Cards Against Anarchy: The Survival of Art and Game in the Dashavatar Cards of India

The Dashavatar cards, hand-painted circular playing cards depicting the ten avatars of Vishnu, descend from the Persian ganjifa tradition that reached India around the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This study argues that these cards cannot be understood as either pure art or pure game, and that their survival depends on preserving both dimensions together. Its account draws on field interviews conducted across Odisha, West Bengal, Maharashtra, and Karnataka, giving the analysis a regional scope centered on eastern and western India.

The findings describe a tradition in steep decline. Once elite court art, known as durbar kalam, the cards have shifted to bazaar kalam, a handicraft sustained largely by patachitra painters and increasingly by tourists buying curios. Production is now limited: a full 120-card Dashavatar set, painted on cotton cloth with lac, varnish, and natural mineral pigments, can take over a month to complete, and post-Covid cost increases have further constrained makers. Iconography and materials vary by region, reflecting Mughal, Odia, and Mysore influences, which underscores the tradition's diversity as well as its fragility.

Perhaps the most pressing conclusion concerns play. The last players are dying, and many artisans no longer know the rules, so the game itself risks disappearing even as its visual forms survive as decorative objects. Revival efforts, such as those led by the Sawantwadi royal family, have helped sustain the cards but have also altered their ethos in the process. The authors contend that the decline of play is inseparable from the loss of the cards' artistic and narrative content, and that conservation must address both.