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Mancala, the National Game of Africa
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Free material for Culin's 1894 paper: two boards at playing size to print, all three complete games on a single sheet you can keep beside the board, the register that separates what he watched from what he was told, and every one of the twenty-two illustrations he published listed with the provenance he recorded for it.
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Two mancala boards to print and play on
PDF · US Letter · 2 pages
The two-row board of fourteen holes for the Syrian games, and the four-row board for Chuba. Drawn at playing size, with cups large enough to hold a stack of coins. Beans, coins or shells will do for counters; the game has always been played with whatever was to hand.
Open PDF311 KBAll three games, on one sheet
PDF · US Letter · 1 page
La'b madjnuni — the crazy game, whose result is fixed by the opening layout — its companion la'b akila, and Chuba. Culin sets his rules out as prose in the middle of an argument; here they are set out to be played from, and every place he leaves something unsaid says so.
Open PDF67 KBA Register of Record and Inference
PDF · US Letter · 1 page
What Culin watched in Washington Street, what a lad from Damascus told him, what he read in Lane and Hyde, and what he concluded from the three — kept apart on one page. A short paper moves between them inside a single sentence, which is exactly when it matters.
Open PDF67 KBThe objects he figured
PDF · US Letter · 1 page
All twenty-two captions from the illustrations this edition does not reproduce, in Culin's own wording, with the museum numbers and the provenance he recorded — a catalogue of the boards a curator could put his hands on in Philadelphia in 1894.
Open PDF66 KB
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About this material
Stewart Culin died in 1929 and the 1896 United States imprint puts this text in the public domain there on its own. None of the paper's five plates or fifteen text figures is reproduced: no photographer and no draughtsman is named for any of them, so nothing on this page is taken from them. Both boards were drawn for this edition from the counts in Culin's own text — fourteen holes and ninety-eight counters for the Syrian games, four rows for Chuba.