The Game of the Great Sepoy Mutiny

Not in the same league as the Great Game of Kipling’s ‘Kim’ but neither has this any reference to that other Great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

That 1857 Sepoy Mutiny came a nasty cropper but this Sepoy Mutiny lets you live to fight another day!

This is a war game in the best of military traditions.

War Games of skill and strategy are not just limited to  the old fashioned verandahs or Pyols if you prefer that term, or the nearest village meeting place under the tree or even the temple courtyard, but played in  war rooms of the world’s great military colleges like Sandhurst, West Point and the Indian Military Academy. Two armies face off  and strategies worked out  with ‘kills’ being registered and so on and so forth. Finally one side wins and the other officer- in -the- making  gets to do KP for a week!

But in the Sepoy Mutiny Game, two players face off with 23 counters or soldiers or sepoys each. The board itself is a complex diagram as shown in the picture given below (Fig.1). The dots are the intersections on which the counters or sepoys are placed.

The winners is the one ‘kills’ all the enemy sepoys.

You mean, where is the mutiny? Well that is simple. You are heading the loyal forces of the King and your opponent heads the mutinous gang of cut throats that ever lived, right?

Check out figure 2, and that is how the sepoys will be placed. You can see that two armies of 23 yellow sepoys and 23 red sepoys are in a formation on the board in Fig.2.

The sepoys can be moved in any direction but just one pace at a time and only along connected  points (see Fig.3). If a point is not connected then the sepoy cannot make a move there (see Fig.4).

This is how a kill is made: If a sepoy encounters another from the other side and sees that there is an open point behind him, then all it needs is a quick leap over the hapless mutineer  and thus ‘kill’ him out of the game (see Fig.5). A spry sepoy can jump over many mutineers if the placing is opportune and thus if the conditions are favourable or so contrived can decimate half the mutinous crew (see Fig.6).

Consumed by bloodlust then it possible for the victorious sepoys to further finish off all the mutineers. But before that one must know the proper way of 'killing'. A sepoy cannot jump if there is no point behind the enemy (see Fig.7). A sepoy cannot also jump if the point behind the enemy is already occupied (see Fig.8).

The Sepoy Mutiny is an ancient game  and some of the ancient carvings on the flagstones of the equally old temples of southern India and even Sri Lanka depict this game  and are not cryptic alien signs by  the denizens of a visiting UFO!

In fact there is an etched pattern of  this game in the temple premises of Huchchapparaya, Sri Venugopalaswamy of Hemmaragala, Nanjangud Taluk.

The next time you go walkabout on your yearly sabbatical,  and visit the temple towns down south look for these carving on the temple courtyard stones. You will be surprised at what  you see! Hunker down to a game and you will soon draw a crowd of interested  and active participants.

Of course, regular playing of this game may even give you Brownie points when you want to join one of the great military academies!

Where there is a will...

... there is a lawsuit!

It happened one summer night some 40 years ago when a game of Pachisi was in play. The half-fun wager literally ‘unto half my kingdom’ was taken seriously and the end result was that this property dispute case is still going on in the apex court of India!

The will to win was there but the dice refused to kowtow.

The point is that kingdoms  have been lost and won on the throw of a pair of dice. There are epics that refer to this matter. The matter has been etched in stone slabs paved in temples, over the main gateways of sanctums, warning the unwary that it is not just cricket to wager with one’s spouse, house and assorted kin as stake.

That brother of the wife who is forever mooching around the dining room for scraps, is alright to be staked but one will discover that there will be no takers for such a bet. No one wants a human vacuum machine around the fridge!

The point being made here is that shaking a pair of dice is as old as civilization itself.

Ever since early man on discovering that he could exercise his vocal cords and not make any grunts and ooghs like the apes in one of the Tarzan books, suggested to rest of the cave dwellers that when they could take a break from hunting the sabre tooth tiger they could hunker down by the fire and play a game of Sabre tooths and Bisons.

Evolution did the decent thing and we now have the game of Tigers and Goats!  And it was here according to cave wall scribblings that, the very first court case began with the crooked victor grilled over an open fire!

The dicey-ness of dice has been figured  by seers of yore.

There is  even a group of verses in the Rg Veda called 'Aksha Sukta' or ‘The Gamester’s Lament’  which we reproduce for you, loosely translated, of course :

“ The dangling nuts, born where the wind blows the lofty tree,
delight me with their rolling on the board.
The cheering vibhidaka has brought me joy,
like a draught of soma from Mount Mujavant.”

But after this euphoric draught of the intoxicating Soma, the gambler bemoans  the loss of his wife and wealth through his addiction. (Check out A.L. Basham’s ‘The Wonder that was India’ , pp 403-405; and Wendy Doniger O’ Flaherty’s The Rg Veda, pp.239-42 )

The Skanda Purana  also refers to a game of dice (or is it an early version of Backgammon?) played by the God Shiva and his consort, Parvathi, but there is no mention of the stakes being won and lost.

The feckless Yudhishtira’s losing his kingdom, and his wife being saved in the nick of time by the Lord Krishna and his various travails along with his brothers and of the King Nala  who loses his kingdom and is out in the cold with his devoted wife Damayanti,  have been recounted enough number of times in books, films and  TV serials but there you have it, the lure of  the dice is as strong as ever and people to this day gamble all that they have on the throw of a couple of cubes of ivory.

Today's wives would have filed a law suit against such husbands! And what is more, cleaned him of every thing except perhaps the shirt on his back.

Which is why savants of the old thought of this: Where there is a Will, there is not a Way but a lawsuit.

Board Games in Lawley Extension!

Lawley Extension?

Just another name for Laxmipuram in Mysore where the late novelist R K Narayan lived and wrote some of his most memorable novels.

For those who have been brought up on a diet of early R K Narayan,  Lawley Extension is an intrinsic part of Malgudi which many learned scholars and writers have claimed to be any little town in Tamil Nadu. This is blasphemy and calls for the heated iron and red hot coal treatment.

Narayan (who is even better than Chekov or de Maupassant anyday) wrote of life in Mysore as he saw and the people he met when he went for his stroll from his Laxmipuram residence (the sprawling house still stands there) to the heart of the city. He was briefly a correspondent for a Madras daily which he soon gave up to become a full time writer.

But it was the game of pagade that was played on the pyol (large verandah) of his house during the month long summer holidays that one recollects.

RKN wrote in long hand and then typed it out on an old machine. His favourite place was in one of the airy rooms while his mother and other family members and extended family members plus the younger ones sat on the verandah, chatted or like us played Pagade or Alu-Guli.

In fact, if one were to walk into any of the houses either in Laxmipuram or Krishnamurthypuram, on a summer evening, chances are that a game of Pagade would be in progress. Or it could be Alu-Guli or Chauka Bara.

There was no house that did not have a Pagade board or a huge massive carved Alu-Guli board placed in a corner of the hall, ready to be brought into play. Some of the houses had ornate brass (or was it copper? ) Alu-Guli boards.

Pagade or Pachisi is a race game that was and is played in every nook and corner of the country.
Pachisi ( the word means 25 in Hindi) used to played for stakes and many of pictorial depictions of the game show usually royalty or nobility playing the game with bags of money by their side!

The Pagade board is four-armed with playing squares which are known as ‘Houses’ embroidered on a  piece of square cloth. The stick dice too may have distinct pattern of dots that only  those who knew the game understood what they meant!

The Pagade cloth board comes with four sets of counters (each set has four) coloured red, black, yellow and green and a pair of stick dice. Each of the players in his or her turn endeavors to send his counters racing across all four arms, counterclockwise right round the perimeter and then back to the starting point. The first one to get all his counters into the central square is the winner.

In the small narrow conservancy lane in Laxmipuram which became Kabir Lane in Malgudi, which in the early 50s, boasted a neat row of houses with small yards in front with the ubiquitous Tulasi Katte in the centre and there would be small bushes of Sampige or Jasmine and sometimes rose. There would be a small narrow verandah on which the man of the house relaxed after coming from work with the daily evening Kannada paper while the wife and other ladies would be preparing to go to the temple.

The youngsters after an argumentative  game of tennis ball cricket would sit on the verandah to play Tigers and goats (Aadu-Huli Aata) or Snakes and Ladders  or Ludo or Aluguli which was seen as a game for the girls. No boy would want to be  seen playing Aluguli with his sisters. His life at school would be permanently ruined!

TV? The word was meaningless. Even radio sets were far and few. National, Ecko for the hoi polloi  and  Bush, Phillips for the wealthier.  Newspapers were bought by every house and widely read by family and friends! Transistor radios were yet to be seen.

The result was that countless families and one is sure, across the country too, depended on simple, wholesome board  games for entertainment and of course the daily newspaper.

Even under the shadow of the Dodda Gadiyara ( Big Clock Tower) next to the Rangacharlu Memorial Hall (the Town Hall to the uninitiated), near  Curzon Park, loungers would be seated playing a game of Tigers and Goats drawn on the stone with bits of broken bricks.

The character, Raju, of R K Narayan’s Guide was a regular at these impromptu games. No, he, Raju, was not a figment of Narayan’s imagination but a pesky tourist guide who had a business tie-up with a tonga driver and between them they would hustle tourists from one place to another. Yes, Raju was as real as the Man-Eater of Malgudi or The Financial Expert, Margayya or Mr Sampath!

This was Malgudi. This was Mysore of the 40s and 50s. Those  lucky enough to have lived in Lawley Extension (Laxmipuram)and elsewhere in this city, knew the pleasures of a simple game of Chauka Bara or Pagade that bound friends for life.

Like meeting an old friend after 50 years and discovering all that was evergreen in his memory was seeing yours truly playing Alu-guli with the girls! Priceless!

May the Force be with you !

You will need it when playing Gyan Chaupar or ‘Game of Knowledge.’

You haven’t got my drift? Then I will continue snowing!

Gyan Chaupar is a souped up ‘Snakes and Ladders’  with a mystic twist to it. Much like the 'Star Wars' trilogy with its homespun spirituality spouted by highly evolved gremlins like Obi-Wan-Kenobi, the Jedi Knight whose confusing sayings are often mistaken for wisdom.

But Snakes and Ladders in its Gyan Chaupar form is highly sophisticated spirituality.

The dice are thrown in the game and the progress of the players plotted from various states of temporary enlightenment to states of illusion, vices, and finally to the state of enlightenment or oneness with God.
Heavy going, right?

Right up the main street of Mcleodganj with smoke from many hookahs clouding the brain.

Be that as it may.
The late 10th Century work, ‘Rishabhapanchashika’ attributed to Dhanapala and loosely translated means: “Like gamesmen, the living beings on the gaming board of Samsara (the cycle of rebirths) are carried away by the dice (or senses), but when they see you, O Jina, the place of refuge (or square on a game board), they become free  from possession by prison, slaughter and death.”

This is what set Gyan Chaupar apart from the plain old Snakes and Ladders. This is what separated the men from the boys when they played the game on Mahashivratri or the Amavvasya night that famous festival of lights, Diwali.

One kept awake on these nights and one way to stay awake was to play any one of the several board games, though  the hardier settled down for a round or maybe several rounds of cards.

Just imagine a young Hans Solo and future  Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker yet to get his funky headgear and breathe heavily like an ex-racehorse) play the game of Gyan Chaupar and the game will not be out of place at all.

There would be other denizens, like Jabba  the Hutt or one of the Ewoks on the sidelines egging on the players as they stumbled, rose, fell and rose again in a bid to attain enlightenment.

Gyan Chaupar is also the theory of Karma illumined through a traditional game of snakes and ladders.
The Hindu Gyan Chaupar is not very different from the Jain Gyan Chaupar boards, it is just doctrinal differences.  In the Hindu Gyan Chaupar boards games  extensive use is made of  Sankhya, Yoga, Vedanta or Tantric philosophy.

The Sufi game of Gyan Chaupar  incorporates some of the canons of Islam and Sufi mystical paths to take the seeker closer  to God.

In the works of Amir Khusru  and other Sufi saints the game is known as ‘Shatranj-al-arifin’ or ‘ Chess of the Gnostics,’ and a regular playing of the game is expected to lead one from  the enticements of the world and the devil (think of Nicholas Cage in 'Ghost Rider’ and of course Faustus) to union with the Almighty.

Hard to believe? Then this ought to make you think a bit.

The Maharashtrian saint, Jnaneswar,  used the Gyan Chaupar game known as  Mokshapata (the Board of Enlightenment),  to bring “relief to such people who have been afflicted by Samsara.”

Gyan Chaupar with its elaborate calligraphy  and art was once upon a time an essential part of the Woodstock Hippie’s backpack. He or she would sell his jeans (most of them did so at the Anjuna flea market) but never his Gyan Chaupar board. Hey, we are heading towards enlightenment !

May the Force be with you!

Confessions are good for the soul ...

...but not for the reputation and certainly not when you are playing ‘Tigers  and Goats’

The confession that you haven’t the foggiest idea of how to play backgammon or that ancient hunt game of Tigers and Goats ( or Aadu Huli Aata as it is known in the Kannada language of the Indian State of Karnataka ) can lead to one acquiring a reputation of being not quite there! Chauncey Gardener could get away with it in 'Being There,' but you can't!

It was Thomas Robert Dewar whose name has been immortalised by one of the finest blended Scotch whiskies, who said: “Confessions are good for the soul but not for the reputation.”

