Why a garden?

Pachisi was usually played on a cloth cut in the shape of a cross, with the squares sewn on. It could be folded up and spread out wherever people sat. So here the cloth lies on a lawn, and the other players are garden animals, from a slow Snail to a Monkey that counts its chances.

The rest is kept as it was. There are six cowrie shells to throw, beehive-shaped pieces in yellow, red, black and green, castle squares marked with a stitched cross, and the big square in the middle called the Charkoni, where every piece starts and finishes.

A bit of real pachisi history

The name comes from the Hindi word for twenty-five, the highest throw of the shells. Museums and older writers often call it the national game of India. It is close kin to chaupar, which is played on the same cross with long dice instead of shells.

Many books say the game is thousands of years old. That is hard to prove. Old texts mention dice games without describing the board, and some historians of games say the earliest firm evidence is from the Mughal palaces of the 1500s.

The most famous story is about the emperor Akbar. At Fatehpur Sikri, the city he built in the 1570s, a courtyard has a large cross laid into the stone paving. The story says he played there with women in coloured clothes as the pieces. Writers were repeating this by the 1870s. Akbar’s own court history has a section on chaupar, but no record from his time says he used living pieces in that courtyard, and some scholars doubt the cross was ever a game board at all. So treat it as a legend.

Traditionally four people play in two teams, with partners sitting opposite: yellow and black against red and green. In the late 1800s simpler versions with a cube die were sold in Britain, where one became known as Ludo, and in the United States.

How to play our version

Rules differ from family to family and book to book, so here is exactly what this page does.

• The shells: count the mouths facing up. Two to five up moves that many squares. Six up moves 6, one up moves 10 and none up moves 25.
• Graces: a 6, 10 or 25 is a grace and you throw again. A grace can bring a new piece out of the Charkoni, or move any piece a single square.
• Coming out: your first piece can come out on any throw. Every other piece, and any piece that was captured, needs a grace.
• The route: down the middle of your own arm, round the whole cross against the clock, and back up your middle to the Charkoni. That is 84 steps. The last throw home must be exact.
• Capturing: land on another colour and its pieces go back to the Charkoni, and you throw again. Nobody can be captured on the 12 castles, and you can’t land on a castle another colour is sitting on.
• Passing: moving is never forced. You may pass, for example to keep a piece safe on a castle.

Where sources disagree, we chose. Some families need a grace for every piece. Some throw all their graces first and then move. Here each throw is used as it comes, everyone plays for themselves, and the one-square grace means a piece never gets stuck one step from home. Each of our shells lands mouth up or down with even chances. A Quick game uses 2 pieces each and a Full game uses 4.

Tips

Count before you land. The most common throws are 3, then 2 and 4. A piece sitting 3 or 4 squares in front of an enemy piece is in the most danger.

Use the 25. From the Charkoni to the castle at the end of the next arm is exactly 25 squares, and so is the run home from the castle at the end of the third arm. A piece resting on that last castle is safe, and a single 25 takes it straight home.

Your turn

The cloth is spread out at the top of this page and the Snail is waiting. Throw the shells.