A King’s Fascination with Games

The king and his court

Krishnaraja Wodeyar III, also known as Mummadi, became Maharaja of Mysore in 1799, after Tipu Sultan’s defeat and death. He was five years old. His reign lasted until 1868, but his authority changed considerably during those years. In 1831, British commissioners took over the administration of Mysore. Krishnaraja remained Maharaja while the commissioners governed the state.1

His court supported painters, musicians and scholars. He encouraged the Mysore school of painting and employed prominent musicians. He was also a writer in Sanskrit and Kannada, with interests that included mathematics and astrology.1 8 7

In 1861, he built Jaganmohan Palace. Its carved entrance includes the ten incarnations of Vishnu, and its paintings depict religious subjects, the royal family and Mysore’s Dasara celebrations. The palace remains one of the buildings associated with his support for the arts.9

Krishnaraja also took an active interest in games. He designed Ganjifa card packs, adapted pachisi for larger groups and worked on the movements of a chess knight. His writing brought games together with the other subjects he studied.11 1 2

Krishnaraja’s writing on games

Krishnaraja is credited as the author of Sritattvanidhi, a large illustrated compilation covering religious figures, traditional learning and other subjects. Its ninth section, Kautukanidhi, means “Treasure of Pastimes”. It describes Ganjifa, dice and mathematical puzzles in Sanskrit verses.8 2

Krishnaraja employed artists, including Javagallu Narasimhayya, to illustrate Sritattvanidhi. He described the deities’ appearance to them in detail before they painted the illustrations. H. P. Devaki, director of Mysore’s Oriental Research Institute, describes this work in her account of the manuscript.8

The institute preserves a manuscript written in Sanskrit using Kannada script. The distinction is between the language of the verses and the letters used to write them. Within the games section, descriptions and illustrations recorded the designs of card packs as well as puzzles to be solved on boards.8

Ganjifa cards designed for Mysore

Ganjifa is played with painted cards arranged in suits. Each suit has its own figures and symbols. The cards can be circular or rectangular, and artists paint each face with people, animals or religious subjects. Krishnaraja developed Mysore versions known as chadas. His games text recorded their names, card counts, pictures and colours.10 12

The named designs include Chamundeshwari Chada, Jagan Mohan Chada, Panch Pandava Chada and Krishnaraj Chad. Chamundeshwari Chada referred to the goddess associated with the Mysore royal family. Panch Pandava Chada featured the five Pandava brothers from the Mahabharata. The subjects gave the packs different sets of characters and images.10

One pack bore the king’s own name. Krishnaraj Chad has four suits, each associated with a deity: Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma or Indra. These names identify groups of cards, not individual cards. Every suit contains eighteen cards: five court cards, four figures and symbols associated with Vishnu, and nine animals and birds. Together, the four suits make a pack of seventy-two.11 10

A suit is a group of eighteen cards. Krishnaraj Chad has four suits, named after Vishnu–Krishna, Shiva, Brahma and Indra: 72 cards altogether. Their banner cards carry different figures.

Krishnaraj Chad

Four suits. Four different banners.

Touch a suit to change the banner. Swipe to explore its other cards.

Original illustrations. The suit colours and banner figures follow the collector’s account published by Global InCH; the drawings and decorative borders are modern interpretations.

The illustrations could be very specific. In a published account, artist Sudha Venkatesh showed a writer her copy of Kautukanidhi. One illustration depicted Ganga riding a crocodile. Beside it was Vishnu beneath the hood of the serpent Anantsesha. These were among the subjects described for the card paintings.10

A knight’s route through every square

Krishnaraja’s work with games also included a problem that required only a board and a single chess piece. In a knight’s tour, the knight must visit every square once. It keeps its usual chess move: two squares in one direction and one square across. There is no opposing army. The task is to find a route that reaches the whole board.

A move can be allowed and still lead to trouble later. The knight may reach a square from which all its possible destinations have already been visited. A successful route must leave a way into every part of the board without returning to an earlier square.

