Pachisi Players

Pachisi is a cross and circle board game that originated in ancient India which has been described as the "national game of India". It is played on a board shaped like a symmetrical cross. A player's pieces move around the board based upon a throw of six or seven cowrie shells, with the number of shells resting with aperture upwards indicating the number of spaces to move.

The name of the game derives from the Hindi word pachis, meaning twenty-five, the largest score that can be thrown with the cowrie shells. Thus the game is also known by the name Twenty-Five.

Parcheesi, Sorry! and Ludo are among the many Westernized versions of the game.

History

Pachisi may be quite ancient, but so far its history has not been established prior to the 16th century. A 6th- or 7th-century representation of Lord Shiva and the Goddess Parvati said to be playing Chaupar (a closely related game)^[2] in fact depicts only dice and not the distinctive board.^[3] A Song Dynasty (960–1279) document referencing the Chinese game ch'u-p'u (Wade-Giles, pinyin chupu)^[4], "invented in western India and spread to China in the time of the Wei Dynasty (AD 220–265)"^[5] may relate to Chaupar, but the actual nature of the Chinese game (which may be more closely related to Backgammon) is uncertain. Speculation that Pachisi derived from the earlier game of Ashtapada is plausible but unsubstantiated.^[6]

The game of Pachisi was played by Akbar in a truly regal manner. The Court itself, divided into red and white squares, being the board, and an enormous stone raised on four feet, representing the central point. It was here that Akbar and his courtiers played this game; sixteen young slaves from the harem wearing the players' colours, represented the pieces, and moved to the squares according to the throw of the dice. It is said that the Emperor took such a fancy to playing the game on this grand scale that he had a court for pachisi constructed in all his palaces, and traces of such are still visible at Agra and Allahabad. ^[7]

Finkel adds:

To date, these grandiose boards still represent the earliest secure evidence for the existence of the game in India. The game's role in the history of India still remains to be investigated. It is often assumed that the gambling game that plays so significant a role in the Mahabharata, the classical literary epic, is pachisi, but the descriptions, such as they are, do not tie in with the game, and this conclusion is perhaps erroneous. ^[8]

 Read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachisi