Pasaपासा

The cloth

The board is a cross of four arms around a square in the middle, the charkoni. Each arm has three lanes of eight squares. The two outer lanes of every arm, joined by the end square of each middle lane, make the track that everyone shares: 68 squares round the cloth.

Twelve squares are marked as castles: the end square of each middle lane and, on every outer lane, the fourth square in from the far end.

Players and pieces

Each player has four pieces of one colour and owns the arm nearest them. With four players the two sitting opposite are partners. With two players you sit opposite each other; with three, one arm stays empty.

All pieces start in the charkoni. The throw passes round the table in the direction the pieces travel.

The dice

Pasa are long dice with four sides marked 1, 2, 5 and 6. You throw three of them together. There are no special throws: every die simply moves a piece.

Moving

Use each die on its own: pick a piece, move it the number on the die, then use the next die. One piece may take two or all three dice one after another, and you choose the order.

Every piece makes the same journey: out of the charkoni and down the middle lane of its own arm, onto the end square, round the whole track the way the pieces travel (to the right, anticlockwise as you look down on the cloth), back onto its own end square, and up its middle lane into the charkoni. That is 84 steps. The middle lane of an arm is used only by the pieces that belong to it.

Any die can bring a piece out of the charkoni. You must use a die if any piece can use it. A die that no piece can use is lost, and when only one move is possible the table makes it for you.

Capturing

Land exactly on a single enemy piece on an ordinary square and you capture it. It goes back to the charkoni and must start its journey again.

• Castles are safe: pieces of any side may share them and nobody is captured there.
• Two or more pieces of one side on a square make a pair. A pair cannot be captured, and enemies may not land on it, though they may jump over it.
• Partners never capture each other. Their pieces can share a square and make a pair together.

Going home and winning

A piece goes home when it reaches the charkoni with an exact throw. A die that would carry it past the charkoni cannot be used on it.

With partners, a player whose four pieces are all home keeps throwing and moves the partner's pieces instead. The pair wins together when all eight of their pieces are home. Playing each for themselves, the first player with all four pieces home wins.

Where these rules come from

No rulebook for the Nepali game survives, so this table puts together what is known about pasa in Nepal with the oldest written rules for chaupar:

• The dice: Nepalese long dice come in sets of three marked 1, 2, 5 and 6 for the game called chausar or chaupur (the dice collection catalogued at CERN). Republica's "Juwako khaal" describes pasa as a game of three long dice played in Nepali homes at Tihar, and The Kathmandu Post mentions it beside kauda. Painted cross-shaped boards are still sold in the Kathmandu valley (Global InCH).
• The story of Jayaprakash Malla playing tripasa, a game of three dice, with the goddess Taleju every night is the founding legend of the royal Kumari (Wikipedia, citing Michael Allen).
• Using each die separately, capturing only single pieces, pairs that cannot be captured, the exact throw home, no extra throws and partners who carry on for each other all follow the rules recorded in the Ain-i-Akbari in 1590 (as encoded by the Ludii project and described by H. J. R. Murray and David Parlett).
• Sources disagree on where the pieces start. The Ain-i-Akbari sets them part way down the board; Pachisi players (Wikipedia) start them in the charkoni. This table starts them in the charkoni, the way most people in Nepal and India know the game, and lets any die bring one out.
• The long-dice sources have no safe squares; Pachisi boards mark twelve castles. The castles are printed on every chaupar cloth, so this table uses them.
• The extra throw after a capture comes from Pachisi, played with cowries, and is offered as an option.
• In Nepal Bhasa the word pasa means friend, and no source records a separate Newar way of playing, so this page calls the game Nepali rather than Newar.

Each for themselves

With four players you can switch off partnerships. Then all four colours race against each other and the first player with four pieces home wins.

Throw again after a capture

Pachisi players give an extra throw to anyone who captures. With this option a turn in which you capture at least one piece earns one more throw.