Raja Pasu
Game type: Two-player two-row mancala without stores, 7 holes per row — Indian-style relay sowing; mid-sow fours captured by row owner and pussa leaps beyond an empty landing pit
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Overview
Raja Pasu (signifying "king and cow") is a traditional two-row mancala game played in India and Sri Lanka. Documented by anthropologist and games scholar Alexander Johan de Voogt in 2000 during field investigations in the Colombo region, it was observed primarily among women, though several men in the community also maintained a strong command of its tactics. The game combines continuous Indian-style multi-lap relay sowing with dual capture mechanisms: empty-hole leapfrog captures and mid-sow four-seed captures. Because fours belong to the owner of the row rather than the player sowing, Raja Pasu demands careful calculation to avoid gifting points to the opponent during extended laps.
Board
- Rows: 2
- Holes per row: 7 (14 playing holes total)
- Stores: None (captured counters are set aside in personal reserves)
- Counters per hole at start: 7 (total of 98 seeds)
- Each participant controls the seven holes in their own row.
How to Play
- A player begins their turn by taking all counters from any occupied hole on their own side and sowing them one by one counter-clockwise around the board.
- Sowing follows Indian-style relay rules: when the last counter in hand is placed into a hole, the player picks up the entire contents of the immediate next hole and continues sowing in another lap.
- If the hole following the last dropped counter is empty, the sowing lap ends.
- If the player has no legal move on their turn (their side is entirely vacant), the game or round concludes, and all remaining counters on the board are awarded to the opponent.
- Multi-round match play: between rounds, players refill their pits using 7 counters per hole from their accumulated winnings. Any holes that cannot be fully supplied are left empty, closed starting from the left end of the player's row, and excluded from active play. The player who captured the remaining counters at the end of the previous round leads off the next round.
- A full match concludes when a player captures fewer than 7 counters in a round and is unable to open even a single hole.
Capturing
- Empty-hole leap (Pussa): If the final counter of a sowing lap falls into a hole followed by an empty hole, and the hole immediately beyond that empty one contains counters, the active player captures all counters in that occupied hole. This capture may occur on either side of the board.
- Row-owner four (Pasu): If adding a counter to any hole during a sowing lap brings its total count to exactly four counters, those four counters are immediately captured by the player who owns that row (regardless of who is sowing), while the sowing lap proceeds uninterrupted.
End of Game and Winning
- A round concludes when a player cannot make a legal move; the adversary collects all remaining counters on the board.
- The player with the highest total of captured counters wins the round.
Notes
- Raja Pasu is closely related to regional variants like Raja Pasu Mandiri. The crucial rule awarding mid-sow sets of four to the row proprietor rather than the sowing player creates a distinct defensive dynamic, as sowing deep into enemy territory can easily yield inadvertent bounties for the defender.
Source: Mancala World – Raja Pasu