Pallanguzhi is a mancala game from South India, played by two players on a board of 14 pits. You sow seeds around the board and try to finish with more than the other side. Play it free here against four garden animals, or a friend on one device.

How to play Pallanguzhi

1. Each player owns one row of seven pits. Put 5 seeds in every pit.
2. On your turn, pick up all the seeds in one of your pits and drop them one at a time into the pits that follow, counter-clockwise, round both rows.
3. When your hand is empty, pick up the seeds in the next pit and keep sowing.
4. If a seed you drop makes any pit hold exactly 4, take those 4. This is pasu, the Tamil word for cow.
5. If the pit after your last seed is empty, take the seeds in the pit just past it, and your turn ends. Two empty pits: you take nothing.
6. The round ends when the player to move has no seeds in their row. The other player keeps the seeds on their side. More seeds wins.
7. To play on, refill your pits with 5 seeds each. Pits you can’t fill stay closed. A player who can’t fill a single pit loses the match.

The rules we chose, and why

Rules change from family to family, and sources disagree. The Tamil folklorist Tho. Paramasivan describes five seeds a pit, and so does L. S. Saraswathi in a 1995 article that mancala researchers cite. Both count a pit of four as pasu. Other accounts start with six, so six a pit is in the settings. Most accounts sow counter-clockwise and give the pasu to the player sowing, and so do we.

Two rules are our own, for a screen. If 20 turns in a row take nothing, the round ends as if a row had run dry, so two lone seeds can’t chase each other for ever. And the animal sows first in round 1, because in our tests the reply to the first move often takes a big haul. That reply is yours.

A bit of real history

Pallanguzhi belongs to the mancala family, games where seeds are sown around rows of pits. It is played mainly in Tamil Nadu, and in Kerala too. Close cousins are called ali guli mane in Karnataka and vamana guntalu in Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil communities play it in Sri Lanka and Singapore. Another Tamil name, pathinalam kuzhi, means “fourteen pits.”

The counters are usually tamarind seeds or cowrie shells, on a wooden board. Writers describe it as a game played at home, mostly by women and children. How old it is, nobody can say. Popular articles call it ancient and link it to old kingdoms and epics, but we found no firm evidence for a date.

Tips

Read the numbers. With the hints on, each of your pits shows what it would take this turn. Before you grab the biggest, check what it leaves the other side.

Watch the empty pits. An empty pit just before a big pile is a target. Whoever ends a sowing on the pit before it takes the pile. Count the threes too: one more seed makes a pasu.

Pallanguzhi questions

How many seeds go in each pit in Pallanguzhi?

It depends on who taught you. Five a pit, 70 seeds in all, is common in Tamil accounts and is our main game. Six a pit is another common choice. One account has twelve in most pits and two in the middle pit of each row.

What is pasu in Pallanguzhi?

Pasu means cow in Tamil. When a seed you drop makes a pit hold exactly four, you take those four at once and carry on sowing. It can happen in any pit on either side, so a row of threes is risky for both players.

Is Pallanguzhi the same as congkak?

They are cousins: both are mancala games on two rows of seven. Congkak, from Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, adds a store at each end, and you drop seeds into your own store as you pass it. Pallanguzhi has only the 14 pits, and captured seeds are kept to one side. Try our Congkak Seeds to feel the difference.