PARCHEESI and VARIATIONS
THE ORIGINAL PARCHEESI
This popular board game traces its roots to ancient India. In the Mahabharata, a classic epic poem from early India written in Sanskrit, the game is referred to by the Hindi name “Pasha.” The great Mughal emperor Akbar, who reigned from 1556 to 1605, supposedly played the game using actual people as pawns and specially built courts as game boards. Traces of such life-sized playing surfaces are still visible at Agra and Allahabad.
The board and the basic rules of Parcheesi have not significantly changed in over 1,200 years. A player’s pieces move around the track on a cross-shaped board based upon a throw of six or seven cowrie shells. The, meaning “twenty-five,” the largest score that can be thrown with the cowrie shells; thus this game is also known by the name Twenty-Five.
