In all pictorial representations of this that I've seen, it looks like a plain Ludo board. But the way it seemed to be played - sorta like a guess the number, seemed more like a coin toss. And did they use real cubes that were numbered, or different objects, such as shells, which had to land on one side or another?
Some of the famous games I've gathered over everything I've read include
- Shakuni's game w/ Yudhisthir
- Nala's games w/ Pushkar (they played 2, Pushkar won the first time & sent Nala to exile, Nala won the next w/ Rituparna's training. But Pushkar didn't cheat or ill-treat Damayanti)
- Balarama's game w/ Rukmi (which ended w/ Balarama killing Rukmi due to the latter's incessant insults to him)
- Krishna's game w/ Rukmini (while his sudarshan chakra was sent against an ally of Paundra Vasudeva)
Shakuni was said to have made his dice out of the bones of rakshashas that Bhima killed, like Hidimba and Bakasura, but couldn't any challengee have objected to and insisted on the grounds of combat, instead of being just taunted into playing by their opponent rules, as Yudhisthir was? And if Rituparna could teach Nala how to win it, couldn't someone have done the same for Yudhisthir, so that he'd have won back his kingdom, and Bhima, Arjun & Sahadev could separately have fought and killed Duryodhan, Dushashan, Karna & Shakuni?
Also, I can understand people being angry when losing a game they have full control over, like chess, and to a lesser extent, physical games. But the anger shown sometimes at people losing what's purely a game of luck somewhat baffles me. Or were the players expected to know mantras that would cause the dice to give them the results they wanted ❓
Feel free to post your insights, but for this thread, please restrict the discussions to this game. 😆
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