1879.] on the History of Games. 138 



which pieces he will move his allotted number. In England this 

 group of games is represented by hachjammon. When Greek writers 

 mention dice-playing, they no doubt often mean some game of this 

 class, for at mere hazard the Persian queen-mother could not have 

 played her game carefully, as Plutarch says she did, nor would tliere 

 have been any sense in his remark that in life, as in dicing, one must 

 not only get good throws, but know how to use them. The Eoman 

 game of the twelve lines (duodccim scripta) so nearly corresponded 

 with our trictrac or backgammon, that M. Becq do Fouquieres, in his 

 ' Jeux des Anciens,' works out on the ordinary backgammon board the 

 problem of the Emperor Zeno that has vexed the soul of many a 

 critic. All these games, however, are played with dice, and as there 

 exist other games of like principle where lots are thrown instead of 

 dice, it may, perhaps, be inferred that such ruder and clumsier lot- 

 backgammon was the earlier, and dice-backgammon a later improve- 

 ment upon it. Of course things may have happened the opposite 

 way. Lot-backgammon is still played in the East in more than one 

 form. The Arabic-speaking peoples call it tab, or game, and play it 

 with an oblong board or rows of holes in the ground, with bits of 

 brick and stone for draughts of the two colours, and for lots four palm- 

 stick slips with a black and white side. In this low variety of lot- 

 backgammon, the object is not to get one's own men home, but to take all 

 the adversary's. The best representative of this group of games is the 

 Hindu pachisi, which belongs to a series ancient in India. It is 

 played on a cross-shaped board or embroidered cloth, up and do^vn 

 the arms of which the pieces move and take, in somewhat the manner 

 of backgammon, till they get back to the central home. The men 

 move by the throws of a number of cowries, of which the better 

 throws not only score high, but entitle the player to a new throw, 

 which corresponds to our rule of doubles giving a double move at 

 backgammon. The game of pachisi has great vogue in Asia, extend- 

 ing into the far East, where it is played with flat tamarind-seeds as 

 lots. It even appears to have found its way still farther eastward into 

 America, forming a link in the chain of evidence of an Asiatic 

 element in the civilization of the Aztecs.* For the early Sj)anish- 

 American writers describe, as played at the Court of Montezuma, a 

 game called patolli, played after the manner of their European tables 

 or backgammon, but on a mat with a diagram like a -j- or Greek 

 cross, full of squares on which the different coloured stones or pieces 

 of the players were moved according to the throws of a number of 

 marked beans. Without the board and pieces, the mere throwing 

 hazards with the beans or lots, to bet on the winning throws, 

 furnishes the North American tribes with their favourite means of 

 gambling, the game of plumstones, game of the bowl, &c. 



It is a curious inquiry what led people to the by no means obvious 



* See the Author's paper in the ' Journal of the Anthropological Institute,' 

 November, 1878. 