When you are playing this simple game of Aadu Huli Aata (‘Goats and Tigers’ or even ‘Cows and Leopards,’ if that is your preference ) you will discover that if you are the tiger it is not just a question of swallowing the minimum of six plus one goats but being nifty in dodging the slow ganging up of goats who are hell bent on pinning you into a corner where all you can do is roar in impotent rage!
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This is one game  that is not just played by two players but there is active participation of aunts, uncles, fathers and fathers-in-law, mothers and mothers-in-law, of daughters, sons, particularly those below 13 and other assorted kith and kin who crawl out of the woodwork when the word gets around that a game of Aadu-Huli Aata  is about to commence. In fact permanent blood feuds have resulted from playing this game by the unwary.

Whether you are the goatherd or the owner of the tigers, you will be subjected to unwarranted , unsolicited advice which in most cases proves deliberately useless.

The game which in the old days, pre-Woodstock days, was usually scribbled with chalk on the floor of the verandah and everybody sprawled around. And if  you were a hippie in India then you used a broken piece of charcoal or brick and drew the game on the floor of the shack or some ruin and called the local natives to join in the fun.

Go back further in time and you will discover that in many of the ancient temples, there will be this game etched by some sculptor goofing off and rounding up a couple of other members to play a game.

You don’t believe me ?

The  next time you walk up the steps of the Chamundi Hill in Mysore, stop by the first archway and on the stone platforms you will discover this game etched deep in the rock.

Not only this temple, the even more old temples of Aihole, Pattadakal, Badami, Hampi, Madurai etc., you are likely to see this game and many others inscribed on the stone slabs, flagstones, etc.

This is how the game goes: The powerful tigers or leopards ‘kill’ the weaker goats or cows by jumping over them in a straight line and onto a vacant point just beyond. The weaker sheep or goats do not have this advantage of leaping over but instead they ‘gang up’ and trap the powerful tigers into a state of immobility.

This is where your reputation is on the line. All your boasting  that you have played this game many a times while you were still in your shorty pants will come a cropper if (and it doesn't matter if you are a goat or a leopard or a tiger) you get skewered or pinned as the case may be.

It is not a question of moving the pieces randomly hoping for the best. The game calls for devious thinking like a home-grown Ninja  and outsmarting your opponent. Or a martial artist. Or a chess player!

Whether you draw the tigers or the goats, either way, you have to mentally plan your strategy and  there are several ’what if’ questions that you need to work out  mentally.

But if you are not able to count up to 20 without using your fingers and toes, then this game is not for you!

Traditional Board Games contests - a little like WWE !

Traditional board games when played by family members on a late Sunday morning or by friends who have gathered around  the embroidered square cloth often degenerate into the kind of fracas that is normally associated with World Wrestling Entertainment ( one prefers the earlier name, World Wrestling Federation which has a lot of gravitas to it)....Like sound and fury with nary a blow being given or taken.

Like John Cena and Triple XXX or The Rock, the players square off on either side of a pachisi board. The counters and  the dice are placed. A coin is tossed to decided who is going to throw the dice first.

 That’s when the trouble starts.

 The various family members who have divided themselves into two camps now start baying for blood.

 One of the players now calls ‘foul’ and claims that the coin was tossed in such a way that it would come up heads. The coin is now examined for crookedness! Everything is above board.

 Now the players begin to brag with one consistently needling the other. The other assumes the kind of hurt look like The Rock assumes just when he is about to go ballistic.

The play begins with the throwing of dice. Another verbal fracas now  beings.

 The warring camps now demand that the dice be checked. “How do I know if the dice are not loaded?” asks one who has spent a dozen years in New York and has seen ‘The Godfather’ a hundred times... he even speaks from the corner of his mouth.... “With what” replies another defiantly who does not have the foggiest idea since he has not traveled beyond Mysore and has confessed to not having seen ‘The Godfather.’

Thus the game proceeds in fits and starts, with advice freely given to the players apart from insults of the funnier kind.

Another bout of verbal jousting ensues with bystanders egging on the contestants.

The game is yet to get underway and the counters yet to start moving.

At last, a couple of hours later, the game gets underway and another hour later , there is one winner and one sore loser.

The winner pumps his hand in the air while the loser gives out a mock roar  that has the eerie resemblance to a Neanderthal man crying out his pain as the wooly mammoth makes its escape with a spear hanging from its rear!

Losers in board game do not go gently into the night ( Apologies to Dylan Thomas). There is a little pomp as he or she primps, looks as though he has been stabbed in the back when the referee was not looking even though the bystanders do.

