ARTICLE
Pachisi
Capturing and blocking tokens was also a major component of the gameplay. An opponent’s token was considered captured when a player landed on the same square as that token. Captured tokens were sent back to the charkoni and had to begin the game anew. In some versions of the game, a token could only finish at the charkoni if it has captured at least one enemy token during its time on the board.
Another Indian game that is similar to, and possibly also contemporaneous with Pachisi, is Chaupar (not to be confused with Gyan Chaupar) which uses stick dice in place of the cowrie shells used in Pachisi. Early European variations of Pachisi include Ludo, a British game invented in the late nineteenth century, and Mensch ärgere Dich nich, an early twentieth-century German game. Later American adaptations of the game include Sorry! and Parcheesi.
Today, Ludo is the most commonly played version of Pachisi in India, although the original version is still played in some parts. Pachisi boards and tokens from various periods of Indian history can be found in the collections of the National Museum, New Delhi; The British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK; the Swiss Museum of Games; the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, USA; and in the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art.
Bibliography
Brown, W. Norman. “The Indian Games of Pachisi, Chaupar, and Chausar.” Expedition Magazine, 1964. https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-indian-games-of-pachisi-chaupar-and-chausar/.
Encyclopedia Britannica. “Pachisi.” Accessed 16 November, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pachisi.
Falkener, Edward. Games Ancient and Oriental, and How to Play Them; Being the Games of the Ancient Egyptians, the Heira Gramme of the Greeks, the Ludus Latrunculorum of the Romans, and the Oriental Games of Chess, Draughts, Backgammon, and Magic Squares. New York: Dover Publications, 1961.
Mohr, Merilyn Simonds. The New Games Treasury: More Than 500 Indoor and Outdoor Favorites with Strategies, Rules and Traditions. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1997. https://archive.org/details/newgamestreasury0000mohr/page/68/mode/2up.
Srivastava, Mohit. “Towards a Cultural History of Indian Board Games: Backgammon, Chaupar and Chaturanga.” Sahapedia. Accessed 16 November, 2021. https://www.sahapedia.org/towards-cultural-history-indian-board-games-backgammon-chaupar-and-chaturanga.