Origins of Mahjong

In Western countries the game of mahjong is know mainly through the online version of the game, mahjong Solitaire or mahjongg. The game rules of the online game are very simple compare to the rules of the traditional mahjong, whose origin is said to come from an ancient Chinese soothsaying practice.

Historians believe that the original mahjong game, emerged from Chinese astronomers starting to record the progression of the Sun, Moon and planets, using a simple a grid, to calculate the positions of the celestial bodies. However, in practice the history of mahjong is unclear and poorly documented. For example, one of the legends around mahjong’s origin says that the game was invented by Confucius around 500 B.C.

But in reality, mahjong as we know it today has a much shorter history, dating back since the end of imperial China in the late nineteenth century. There is still no clear answer, to who is the inventor of the game. According to some, the game was created to pass time by army officers during the Taiping Rebellion. Yet another, theory, claims that a nobleman who lived on the outskirts of Shanghai between 1870 and 1875 was the original inventor of the mahjong game.

Even though hugely popular in China, traditional mahjong was banned when the People’s Republic of China was created. mahjong was outlawed together with all other gambling activity. However, political reforms undertaken in the early 1990s have made mahjong to be considered an official sport in mainland China.