Zung Jung: a Perspective of Mahjong History

Chapter 2 ~ Early Chinese Classical Mahjong

There are many different sayings about the origin of mahjong. Many are merely wild rumors; the one I consider more credible is that the game was created by Can4 Jyu4-Mun4 in Nangpao (寧波‧陳魚門) some time around 1850. As this is outside the focus of my research or the main theme of this book, I am not dwelling further on this topic.

While the origin of mahjong is a frequently asked question, surprisingly few have asked what the original rules of the game were like. This is attributable to the fact that, many people (especially modern Asian players) do not know that the original rules were quite different from the modern versions we see around today; it is only natural that people don't ask about something of which existence they don't even know. It should be noted that, the differences between different rules versions lie mainly in the section concerning the scoring at the end of a hand; the rules concerning the playing of the game up to that point are more or less universal. In fact, differences in the playing rules are usually caused by changes in the scoring. (See Chpater 16, "The Sacred Discard", for example.)

Because of the sparsity of written records, mahjong rules history can be said to be the most 'forgetful' history: when a new version gains popularity and replaces the old one, not only are the contents of the old rules soon forgotten, but also even its existence, the very fact that the old version has ever existed, gets forgotten too. This is not because of forgetful individuals, but because during the propagation of the game, the old rules are omitted and not mentioned to the next generation of players. I call this phenomenon "collective amnesia"; this is especially common in Asian areas, where the game is most popular (and is propogated more by verbal instruction than by written material).

In fact, it is difficult to confirm what the original rules of mahjong were like. For the sake of facilitating the discussion in this book, I adopt the "proposed Ningbo rules" by Japanese mahjong scholar Haibara Shigeki (榛原茂樹) as a reference point. ¹ These rules were compiled by Haibara in 1952 by using as reference materials five mahjong books published in China around 1910~20. As the reference materials were dated much later than the birth of the game itself (which many believe to be around 1850), there are probably discrepancies in certain details between Haibara's rules and the earlier, original rules of mahjong. (I'll talk about this in a later section.) Nevertheless, Haibara's rules are handy for the purpose of illustrating certain core characteristics of the early rules which form the basis of the arguments in this book. The discrepancies, be they early changes and additions after the initial conception of the game, or inaccuracies introduced by Haibara due to the complication of summarizing from multiple texts which sometimes contradict each other, are over minor details which are not relevant to my core arguments. On the other hand, Haibara's rules provide a handy reference point for its being well organized and presented, and also for its being drawn from more source materials than a single book.

Despite discrepancies in some details, it is verifiable that Haibara's rules, in its core, highly resembles the versions commonly played in a certain period (around 1910~20 or earlier). Upon comparison with the mahjong scenes in fictional works around that period, I found that they largely agree with Haibara's rules.

Haibara's Mahjong Scoring Rules

The core of Classical mahjong scoring is the counting of triplet-points (副 / 符). The hand is evaluated by the value of the individual sets it contains, with points added for tripets and kong, while sequences are worth 0. Different values are assigned for exposed triplets (formed by claiming a pong), concealed triplets (three tiles inside one's concealed hand), or declared kong, as per the following table:

"Middle number" means the numbers 2 to 8 in each suit; "terminal" means 1, 9, and honor tiles. (Some mahjong books call them "minor tiles" and "major tiles" respectively.) To put it in another way, the values start from the 2 points for a middle-number exposed triplet, and is doubled for a terminal set, doubled for a concealed set, and quadrupled for a kong.

In Haibara's rules, the value honors are of paramount importance. The three types of Dragon tiles (Red, Green, White) are value honors public to all four players. Each of the four types of Wind tiles (East, South, West, North) correspond to a different player, and is a value honor private to that player. In other words, each player has four value honors: the three Dragons, and his own Seat Wind. (It is worth noticing that, the "Prevailing Wind" was not recognized in the early peroid; that was a later addition.) A player with a triplet or kong of a value honor earns, besides the points for that (terminal) set itself, a Faan (double) for all the points in his entire hand. Also, one scores 2 points for each pair of value honors in his hand.

These triplet-points are scored not only by the player who completes a winning hand, but rather, when a player wins, every player reveals his hand and scores it; every player collects the difference from each opponent whose hand value is lower. But the winner is exempt: he does not pay for the points in the other players' hands, and simply collects the value of his winning hand from each opponent. In other words, the winning player is guaranteed some positive income, though if his hand is small, it is possible that another player with a high-value hand (for example, a concealed kong of a value honor alone would score 64 points) can win more points than him.

