The Crux of the Cruciform: Retracing the Early History of Chaupar and Pachisi

"The Crux of the Cruciform" argues that the widespread belief in the ancient origins of South Asian cruciform games such as caupaṛ and paccīsī is largely unsupported by the surviving evidence. Its central thesis is that the earliest secure textual and visual attestations of these games date only to the 15th and 16th centuries, most notably Abul Fazl's Ain-i-Akbari (c. 1590), and that claims of greater antiquity often reflect retroprojection, misreading of sources, or nationalist narratives rather than documentary proof. The article scrutinizes a range of purported early evidence, including Vijayanagara graffiti, Ellora sculpture, and supposed Mesoamerican and Central Asian connections, finding most of these either misinterpreted or unsubstantiated.

The study's most substantial contribution lies in its analysis of Sanskrit and vernacular literary sources. It shows that the Mahābhārata's dice episode was retrospectively reimagined as a game of caupaṛ in later commentaries and Mughal illustrations such as the Razmnāma (c. 1586), even though the original text describes a different dice game. Similarly, the Skandapurāṇa's Śiva-Pārvatī game was originally backgammon, with caupaṛ replacing it only gradually. The author proposes that caupaṛ may have evolved from a two-player backgammon-like ancestor, but treats this as speculative, and rejects etymological links to Sanskrit terms such as catuṣpuṭa and catuṣpaṭa, as well as to the Chinese game chupu, on grounds of weak evidence.

The article's most promising line of inquiry concerns phañjikā, a cruciform race game described in the 12th-century Mānasollāsa with five pawns per player, cowrie dice, and a five-count entry throw. The author argues that phañjikā is a plausible ancestor of paccīsī through the shared five-count throw and the continuity of name, though a direct connection cannot be proven given the absence of intervening references. Overall, the article advocates tracing individual game elements rather than projecting modern games backward, and it concludes that the Indian cruciform tradition's older roots are more distinctive, and less well documented, than popular accounts, including the modern Ludo simplification, have suggested.