Plate 1.Turkish Girls Playing Mancala.From an old print.
Plate 1.
Turkish Girls Playing Mancala.From an old print.
Turkish Girls Playing Mancala.From an old print.
Fig. 5.BOARD FOR NARANJ (MANCALA).Maldive Islands.Cat. No. 16379, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 5.BOARD FOR NARANJ (MANCALA).Maldive Islands.Cat. No. 16379, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 5.BOARD FOR NARANJ (MANCALA).Maldive Islands.Cat. No. 16379, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
A board in the Museum of Archæology, University of Pennsylvania, from Jerusalem, is shown infig. 2, and one from Beirut, Syria, inpl. 2, fig. 1.
Mancala, the name which the Syrians give to this game, is a common Arabic word and means in this connection the “Game of transferring.” It is not mentioned in the Koran by this name, but must have been known to the Arabs in the Middle Ages, as it is referred to in the commentary to the Kitab al Aghani, the “Book of Songs,” which speaks of a “game like Mancala.”
Fig. 6.BOARD FOR CHANKA (MANCALA).Ceylon.Cat. No. 16381, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 6.BOARD FOR CHANKA (MANCALA).Ceylon.Cat. No. 16381, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 6.BOARD FOR CHANKA (MANCALA).Ceylon.Cat. No. 16381, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 7.BOARD FOR CHONGKAK (MANCALA).Johore, Malay Peninsula.Cat. No. 16382, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 7.BOARD FOR CHONGKAK (MANCALA).Johore, Malay Peninsula.Cat. No. 16382, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Fig. 7.BOARD FOR CHONGKAK (MANCALA).Johore, Malay Peninsula.Cat. No. 16382, Museum of Archæology and Palæontology, University of Pennsylvania.
Dr. Thomas Hyde gave a very good account of it two hundred years ago in his treatise, “De Ludis Orientalibus” (seefig. 3), and Lane, in his “Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians,” describes it very fully as played in Cairo upon a board with twelve holes, quite in the manner I have related. Seventy-two shells or pebbles are there used, and, whether shells or pebbles, are indifferently called hasa. The hemispherical holes in the board are called buyoot, plural of beyt. The score of the game is sixty, and when the successive gains of a player amount to that sum he has won. I soon found that I had learned from my Syrian acquaintance nothing that had not been recorded, but upon visiting the Damascus House in the Turkish village at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago, I was enabled to engage with the Syrians in the game, and was impressed with the peculiar distribution of the game over the world. The Ceylon exhibit contained boards from the Maldives with sixteen holes in two parallel rows, with a large hole at either end. (Figs.4and5.) Here the game is called Naranj. Boards in the same exhibit from Ceylon had fourteen holes with two large central cavities (fig. 6), the game being called Chanka. An Indian gentleman informed me that the game was common at Bombay. His Highness the Sultan of Johore exhibited a boat-shaped board with sixteen holes (fig. 7) under the name of Chongkak. I learned, too, that the game was common in Java, as well as in the Philippine Islands, where a boat-shaped board with sixteen holes is also used (pl. 2, fig. 2), the game being called Chungcajon. It would thus appear that the game extends along the entire coast of Asia as far as the Philippine Islands. Mancala and a kind of draughts were the favorite amusements of the negroes from the French settlement of Benin on the west coast of Africa in the so-called Dahomey village at the Columbian Fair. They played on a boat-shaped board, with twelve holes in two rows, which they called adjito, with pebbles, adji, the game itself being called Madji. It is with the continent of Africa that the game of Mancala seems most closely identified. It may be regarded, so to speak, as the African national game. In the exhibit of the State of Liberia at Chicago, there were no less than eleven boards, comprising three different forms, said to be from the Deys, Veys, Pesseh, Gedibo, and Queah. (Figs.8,9, and10.) They were catalogued under the name of Poo, by which name the game is known to civilized Liberians. The game is, in fact, distributed among the African tribes from the east to the west and from the north to the south. In Nubia, where a board with sixteen holes is used, it is known as Mungala.
Fig. 8.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 8.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 8.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 9.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 9.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 9.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 10.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 10.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.
Fig. 10.BOARD FOR POO (MANCALA).Liberian Exhibit, World’s Columbian Exposition.