Article

Games

From Munshipedia, the MBRAS digital historical encyclopedia

Games

Games in the Malay Peninsula and Borneo encompass a wide range of recreational and gambling activities documented from the late nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth century, spanning Chinese lotteries, Malay board games, card games, and outdoor entertainments. The literature reveals a region in which gaming served simultaneously as a social institution, an economic activity, and a source of administrative concern for colonial authorities. The games recorded range from the highly organised Chap-Ji-Ki lottery that swept through Singapore’s Chinese trading community in the 1890s [1] to the village-level board games played with tamarind seeds on boat-shaped boards [2], and from the complex rule systems of Malay chess [3] to the simple shell-scattering games of small children [4].

Members & Sub-Topics

Chinese Lotteries and Gambling

The most extensively documented category of games in the archival record concerns Chinese gambling practices in the Straits Settlements, particularly the two major lottery systems that operated in Penang and Singapore during the late nineteenth century.

The Hua-Hoey (Thirty-Six Animals) lottery was described in detail by C.W.S. Kynnersley in 1885, drawing on a Chinese dream-interpretation manual and direct observation of the game’s operation in Penang and Singapore [5]. The lottery is drawn twice daily, at noon and at 6 p.m., with a payout of thirty times the stake, less a small agent’s commission [5, p. 245]. The cultural engine of the game is its dream-interpretation system: players do not stake randomly but consult their dreams against a fixed key of thirty-six animal characters, making the lottery as much a divination practice as a gambling one [5]. The thirty-six characters are classified into occupational groups: Four of the Highest Degree, Seven Traders, Four Priests, Five Generals, Four Ladies, Four Happy-lot, One Nun, Two Friars, and Five Beggars [5, pp. 238–243]. Kynnersley is frank about the systemic fraud inherent in the game’s operation: the animal least favoured by the public is frequently declared the winner, and managers have been known to stake by deputy on the animal they intend to declare, thereby defrauding genuine winners [5]. A memorial from Penang Chinese residents dated 30 September 1885 records that a previous suppression campaign approximately twenty years earlier imposed fines of up to $3,000 and rigorous imprisonment, which temporarily halted the game until it re-opened “with re-doubled vigour” within the last year [5, p. 250]. The memorial also specifies that a keeper guarantees liability for only $1,000 per session, yet may collect $2,000 or more in stakes from two thousand or more players, pocketing the entire sum if all lose [5, p. 249].

The Chap-Ji-Ki lottery, documented by G.T. Hare in 1898, represented a newer and more tightly organised form of gambling that swept through Singapore’s Straits-born Hokkien and Teochew Chinese trading community between 1893 and 1896 [1]. The game is won by guessing one of twelve cards—six “red” and six “black,” derived from Chinese chess figures—selected from a pack of ordinary Chinese playing cards; winners received ten times their stake [1, p. 4]. Hare’s account is notable for its detailed operational knowledge, documenting the symbolic notations used on stake packets, the internal communication protocols between managers and collectors, and the elaborate evasion strategies employed against police detection [1]. The principal distinguishing feature of the Singapore variant was that it was a “close” lottery, confined practically to Hokkien and Teochew Straits-born Chinese women of the trading classes [1]. Daily total stakes at the three principal lotteries ranged from $300 to $500 or more, while sub-agencies handled roughly $100 per day [1, pp. 9–10]. Collectors (phoe-kha) received a commission of at least 10 per cent on all money won by their clients [1, p. 9]. The game was broken up by Government action in 1896 [1, p. 2].

Malay Board Games and Card Games

The Malay board game tradition is represented in the records by several distinct types, ranging from the mancala family to chess variants to fox-and-geese games.

Malay chess, known locally as makro or makruk, was studied by T.B. Elcum in 1907 from direct observation of village games in the Malay Peninsula [3]. Elcum identifies several key divergences from European chess: the starting arrangement places the menteri (queen) on the right of the king, directly opposite the opposing king rather than the opposing queen; the king possesses a one-time “leap” (a knight’s move or a two-square lateral move) that functions as a substitute for castling; and the promotion rules are markedly more restrictive, requiring pawns on files other than the rook’s file to play back diagonally a specified number of moves before they may promote [3, pp. 88–90]. A lone king must be mated within seven moves or the game is drawn, discovered check cannot deliver mate, and there is a strong cultural prejudice against exchanging queens [3, pp. 90–91]. Elcum frames these rules as making the game harder to win by a material advantage, thereby favouring the weaker player and producing a different strategic character from European chess [3]. The game is played across the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo, with the proportion of men who can play described as “probably greater than with most races” [3, p. 88]. R.O. Winstedt later published a set of rules for Malay chess as played at Sri Menanti in Negri Sembilan in 1917, obtained from a manuscript copy he had kept in reserve until he could learn the game himself [6].

The mancala-family game known as “chongkak” (or “dakon” in Java) is documented in two complementary accounts. M. Hellier’s 1907 note describes the Malay variant, played on a boat-shaped board with seven holes per side and a larger compartment at each end, using tamarind seeds or marbles [2]. The name is derived from “jong” (junk), and the game was originally a women’s game at Malay courts [2]. Hellier records the rules for continued play, the “dead” (mati) condition when the last seed falls in an empty hole, the “sacrifice” (mati bela) rule, and the final loss condition “utterly destroyed” (mati kena abu) [2]. H. Overbeck’s 1915 note supplements this with the Ceylonese variant, which he judged to be more complex than the Malay form [7]. Overbeck’s account derives from a period aboard the mailsteamer to Colombo, where Singhalese passengers taught him the rules, and from a carved Balinese board shaped as a two-headed dragon with four wheels, bearing two rows of nine holes and two rumahs (stores) [7, pp. 7–8]. The Ceylonese players described the game as one of the oldest of India, with the characteristic two-row hole pattern found cut in the rocks of the oldest temples [7, p. 7].

