Where Did the Games Go? Inquiry of Board Games in Medieval Marathi Literature in India

Board game traditions appear to have declined in medieval Maharashtra between roughly the 13th and 17th centuries, a puzzle the study sets out to examine. Although neighboring regions such as Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Rajasthan preserve documented board game traditions, surviving inscriptions in Maharashtra are largely pre-Islamic and undated, and the medieval period is conspicuously absent from the record. The inquiry is framed as an exploratory, systems-design analysis that draws on architectural, literary, social, and political evidence, with the central question of where the games went.

Searches of Marathi architecture yielded no board game inscriptions, so the investigation turns to Marathi literature of the Bhakti movement, which mentions games such as Sāripata, Ēkibēkī, Okībokī, and Budhdibaḷa (chess). Comparison with the early twentieth-century Marāṭhī Khēḷānc̄ē Pustaka reveals several games absent from medieval sources, including Navkankari, Solah Gutti, Mancala, and tiger-goat hunt games. The authors propose that these games either disappeared and later re-emerged or were introduced through subsequent cultural transmission.

The study attributes the decline of games such as Phare Mare and Sāripata to intertwined social and political forces: caste and religious divisions, the upheaval of successive invasions and regime changes, and Bhakti criticism of gambling and ritualism. These pressures, the analysis argues, reduced leisure time, moved play from public to private settings, disrupted the transmission of rules, and favored simpler, portable games that survived. Devotional and philosophical verses by Jnaneshwar, Eknath, Tukaram, and Ramdas reference games including viṭīdāṇḍū, cēṇḍū, lagōrī, and hamāmā, often as warnings against vice or worldly distraction, documenting a rich vernacular play culture alongside its use as moral metaphor. The authors conclude that explaining the disappearance and survival of these games requires a holistic, systems-based approach integrating religion, caste, and linguistic evidence such as Marathi game terminology.