Discovering Dadu: A Ludemic Enigma from South Asia

"Discovering Dadu" by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen introduces a little-documented two-player race game played almost exclusively within the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim community of South Asia, a game absent from major encyclopedias and scholarly literature. Using ludemic theory, the article argues that Dadu is a hybrid: a South Asian single-track race game, closely resembling Pancha Keliya in its cowrie-dice mechanics, that has absorbed structural features of the West Asian Tab family, particularly the 17th-century Palestinian Kiôz and the Turkish Kös. Its king-and-pawn pieces, perpendicular track, and opposed movement are presented as the evidence for this blend, with Backgammon and Chess rejected as direct sources.

The study's main findings center on the social and cultural conditions of play. Dadu is typically played at gatherings by teams of roughly four to ten players, with a single throw of 1 required to enter pieces, producing large swings in fortune. The author argues that team play is common but underreported in traditional race games, challenging the assumption that early board games were designed chiefly for two players. The formal rules, including the king-capture reset, are shaped by social context, and some players deliberately set them aside to preserve harmony.

The article situates the game within a broader history of Tab-family games moving from West Asia into South India, the Maharashtra region, and the Himalayas, through variants such as Tablan, Tabul Phal, and Bheri Bakhri. It proposes that Dadu arose within the Bohra community as a deliberate synthesis of these traditions, plausibly carried across the Indian Ocean through the community's Yemeni origins and migration history. The article further contends that ludemic analysis offers a useful method for placing an undocumented game in its historical context. Appended materials include an extensive bibliography, the basic and optional rules of Dadu, and a catalogue of house rules and variants.