2 players
Aksadyuta
Akṣadyūta
- Game family
- math
- Origin
- India
Overview
Akṣadyūta is a scoring game that plays a central role in the Indian epic Mahabharata. While the Mahabharata was an oral tradition which was written down much later, one of its key events is a game of Akṣadyūta in which Shakuni won the kingdom from Yudhishthira. Later Indian sources often confuse the game as that of Pachisi or Chaupar, but the text clearly describes a game of a different nature.
Source rules (English)
There is a large number of akṣas (beans) in a container, divisible by five. One player grasps a random number of them, and throws them onto a mat. The beans grabbed by the player is a 'grasp,' and the kind of grasp determines the winner. The type of grasp is determined by the number of beans grabbed by the player. The grasps are: Krta: a multiple of four (e.g., 12); Kali: a multiple of four plus one (e.g., 13); Dvapara: A multiple of four plus two (e.g., 14); Treta: a multiple of four plus 3 (e.g., 15). Krta beats all others, Kali always loses, Treta beats Dvapara.