A silk document dated 1852 records a solution attributed to the Rajah of Mysore. Numbers mark the order in which the knight visits the squares. The World Chess Hall of Fame included this document in its exhibition of Jon Crumiller’s collection. A reader can follow the numbered route one move at a time.5

Researcher R. Gyaneshwara Singh separately describes Krishnaraja’s interest in a board of 144 squares. The puzzle below uses that size: twelve rows and twelve columns. Choose a starting square and try to visit them all.1

Place your knight on any square to begin. Then follow its L-shaped moves and visit every square once. Returning to a visited square ends your attempt.

Play the puzzle

One knight. 144 squares.

0 / 144

A modern version of the knight’s-tour challenge on a 12 × 12 board. Choose your own route; this does not reproduce the solution on the 1852 silk.

Pachisi: a race around a cross-shaped board

Pachisi is an Indian race game played on a board shaped like a cross, often made from cloth. In its familiar four-player form, each player has four pieces. The pieces start in the middle, travel around the board and return to the centre. The aim is to bring all four home before the other players.14 1

Players throw cowrie shells to determine how far a piece can move. The score depends on how the shells land. These are small shells with a narrow opening on one side; the number of openings facing upwards helps determine the throw. Pachisi later provided the basis for Ludo.14

How pachisi works

A race around a cloth cross

Touch a set of pieces to follow its route. Touch the shells to learn how moves are counted.

Each player has four pieces. Touch a set to follow one piece from the central home.

A conventional four-player pachisi board, illustrated for this article. The route demonstration omits throws, captures and safe-space rules.

Krishnaraja adapted pachisi for larger groups. R. Gyaneshwara Singh credits him with versions for six, eight and sixteen players. The largest could bring four times the familiar number of players into the same game.1

The Ancient Indian Boardgames archive records the name Pagade Kayi Ata for the king’s game. Its account describes eight-player and sixteen-player versions with additional arms, larger sets of pieces and markings to tell those pieces apart. These variants used dice rather than cowrie shells.15

Pagade Kayi Ata

Follow the connected arms

Touch an arm to follow its piece.

Touch an arm to follow its piece from home, around the board and back.

Journey 0%

Each arm has 24 spaces and four pieces. Eight arms have 192 spaces and 32 pieces; sixteen have 384 spaces and 64 pieces. Proportions are simplified. The eight-armed route is an illustration applying the sixteen-armed circuit. The route follows Ludii’s account of the sixteen-armed game, citing R. Vasantha. This is a route demonstration, without dice, captures or safe-space rules. See the historical boards and descriptions ↗

The Dice Game of the Nine Celestial Bodies

Krishnaraja also devised a game called Navagrahākṣakrīḍā, or the “Dice Game of the Nine Celestial Bodies”. It connected a game played with dice to his interest in astrology. A manuscript illustration of the design survives, and researchers identify it as his work.2

Jacob Schmidt-Madsen describes it as a race game and identifies its place in the king’s writing: section 9.18 of Sritattvanidhi, within Kautukanidhi. The game therefore has both a surviving illustration and a description in the section Krishnaraja devoted to pastimes.13

The manuscript illustration was formerly associated with the India Office Library and is now recorded in a private collection in the United States.2

A surviving design

Twelve paths arranged like a lotus

Touch a petal, its playing spaces or the inner ring to explore.

Twelve petal-shaped paths

Each curved arm contains twelve playing spaces. Together, the twelve arms form the lotus-shaped board.

R. Gyaneshwara Singh describes this design as Navagraha Pagaday. Photographs shared by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen show pieces shaped like a crescent, a triangle and a lotus.

