Pachisi
Also पच्चिस, the Nepal Academy dictionary's spelling, पच्चीसी, and in Maithili पच्चीसीक खेल. Pachisi means twenty-five. Ludo was made from it.
The cross-shaped race game, thrown with cowries instead of dice. In Mithila it belongs to the night of Kojagara, when a newly married groom plays his bride's brother with cowries and dice sent by the bride's family.
- Who plays
- Two, or four as two teams of two.
- What you need
- A cross-shaped cloth board, four pieces in each of four colours, and six to eight cowries.
- Where
- Maithil homes in Janakpur and across Mithila, and wherever their families live.
- When
- The night of Kojagara, the full moon that ends Dashain. In 2026, Sunday 25 October.
Kojagara
Kojagara is Mithila's name for Kojagrat Purnima, the full moon that ends Dashain, when people stay awake for Lakshmi. For a groom in the first year of his marriage it is a night of his own. The bride's family sends a load of gifts, the bhar, with paan, fox nuts (makhan), fruit, curd, sweets and clothes for him to wear. The women of the house bless him in the chumaon, and the elders with durva grass and rice.
After the meal he plays pachisi with his bride's brother. Onlinekhabar's report from Janakpurdham gives eight cowries and sixteen pieces, and Maithili Wikipedia says the cowries and the dice come from the bride's family. The loser gives the winner a gift. Dainik Jagran writes that the women sing Maithili songs while they play.
The board and the pieces
The Nepal Academy dictionary describes the board as a cloth with four arms spread to every side, three rows of eight squares in each. The cloth is called a tharki, and the dictionary uses the same word for the cloth pasa is played on. Each player has four pieces of one colour, sixteen in all for four colours, and the throw is made with cowries: seven in the dictionary, eight in Janakpur.
How it is played
No source records the rules of the Kojagara game itself. These are pachisi's rules as they are written down for the game elsewhere, from Herklots' account of 1832 and Wikipedia's. Agree the details before the first throw.
Throw the cowries
Throw the cowries and count the ones that land mouth up. The count is worth a number of squares, set out in the table below, and the high throws let you throw again.
Bring a piece on
Every piece starts off the board. It comes on only with one of the high throws, such as a 25.
Go round the cross
Pieces go round anticlockwise: out down the middle column of your own arm, round the outer columns of every arm, and back up your own middle column to the home in the middle.
Send a piece back
Land on another side's piece and it goes back off the board to start again, unless it stands on a safe square, marked with a cross. A capture usually earns another throw.
Bring them all home
A piece needs the exact throw to reach home. The first side to bring all its pieces home wins, and partners win together.
What a throw is worth
This is the part nobody has written down for Kojagara. The table is Herklots' account of the Deccan in 1832, with six cowries and with seven. A throw of 25 also lets a piece come on, and you keep throwing until you throw a 2, 3 or 4.
| Mouths up | Six cowries | Seven cowries |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 6 | 6 |
| 1 | 10 | 10 |
| 2 | 2 | 2 |
| 3 | 3 | 3 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 |
| 5 | 25 | 25 |
| 6 | 12 | 30 |
| 7 | 12 |
Wikipedia gives other tables, one of which puts 25 on no mouths up at all. Whatever your family plays, agree it before the first throw, and tell us, so this page can say it.
Other ways to play
In Bihar, Sarita Sahay records pachisi played at a wedding by the bride and groom themselves, the result taken as a sign of who will lead in the marriage, and the wedding game sometimes simpler than the full one. The same paper says gamblers play it at Deepawali. The Nepal Academy dictionary names pachisi beside kauda and ganjifa among the games played for stakes.
Ludo is pachisi on a square board with a die. Its history, on this site, tells how that happened.
What is on record
- 1832Herklots' Qanoon-e-Islam records pachisi in the Deccan, with what each throw of six or seven cowries is worth.
- 2013Sarita Sahay's paper on the children's games of Bihar describes six cowries and the wedding game.
- 2019Onlinekhabar reports from Janakpurdham that after the Kojagara meal the groom plays pachisi with cowries against the bride's brothers, eight cowries and sixteen pieces.
- 2021Dainik Jagran in Muzaffarpur writes that the pachisi of Kojagara is almost gone from the towns and kept up in name only in the villages.
- 2024Hindustan in Darbhanga writes that the game is seen as tied to Lakshmi, and that the cowries and the dice come from the bride's family.
Where the sources disagree, or say too little
Six, seven or eight cowries?
Eight in the Janakpur report, seven in the Nepal Academy dictionary, six in Sahay's Bihar paper, and six or seven in Asia InCH. Maithili Wikipedia and Hindustan say dice come from the bride's family as well as cowries. How many a family throws, and what each throw is worth, is the question to put to a family that plays.
Who plays whom?
The Janakpur report has the groom against his bride's brothers. Maithili Wikipedia and Dainik Jagran have the groom and his wife's brother. Sahay's Bihar paper has the bride and groom at their own wedding. Nobody says whether the Kojagara game is two players or four in teams, or how sixteen pieces are shared between two.
What is the sixty-four?
The Janakpur report speaks of the pasa's sixty-four (पासाका चौसठ्ठी). It may be a scoring word or a name for the board. Three four-sided long dice can land sixty-four ways, which would fit dice, but that is arithmetic, not a source.
Sources
Every fact on this page comes from one of these. Where a source could not be read, or a claim has none, the text says so.
- मिथिला क्षेत्रमा यसरी मनाइँदैछ कोजाग्रत पूर्णिमा, Onlinekhabar, Janakpurdham, 26 Asoj 2076 (October 2019) (in Nepali)
- मिथिला क्षेत्रमा कोजाग्रत पूर्णिमालाई 'कोजगरा' को रुपमा मनाइँदै, Onlinekhabar, 14 Kartik 2077 (October 2020) (in Nepali)
- पच्चिस, Nepal Academy dictionary, as copied to Nepali Wiktionary (in Nepali)
- कोजागरा, Maithili Wikipedia
- Kojagra, Wikipedia
- Kojagra in Mithilanchal: सामाजिक सरोकार का लोकपर्व कोजागरा आज, Dharmendra Kumar Singh, Dainik Jagran, Muzaffarpur, 19 October 2021, in Hindi
- मिथिला का प्रसिद्ध लोक पर्व कोजागरा आज, तैयारी पूरी, Hindustan, Darbhanga, 16 October 2024, in Hindi
- Traditional Children's Games of Bihar, Sarita Sahay, Folklore 54, 2013, pages 131 and 132
- Pachisi, from Herklots, Qanoon-e-Islam (1832), Ludii Portal, Digital Ludeme Project
- Pachisi, Wikipedia
- Pachisi / Board game of Nepal, Asia InCH
- Kartik 2083, Hamro Patro
Cite this page
Nepali Games (2026). How to play Pachisi, and where it comes from. https://nepali.games/traditional-games/pachisi