The winning player also adds the "basic points" of 10 points for completing his hand. Also, he scores additional points or doubles if he satisfies the requirement for the patterns listed below: (numbering system added by me)

2.1.1 Mixed One-Suit : 1 Faan
2.1.2 Pure One-Suit : 3 Faan
2.2   Nine Gates : Limit

3.2   Big Three Dragons : Limit
3.3   Four Winds : Limit
	A winning hand which includes all four Wind tiles.
	A triplet/kong of the Seat Wind is required; 
	if the Seat Wind is used as eyes, the hand does not count as Four Winds.

4.1   All Triplets : 4 points

9.5.1 Self-draw : 2 points
9.5.2 Final Draw : 2 points
9.5.3 Win on Kong : 2 points

9.6.1 Eye Call : 2 points
	A purely single call for the eye pair.
	Multi-way calls such as "1222" or "4567" do not count. 	(Same for the others below.)
9.6.2 Gap Call : 2 points
9.6.3 Edge Call : 2 points
9.6.4 Two-Pair Call : 2 points
	A purely 2-way call with two pairs.
9.6.5 Robbing a Kong : 4 point
	This counts only when the hand has a pure gap/edge call.
	Does not count if the hand has a multi-way call.

9.4.1 Blessing of Heaven : Limit
9.4.2 Blessing of Earth : Half Limit
9.4.3 Thirteen Unconnected : Limit
	The thirteen tiles in the initial deal hand are completely unconnected with each other.

The "Limit" is 200 points. A hand which counts up to more points than the Limit will score just the Limit.

In Classical mahjong, except for special cases of obviously dangerous dicards such as "Pure One-Suit 9-Tile Pao", in general there is no extra responsibility for the discarder. When someone wins, regardless of whether he wins on self-draw or on a discard, every other player pays the winner the value of his winning hand. But there is the "East-doubling" system: all wins and losses of East (the dealer) are doubled. Thus if East wins, he collects double from each player; if another player wins, he collects double from East, and single from each of the two other players.

Let's look at an example:

South wins on a discarded by West.

Pong:   Chi:
Concealed hand:

The hand is scored as follows:

	4 pts
	4 pts
Gap Call	2 pts
basic points	10 pts
	20 pts
	x2
	40 pts

West's hand:

Pong:   Concealed Kong:
Concealed hand:

The hand is scored as follows:

	4 pts
	32 pts
	2 pts
	2 pts
	40 pts
	x2
	80 pts

Although West doesn't win the hand, he scores 1 Faan for triplet. (He doesn't score any Faan for , which is a Guest Wind [non-Seat Wind], nor for or , which he has only pairs. Also, patterns such as "Mixed One-Suit" are scored only for winning hands.)

East's hand:

Pong:   Chi:
Concealed hand:

The hand is scored as follows:

	2 pts
	4 pts
	6 pts

North's hand:

Chi:   Chi:
Concealed hand:

The hand scores nothing but the 2 points for the pair. (If North had not claimed the for chi, he could have scored 4 more points for concealed triplet, but since now the is locked up in the exposed sequence, of course it cannot be recomposed into the concealed triplet.)

South's winning hand is worth 40 points. He collects twice that, namely 80 points, from East, and 40 points each from West and North. (The winner does not have to pay the points in the non-winning hands.)

West, after paying 40 points to South, collects 78 points from West, and 148 points (74 points doubled) from East. His net winnings are 186 points, which are a bit more than South's.

North pays 8 points (4 points doubled) to East. Including the above losses, he loses 126 points total.

Poor East has lost 220 points total, because of East-doubling.

If West could win this hand, he would have scored "Mixed One-Suit" plus two sets of Value Honors for a 3-Faan Limit hand. For that he would collect 400 from East and 200 each from the others for 800 points total.

It should be noted that the above example is by no means a typical hand. In Classical mahjong, most winning hands are around 10 to 20 points; very high-scoring hands are quite rare. Most non-winning hands are below 10 points (like East's and North's hands above), and it is also rare for a non-winner to win more points than the winner.

Other Rules

In the earliest rules, the players do not build a two-storey wall as per later rules. Instead, each player draws a 13-tile hand from the shuffled pool, and then builds a single row of 21 tiles in front of himself. After that, the players exchange their dealt hands according to the dice throw. Hence, all players begin with a dealt hand of 13 tiles; the "Thirteen Unconnected" pattern listed above is defined on the 13 dealt tiles. Flower tiles were an optional inclusion, and were perhaps not used commonly. The hand ends in an exhaustive draw (and the deal passes) when the wall is reduced to the last 14 tiles.

"Pao" rules apply to certain big hands. For "Pure One-Suit", if a player has exposed three same-suit sets, any opponent who risks discarding yet another same-suit tile should be responsible for paying all the losses if the discarded tile is indeed claimed for winning a Pure One-Suit hand. Similar rules apply to "Four Winds" hand when a player has exposed three Wind triplets, or to "Big Three Dragons" when a player has exposed two Dragon triplets.

