Very often, when I conduct an event and we’re playing a game, people will stop and ask me, “What’s the name of the game?” It’s a question that always makes me smile, because, for some reason, although our ancestors created wonderful games, they were not very creative when it came to naming those games.
When you look at the sheer range of games they came up with, it is staggering. There was a wide variety: dice games, strategy games, or both, where choice and chance came together; games of alignment of different types, three in a row, four in a row, three in a row with all kinds of varying boards; hunt games, asymmetric games; battlefield games and race games of so many different varieties, where game pieces start in different places and end in the same place, start at the same place and end in different places, or move in opposite directions.
Somehow, when it came to naming the games, the creativity disappeared. Why?
Let’s take some popular games. Bagh Bakri — the Tiger and the Goat. Aadu Puli Aattam — again the Tiger and the Goat in Tamil. Chaupad, which is derived from words associated with four parts or four sides, refers to the characteristic cross-shaped board with four arms. Ashta Chemma — eight and four. Teen Goti — three game pieces. Panch Kone — five corners. Or my personal favourite, Chaturvimshati Koshthaka — a game in 24 squares.
Perhaps games didn’t need titles because they weren’t products. Today a game needs a distinctive name partly because it is an object in a marketplace. The name identifies it, packages it, and differentiates it. A game transmitted orally doesn’t necessarily need that. If everyone in the courtyard knows what “five stones” means, five stones is a perfectly adequate name. Perhaps the name functioned as an instruction rather than a title. Teen Goti, Panch Kone, and similar names may tell you something immediately: the number of pieces, the geometry of the board, the principal objects involved.
Perhaps the game mattered more than its name. When knowledge is passed from one person to another by demonstration, you don’t necessarily ask: “What is the game called?” Maybe a game didn’t have to be called something memorable in order to be memorable. It was simply the game with the five stones, or the one with the tiger and goats, or the one grandmother drew on the floor. And that’s probably why the extraordinary creativity is in the play rather than the packaging.