Simplified drawing: individual zodiac images and inscriptions are omitted. Board photographs ↗ · Playing pieces ↗

The games after Krishnaraja

Krishnaraja died in 1868. His work on games survived in manuscripts, diagrams and objects made at his court. At Jaganmohan Palace, game diagrams covered the walls of an upper-floor room. Elsewhere, designs were preserved on paper, wood and copper.1 6

A wooden games box associated with his court had already reached Europe during his lifetime. Made in Mysore between 1825 and 1850, it combined playing surfaces with drawers for pieces and was decorated with ivory inlay and brass fittings. The museum now known as the V&A purchased it at the Paris International Exhibition in 1867.4

Artists continued to paint the card designs long after his death. IGNCA records two Krishnaraj Chad packs made by Sudha Venkatesh: a rectangular set from 1994 and a circular set from 2000. Both contain seventy-two cards in four suits.12

Venkatesh had learned to paint Ganjifa as a child. Her father, M. Ramanarasiah, worked as an artist at the Mysore palace and later as curator of the Jaganmohan Palace art gallery. In her own work, she continued painting the card packs that carried Krishnaraja’s name.10

Sources

This article draws on H. P. Devaki’s account of the Oriental Research Institute manuscript, research by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, museum catalogues, a published account of artist Sudha Venkatesh and an interview with R. Gyaneshwara Singh. References accompany the relevant passages.

Sritattvanidhi and Kautukanidhi are credited to Krishnaraja by the cited scholars. This article does not claim that we have examined his handwriting. The manuscript’s Sanskrit language and Kannada script follow Devaki’s description. Her article was available as indexed text; the original manuscript has not been examined. We omit conflicting dates given for the work in secondary accounts.

The knight’s tour is a complete modern implementation of the standard open-tour puzzle on a 12 × 12 board. It does not reproduce the separate 1852 silk solution. Players place their knight before the first move, including after a restart. A translucent preview on focus or hover is not a placed piece. Returning to a visited square or having no unvisited destination ends an attempt; visiting all 144 squares wins.

The Dice Game of the Nine Celestial Bodies is identified in Kautukanidhi 9.18 by Schmidt-Madsen. It is not treated as identical to an unnamed zodiac game or to Navagraha Ganjifa. We do not reconstruct its rules from the illustration. The Dadu rules elsewhere in the cited paper belong to a different game.

The V&A dates the games box to 1825–1850 and records its purchase in Paris in 1867. The maker is unknown. Conflicting catalogue fields for its wood and number of games are omitted. The article does not claim the king made it or personally arranged its journey.

The IGNCA packs by Sudha Venkatesh date to 1994 and 2000; they are not cards owned by Krishnaraja. No historical photographs or card paintings have been reproduced. No dialogue, private scenes or personal motives have been invented.

The Ganjifa illustrations are original interpretations of all eighteen subjects listed for a Krishnaraj Chad suit in the Global InCH collector account. The suit colour families and the figures on the Dwaja banners follow the collector account: red/Garuda, yellow/bull, green/swan and black/elephant. The artwork and border patterns are modern interpretations. The carousel opens on Dwaja so readers can compare a documented difference. These are card subjects, not a verified ordering of ranks. The conventional pachisi board and the larger variants are explanatory drawings, not reproduced artwork.

The larger pachisi diagrams follow the archive’s reported counts: eight arms, 192 spaces and 32 pieces; sixteen arms, 384 spaces and 64 pieces. The sixteen-armed board photograph was inspected. The eight-armed arrangement is schematic. The archive calls the central home Mukti Sthala and records the name Pagade Kayi Ata, citing R. Vasantha. Diagram colours, markings and proportions are simplified. The route follows Ludii’s description of the sixteen-armed game, citing Vasantha 2006, pp. 34–37. The eight-armed route applies that same circuit as an illustration; it is not an independently verified rules reconstruction.

The celestial-board diagram follows photographs published by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen and credited to Rangachar Vasantha, together with Singh’s description of twelve arms and 144 spaces. It simplifies the shapes, omits inscriptions and individual zodiac images, and does not supply rules of play. Links open the published photographs; no photographs have been copied into the site.