Remembering the interesting game – Thayam

Remembering the interesting game – Thayam

    Common! Lets play and also build strong relationships in us! Just inviting the winter holidays by remembering our traditional ancient games! First comes my favorite Thayam (தாயம்).
 
    Happy writing this post, since I can recall my evergreen childhood days. Got spirited by lot of my grandma’s traditional indoor games, I used to play thayam more frequently. But nowadays, these games have a very rare picture. The game is also called as “Chathuranga”, which has a very ancient history as it takes an important picture in the epic “Mahabharatham”. The eldest of Pandavas, Yudhishthira and the eldest of Gouravas, Duryodhana play the wicked game - soothu thayam, in which the Pandavas were cunningly defeated and were sent to forest. Thus the game scene forms the important turning point in the epic.
 
Gaming procedure:
    The game is usually played with two or four players sitting around the thayam design drawn on floor or a wooden board. There are two types of design – the 7 X 7 squared and the 6 X 3 squared (as seen in the left and the right side of the image above). Each of the players should have different types of coins, varying either in color or in shape. They roll the dice or the thaya kattai and can start playing the game only if they get “1” in the dice. All the players get consecutive turns and move their coins according to the numbers that turn up in their dice. A player can roll his/her die again, if he/she gets 1, 5 or 6 in it. The coins are moved in a defined path. Coins of two different players cannot be placed in the same square; hence the previous coin is slashed out from the game and hence moved back to the initial position. But there are some exceptional cross-checked squares in the design, where coins of two or more players can stay. A player wins the game only when all of his/her coins reach the final destination at first.
 
    It was further modified as the Snake and Ladder game or the Paramapatham. It is said that this game indirectly teaches a good lesson in life - the ladders denotes the good virtues, so that grabbing them can give speedy success and the snakes represent the vices, thus touching them may push to dangerous lower positions in life. 
     Thus the game converts the leisure time, happier, interesting and develops mathematical knowledge too. The more special feature of the game is that, it can be played by enthusiastic minds of all age groups. Hope the budding new generation learn this game, play these native Indian games and spread the joy everywhere.
 
    Happy Holidays Guys!