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Evidence for Pancha Keliya (Complex)
1 pieces of evidence found.
Id DLP.Evidence.1760
Type Ethnography
Location Sri Lanka
Date 1942-01-01 - 1942-12-31
Rules Eleven squares are in the bottom line. From the central square, a line of an additional ten extend up. From the central hole of this vertical line (counting the central hole of the bottom line), a square with eleven holes per side. Extending to the left and right of this, five more squares on each side. Five squares extend upwards diagonally from the end of each of these lines, joining at an apex. Intersecting with the fifth square in the initial vertical line, a square with eleven spaces per side. Every fifth square is marked with an X. Players enter from opposite ends of the bottom horizontal track. Marked squares are safe spaces. Each player has multiple pieces. Pieces landing on an opponent's piece send them back to start. Knucklebones, cowries, or dice used to determine moves.
Content "e games referred to in this note owe their origin to the practice of keeping a record of the successive throws of knucklebones, cowries, or other natural prototypes of the dice, by means of counters shifted along a row of stones, or a scale of lines, the length of which corresponds to the winning score. In the course of time the record-keeping part became the more important one, and some of the following characteristics
were developed:
(1) The use, for each player, of more than one
counter which he can use alternately, at his own discretion: this feature introduces the element of discrimination in a game, otherwise, of pure chance.
(2) The rule that when one player's counter lands in a place already occupied by an opponent's piece, the latter is sent back.
(3) The marking out of places of safety where such 'sending back ' cannot take place.
(4) Other advantages and handicaps attached to special landing places...It was not until I reached Ceylon that I found it still known to the present generation. Here it was called panca (keliya), i.e. ' (game of) fives." Accompanied with a drawing of the board. Marin 1942: 114, 116.
Confidence 100
Source Marin, G. 1942. "An Ancestor of the Game of 'Ludo.'" Man 42: 114-117.
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