Domain XXIII · PLAY & PASTIME
Play & Pastime
کھیل
Leisure is an art · Ganjifa, shatranj, kabootar
Rootsthe tradition
Circular ganjifa cards hand-painted in lacquer and dealt by suit, shatranj with its slow-moving elephant and counsellor, kabootar-baazi flown by whistle, chaupar cloth, pachisi cowries.
The ideawhat it values
Games were made with the patience given to anything else at court: hand-painted discs lacquered until they resist the thumb, a board divided and stocked with pieces ranked like an actual army, birds flown to a vocabulary of signals and wagers. The rules were as elaborate as the objects. Calling any of it a pastime undersells the craft.
Plateswhat the record looks like
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The groundin the Atlas
The tree names 34 topics here, under Popular & Folk Culture. A branch carries more than one domain, so read it as the ground rather than the boundary.
Gathered whole: Qissa Storytelling
Writtenwhere the archive stands
Nothing written here yet. The tree already names 34 topics on this ground, so the gap is one of writing rather than of scope — and saying so is more use than filling the page.