Discrepancies in Haibara's Rules

As noted above, Haibara's rules were compiled in the 1950's based on materials from the 1910~20's, which was much later than the birth of mahjong. There were scattered sources which suggested some differences between Haibara's rules and the earliest versions. Also, Haibara's five source books contradicted each other, and also contradicted other books published around that period, over some details; this is probably attributable to different local variations around at that time.

The biggest difference between Haibara's version and the earliest version of mahjong is probably in the way Value Honors are counted. Some sources suggest that Value Honor began as being worth one double not for the entire hand, but rather, only for the points for the Value Honor set itself. I think that this saying is very plausible, because this version actually gives better game balance than the one-Faan rule: comparing the difficulty between making one Value Honor triplet and making a Mixed One-Suit hand, it seems unbalancing that they are both worth one Faan equally; most modern versions give Mixed One-Suit a significantly higher value, Zung Jung included. The one-Faan version probably came as the result of later inflation (to make the game more exciting) - although it then became so common as to have become the almost universal rule.

It seems that, except for the above issue, the point-counting system for triplets and kong has not changed in any significant way throughout the entire Classical period. What have been constantly changing and evolving, though, are the patterns adopted (and their values). It is almost certain that Mixed/Pure One-Suit were there since the beginning, but it is hard to verify when the other patterns became widely adopted, or even (for some) if they were ever widely adopted at all. Perhaps the only thing we can safely conclude is that, the earliest version of mahjong probably had even fewer patterns than Haibara's version.

Likewise, it is hard to verify the commonplaceness in that period of certain details of Haibara's rules; the 2 points for Two Pair-Call, the amount of points for the Limit, and the Nine Terminal Mulligan rule seem especially doubtful. The books at that time already recorded different variations, and above that, it is also hard to tell whether the author's writing was accurate, or how commonplace the versions he knew was.

In this book I am leaving these discrepancies as unconfirmed; the job of researching the detailed historical facts is left to other scholars. This is because those details are unimportant for the purpose of this book, which is to find the direction in which mahjong should develop for the present and the future. For this purpose, past historical facts are just a means, not an end. After all, we are not going back to playing Early Classical.

The Original Meaning of the "No Point Hand" (平和)

Smart readers may have already noticed a major omission in the above pattern list: the "No Point Hand" (or "Sequence Hand") is missing.

This omission is not a mistake, but rather, it reflects the fact that, in Early Classical mahjong, the "No Point Hand" is not rewarded with any extra Faan (or points). "No Point Hand" is not a pattern with value, but rather, is merely a (derogatory) nickname referring to the cheapest winning hand which scores only the "basic points".

It was a later development, in the process of inflation, that the "No Point Hand" became a pattern with value. This will be discussed in detail in a later chapter, "From the No-Point Hand to the Sequence Hand".

The Original "Thirteen Unconnected" and "Thirteen Terminals" Hands

The "Thirteen Unconnected" and "Thirteen Terminals" hands were around since quite early. But "Thirteen Unconnected" was originally not a winning hand one can play towards, but rather, it was a lucky reward for an (otherwise) extremely poor (to the degree that such was rare) dealt hand. One could win as "Thirteen Unconnected" only with the dealt hand, not in the middle of play. The original definition of "Thirteen Unconnected" requires only 13 tiles which are neither paired nor connected (forming a partial sequence, including "gap" sets), and do not require that they fall within the numbers 147, 258, 369 for each suit. Hence the following dealt hand is considered Thirteen Unconnected:

A dealt hand with any 13 unconnected tiles qualifies as "Thirteen Unconnected".

"Thirteen Terminals", then, was merely an extreme case example of "Thirteen Unconnected". In other words, "Thirteen Terminals" was originally not a winning hand one can play towards, but rather, it was limited to the 13-tile dealt hand only. And its value was merely the Limit, the same as "Thirteen Unconnected".

It was a later development, in the process of inflation, that these two patterns became irregular winning hands one can play towards. This will be elaborated in detail in a later chapter, "Irregular Hands".

The original meaning of 「放銃」 (Cannon/Discarder)

Originally, the Chinese term 「放銃」 ("Letting off a Cannon" in Millington) was reserved for those special situations such as the "Pure One-Suit 9-tile pao". ² There was no special penalty for discarding to let an average hand win, and hence no special word was needed to refer to it.

Later, as Discarder-punishing payoff schemes gained prominance, the Chinese term was generalized to cover discarding to any win. Also, the English term "Discarder" came into use to refer to the generalized sense.

注：
1：榛原茂樹，「想定寧波ルール」，日本麻雀連盟公式刊物 《麻雀タイムズ》（1952年一月一日號）刊登
2 : Millington, p.189

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© 2009 Alan KWAN Shiu Ho