Indian Board Games

By: Ramya Mudumba

India has an extensive history of a large variety of board games. Did you know that in India, there is a 4-player chess-like game (Chaturaji) with an element of luck imbued in it? Or that in some games, the player is allowed to hold the dice in mid-air and thereby partly determine the outcome, which otherwise would have been random? How about that there was a king named Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar of Mysore whose passion for board games had made him invent a whopping 16-player pachisi and many variations of chess (144 square-checkered board) based on complex mathematics?

Every Indian household knows about the legendary chaupar game (a variant of pachisi) between the Pandavas and Kauravas in Mahabharata. The events that unfolded in one board game changed the fate of the former’s entire kingdom and marked the start of a Dharmayudh.

Our ancient history speaks unarguably of the grandeur that board games enjoyed in this country. People poured over these games of wit, strategy and luck. One can find these trails of the past etched over the walls and floors of many temple courtyards and public places; they can also be found simply alive in your parents’ or grandparents’ memory. Carvings of several board games were found in the temples and caves of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Rajasthan etc. These games have been part of Indian culture for centuries together and excited the minds of people irrespective of their age and gender.

India is known for a set of strategic games called war games & hunt games. In both, the player tries to attack or block the opponent or take down the opponent's pieces. In war games, the two sides have an equal no. of pieces and equal power in terms of the moves, whereas, in hunt games, the number of pieces and the valid moves are asymmetric for each side. Besides Chaturanga, the Indian chess, which is more of a royal courtesan’s game, there are several other war/hunt games that a common man could draw on the floor and play. Though similar in concept, these strategic games are played across the country with different names and interesting variants of boards.

The concept is similar to Alquerque or Haltafl, where the opponents’ pieces are captured by jumping over them, but they are played on much more exotic boards. There is an equal number of pieces on either side along the intersections of lines, with only one position in the middle left empty in most of them. This prompts the first player to sacrifice one piece initially to kickstart the game. To know more, please refer to the recommended readings at the end. You can find most of them online or on game apps that you can play on your devices. Now, let’s look at one board where one can play both a war and a hunting game.

Solah Guttiya / Athaara Guti / 16 Soldiers

Rules:

1. Objective is to take down all the opponent’s pieces on the board.

2. Game starts with 16 pieces each, placed on the board as shown. Each player moves alternatively. Depending on the location on the board, the degrees of freedom for a piece change.

3. Valid moves: a) Pieces can move only along the lines and rest at intersections only if that particular location is open. b) A move can be ‘plain’ when the player moves to one of the immediate adjacent locations along the lines. c) A capture is made when the player’s piece jumps over an opponent’s piece resulting in taking down the opponent's piece off the board. d) A player can jump consecutively any number of times, capturing multiple pieces of the opponent. So even a single piece can devastate a weak-strategic opponent.

In the figure above, the yellow piece captures three black pieces.

4. The player who captures all of the opponent’s pieces on the board first wins!

The same board can be used to play a hunting game called hasu chirate aata or cows & leopards. One of the players takes 2 leopards, and the other takes 24 cows.

Hasu Chirate Aata

Rules:

1. Objective for the leopards is to capture at least 12 cows, and the objective for the cows is to block the two leopards with no further valid moves.

2. The game starts with 8 cows arranged as shown. Each player plays alternatively. One leopard is first placed at any of the open positions. Following, the opponent places a cow in any open position.

3. Valid moves: a) Pieces can move only along the lines and rest at intersections only if that particular location is open. b) A move is made by each player once all their pieces are placed on the board. The leopards move only once the two leopards are placed on the board. Similarly, cows (This means that the leopards starting moving from their third turn, and cows will start moving from their sixteenth turn.) c) A leopard captures a cow by jumping over it to an open position along the lines. A cow cannot capture a leopard; it can only block it. d) A leopards or a cow cannot jump over themselves. e) The first one to fulfil the objective wins the game!

There are myriad variants of war and hunt games played in different parts of India for centuries together; simply drawn and played in temple courtyards, on silk embroidered boards in palaces, with public places huffing around in excitement, spending long hours of evenings going at them. It's unfortunate that we lost track of many variations of what remained. On a lazy evening, why don't we pick one, turn back time and indulge ourselves and our family in a game or two?

Author suggested further readings

Deep dive into their history - https://archive.org/details/historyofboardga0000murr

Kreedakaushalya: Bringing Indian board games alive for today's generation - http://kreedaakaushalya.blogspot.com