose with a red bill.
Harmony is followed by the remaining three doubles in descending order – [5:5] (Plum Blossoms), [3:3] (Long Triples) and [2:2] (Bench). As we can see, the symbolism is clearly not philosophical and the names of the tiles are already based on their appearance.
There are still four remaining civil values, which are also in descending order. These are [6:5] (Ax, or Tiger’s Head), [6:4] (Red-Headed Ten), [6:1] (Long-Legged Seven) and [5:1] (can be called a Red-hammer Six). Why these four values? Note that they all have Heaven, Earth, or Man coded. Moreover, Heaven is present everywhere. [6:5] is Heaven (6) and Man plus Earth (4+1=5). [6:4] and [6:1] are obvious Heavens with Man and Earth. [5:1] is more complicated here, but 1 is Earth, 5+1=6 is Heaven, and 5-1=4 is a Man.
All other values belong to the military. It’s easier with the military. There is no special symbolism in them and they all simply go in descending order – the greater the number of points, the higher it is. If the sum of points is the same, then the values have the same force. The military tiles are named by their pip value – in particular Nine, Eight, Seven and Five. The [4:2] and [2:1] are a bit special in this regard, because they are unique and I haven’t come across them being named after the pip value (Six and Three), but in some games they can have special names, such as Mother and Son.
From all these values of the dice throws, domino tiles were made, the civilian suit was doubled.
Chinese Dominoes GuPai 