Pachgarhwa
From Wikimanqala
Pachgarhwa
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|---|
| Played in: India (Uttar Pradesh) |
| One cycle |
| Pussa-kanawa lap |
| Holes captured between games |
| 5 holes per row |
| Two rows |
Pachgarhwa was first described in 1906 by E. de M. Humphries, a civil servant appointed as the Sub-divisional Officer at Karwi Sub-division at United Provinces (India).
It seems that nowadays Karwi is in the Banda district of Uttar Pradesh, near Madhya Pradesh, in Northern India.
No cultural background is given. Just that it "appears to be more popular than its intrinsic interest would seem to merit".
Rules
The board is made of two rows of five holes.
At the beginning, there are in each hole five pieces made of a material called kankar (presumably a mineral used as a construction material, a calcareous laterite with a high lime content).
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| Initial Position |
Each player controls the holes on her side of the board.
At your turn you take all the pieces from any hole on your side of the board and sow them in an anticlockwise sense, one in each hole. After you have sown them, you take the ones in the next hole and keep on sowing with them.
Your turn ends when you put the last piece of a sowing in a hole followed by an empty one.
When you have finished sowing, if the hole following the empty one is not empty, you capture all its pieces.
According to the description the game ends when "all the pieces on the board are exhausted", but according to the way of sowing and capturing, it is impossible to empty the board. It also says nothing about what happens when it is your turn and you have no pieces on your side. Víktor Bautista i Roca suggested:
- The game ends when both players agree that it is impossible to capture any pieces and each player takes those on his side.
- If there are no pieces on your side to move, you must pass. Otherwise, you must play.
The winner of a game is the one who captures more seeds.
The game was played in several rounds, in which holes could be captured, but the exact rules weren't given as "by that time things began to get complicated and I was unable to discover how, if ever, the game ended".
References
- Humphries, E. de M.
- (1906) 'Notes on Pachesi and Similar Games, as played in Karwi Subdivision, United Provinces', in Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal; 2 (New Series): 117-127. Republished in: Ray, N. & Ghosh, A. (Ed.) (1999) Sedentary Games of India, Calcutta: The Asiatic Society: 77-78.
- Murray, H. J. R.
- (1951) A History of Board-Games other than Chess, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 169.
