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Evidence for Mangala (Bedouin)
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.669
Type Ethnography
Location Arabia
Date 1909-01-01 - 1909-12-31
Rules 2x6 board.
Seventy counters.
One player distributes the counters unevenly in the central four holes (central two holes of each row). The opponent then has the option to flip the board around if they are not satisfied with the distribution.
Opponent begins play. The first move must be from the fourth hole in the row. Sowing occurs in a clockwise direction. Capturing cannot happen on the first move. If the last counter is dropped into a hole, creating an odd number of counters in it, play ends. If the number is now even and the hole in the other player's row also has an even number, the contents of both holes are captured. If the final hole is now even but the other player's row does not have an even number of counters, the counters are picked up and a new sowing begins. If the final hole has more than ten counters it cannot be captured and sowing must continue from this hole whether the number is even or odd.
Play ends when a player has no more counters on their side of the board. The player who has captured the greatest number of counters wins.
Content "Mangala (Bedawi)
This game is played with 70 cowry shells, called "Dogs." At first all the shells are deposited by one of the players, without counting them, in the four middle holes, the eight end ones being left empty. His opponent feels them with the backs of the fingers of a closed fist, and if he be satisfied with the distribution he begins to play. In case the arrangement be not to his liking he turns the board round and tells the other player to begin.
Play commences on the player's own side of the board, at the right-hand filled hole, and always passes to the left,. The shells are "sown" as in Puhulmutu, but each player stops when his last shell falls into a hole in which it makes an odd number. But in the early part of the game if it fall into one of the holes full of shells they are not counters; it is assumed that the number is an even one, and the player takes all out and continues to sow them round the holes, commencing at the next one. After both players have had one turn at sowing they begin subsequent sowings at any hole on their own side of the board.
If, when a player has dropped each last shell, there be any even pairs of shells in opposite holes on the two sides of the board, whether twos, fours, sixes, eights, or tens, beyond which they are said not to run, he "easts" the whole of these pairs. This is the only way in which the shells are captured. The game ends in one round, when one of the players has no shells on his side of the board after his opponent stops playing; and the winner is he who has captured or "eaten" the greatest number. The Bedawi who showed me the game assured me that his people know no other way of playing..." Parker 1909: 601-602.
Confidence 100
Source Parker, H. 1909. Ancient Ceylon. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services.
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