In fact you can see a touch of Hamlet and Lear in the loser’s bearing while the victor smirks and preens just like the winner in a WWE tournament !  

The Kreedaa Kaushalya  Mela of traditional board games will not be WWE but an awesome smorgasbord of board games on display and for sale  organised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP)  in Mysore.

Kreedaa Kaushalya which began on May 10th  will go on till May 26th  at the RKP’s Pratima  Gallery located above Aamarapalli on the Nazarbad main road.

This  celebration of board games of India is just one of the many initiatives of RKP to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country. You could look up the website of Ramsons for more details.

         

Master of Board Games

'Master of Board Games ' -  This title goes to Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III.  And it was accorded by the learned masters of board games, both scholars and amateurs at several International Board Games meets!

 A brief note about  this king will not be out of place.

 Mummadi  ascended the throne when he was still a boy of five in uncertain times. It was a tumultuous period in history. Tipu Sultan had been defeated and the English on the urgings of the young king’s mother and later his guardian as regent, Rajamata Lakshmammanni, crowned  him the ruler of Mysore. The period 1811 to 1868 saw the beginning of a new era for the kingdom of Mysore. But not it seems for the king, who according to historians, was  a soft-hearted and kind man.

It is believed by some scholars that it was only after Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar ‘gave ‘ up the throne in 1831 that he had the time and the inclination to patronise the arts and indulge in his passion for board games and mathematical  puzzles.

Such was his vast grasp of various board games that  he not only devised several new variations of some of the classic games but wrote voluminous commentaries on games, commissioned court painters to paint  murals of board games so that the whole world would come to know more about them.

Written manuscripts, murals, inscribed copper plates, game boards, dice and counters and inscribed copper coins form the vast corpus of work of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar on board games.

Among his many writings, mention may be made of : Chaduranga Sarasarvasvam, SriKrishnaraja Chaduranga Sudhakarah, Kempu Kitabu, Sankya Shastra, Chaduranga Chamaatkrita Chakra Manjari, Chanduranga Bannada Mane.

The top floor of Sri Jayachamaraja Art gallery (the erstwhile Jaganmohan Palace) is a veritable treasure house of the board games invented, devised and improvised by Mummadi.

The murals which have now been restored to their past glory are  in dark earthy colours of reds, orange, yellow and black and are in the form of boards ( 6x6, 8x8,10x10 and a few 12x12 squares). Many of the murals  have figures of animals or have geometric patterns.
 
The Karmic game of Shivasayujam ‘ reinvented ‘ by Mummadi is a spiritual version of the game of snakes and ladders meant for four players . In Mummadi’s variation, the deity appears in a 'Mukhalinga' form in the middle of the board wih at the centre, with Nandi, Ganesha and other deities. The four players each have six pieces, whose starting squares are marked within lotuses at the corners of the board.

The games of Shivasayujyam and Devisayujyam (  which is also based on the law of Karma ) have religious motifs and are supposed to lead the thoughts of the players to the realm of the gods themselves.
There are of course several other writings of Mummadi that deserve to be mentioned but one that is stupendous in its scope is ‘SriTatvaNidhi.’ A rough translation could be  ‘ Illustrious Treasure of Truth.’

According to scholars, SriTatvaNidhi is a compilation of the iconography of South India deities and planets and commentaries on them.  It is believed that apart from two surviving copies , one at Mysore’s Oriental Research Institute (ORI) and the other at the Saraswati Bandaram Library at the Mysore Palace, there is one other section of this work that is in an undisclosed  private collection in the USA!

The SriTatvaNidhi was meant to be a reference work and one portion (Nidhi) the Kautuka Nidhi ( published by the ORI) is a compilation of the board games, their history, rules of the game as well as the variations devised by Krishnaraja Wadiyar.

Mummadi is also said to have devised complex card games to be played with Ganjifa or Chad cards. In SritatvaNidhi’s Kautuka Nidhi, Mummadi  describes 13 card games requiring anywhere between 36 and 360 cards.

Mummadi’s contributions have yet to be recognised in this country though he is better known in the rarefied air of board games players abroad.

Kreeda Kaushalya hosted by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana  (RKP) is in one way a homage to Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar.

Kreeda Kaushalya which began on  May 10th at RKP’s Pratima  Gallery above Aamrapalli Showroomon the Nazarbad Main Road will conclude on May 26th  at around sevenish.

 Kreeda Kaushalya is  just one of the  many initiatives of RKP to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country.