Note 3 — FUTTEHPORE-SIKRI LOUIS ROUSSELET

“The following account of Akbar’s Pachisi-board is from an old Agra periodical:—The game is usually played by four persons, each of whom is supplied with four wooden or ivory cones, which are called ‘gots,’ and are of different colours for distinction. Victory consists in getting these four pieces safely through all the squares of each rectangle into the vacant place in the centre,—the difficulty being that the adversaries take up in the same way as pieces are taken at backgammon. Moving is regulated by throwing ‘cowries,’ whose apertures falling uppermost or not, affect the amount of the throw by certain fixed rules. But on this Titanic board of Akbar’s, wooden or ivory ‘gots’ would be lost altogether. Sixteen girls, therefore, dressed distinctively—say four in red, four in blue, four in white, four in yellow—were trotted up and down the squares, taken up by an adversary, and put back at the beginning again; and at last, after many difficulties, four of the same colour would find themselves gliding into their dopattas together in the middle space, and the game was won.”—Bholanauth Chunder.