Other Malay board games include sodok apit, described by Raja Samusah in 1932, in which two players use 16 pieces of equal value on a draughtsboard, moving orthogonally any number of squares and capturing by two methods: sodo’ (moving into the empty square between two opposing pieces to remove both) and apit (enclosing one or more opposing pieces on two opposite sides) [8]. O.T. Dussek documented two further games in 1919: Main Pacheh, comparing the Acheh and Penang varieties of a racing-and-capturing game, and Main Tapak Empat, a Menangkabau fox-and-geese type game in which two harimau (tiger) pieces attempt to capture 24 kambing (goat) pieces [9]. A.H. Hill recorded the Tiger Game (Main Rimau) as unique to Kelantan, played on a board of twenty-five holes with two rimau (tigers) against twenty lembu (cattle) [10, p. 29].

Malay card games were treated by R.O. Winstedt in 1906 as a supplement to W.W. Skeat’s earlier account in Malay Magic [11]. Winstedt documents four distinct games: main chabut, a vingt-et-un variant played to either twenty-one or thirty-one pips; daun tiga lei (or pakau), a three-card game whose hand rankings vary significantly by region; main trop, a trick-taking game; and main daun cheki, a card game with two species, cho’it and chochot [11]. The regional variation in daun tiga lei is particularly striking: in Perak the best hand is three aces, in Selangor three threes, and in Singapore three court cards (tiga kuda), while in Singapore three aces are the worst possible hand, scoring only three pips [11, pp. 86–87]. Winstedt also records a set of covert hand signals used by colluding partners in main trop, which he wryly notes are “masonic signs accounted by Malay gamblers proper and clever, but which we should call cheating” [11, p. 88].

Outdoor Games and Entertainments

The records also encompass outdoor games and physical entertainments that form part of the broader recreational culture. A.H. Hill’s 1952 survey of Kelantan documents bull-fighting, kite-flying, and the shadow play (wayang kulit) alongside the board game Main Rimau [10]. The Kota Bharu bull-fighting arena (bong) measures sixty yards square, enclosed by stout bamboo posts with the top horizontal rail approximately eight feet from the ground [10, p. 20]. The Sultan of Kelantan had made bull-fighting and all animal contests illegal before the war primarily to curb gambling; the ban was lifted in August 1950 at the suggestion of the Kelantan University Appeal Fund Committee [10, p. 20]. Hill catalogues the taxonomy of bull colouration (kumbang, jebat, gedabu, sela, kubing, kijang, langsat, and mixed types), horn morphology (dogol, debek, chakar, molek, sodo’, kupit, kerutut, kerutok), and fighting techniques (tandok, ambil rusok, pulas, bembing, gonggong, tanggang) [10].

The largest Kelantan kites stand ten feet high with an eight-foot wing span; the flying string, made of thin twine identical to that used for fishing nets, may be paid out to a distance exceeding 2,000 feet [10, pp. 27–28]. Hill observes that the judge determines the winner by estimating string length and angle of inclination without any knowledge of trigonometry, yet his verdict is rarely contested [10].

C. Bazell’s 1928 note, communicated from Malay College, Kuala Kangsar, presents rules for three games written by students: an outdoor jumping game introduced by the refrain “Pat! Pat! Suku Lipat; Siapa dapat, orang itu melompat”; Belaga Buah Keras, a gambling game particularly associated with the Pahang Malays in which two competitors each produce a hard nut (buah keras) that is placed in a wooden press and stamped until one breaks; and Tebar Jala (“Throwing the casting net”), a shell-scattering game for small children [4].

Research and Documentation

The Society’s literature on games spans nearly seven decades, from Kynnersley’s 1885 description of Hua-Hoey to Hill’s 1952 survey of Kelantan entertainments, and reveals a shifting set of priorities that mirrors broader changes in colonial administrative and scholarly concern. The earliest contributions—Kynnersley on Hua-Hoey [5] and Hare on Chap-Ji-Ki [1]—are explicitly motivated by the need to build a legislative case for suppression, and their authors were colonial administrators or officials with direct operational knowledge of the games’ internal mechanics. These pieces read as professional records rather than purely scholarly exercises, and their framing of Chinese gambling through Restoration-era English analogies reflects the administrative discourse of the period that treated indigenous gambling as a problem to be managed rather than a cultural practice to be understood on its own terms [1].

The turn of the century saw a shift toward comparative ethnography. Elcum’s study of Malay chess [3], Hellier’s note on jongkak [2], Winstedt’s card games [11], and Overbeck’s chongkak [7] all follow the standard practice of the colonial administrative class in cataloguing local customs for a metropolitan learned society, with the village game rendered as a curiosity to be described and classified. These pieces are grounded in direct personal observation and fieldwork, and they begin to establish comparative frameworks—Elcum’s rule-by-rule comparison with European chess, Overbeck’s linking of Javanese, Malay, and Ceylonese traditions, Winstedt’s documentation of regional variation in hand rankings.

The interwar and post-war period introduces a different register. Samusah’s bilingual note on sodok apit [8] and Bazell’s student-written rules [4] reflect the institutionalisation of Malay cultural knowledge within the colonial education system, with Malay College, Kuala Kangsar, serving as a site of both preservation and transmission. Hill’s 1952 survey [10] represents the most mature ethnographic treatment in the series, combining personal fieldwork with comparison against earlier colonial-era publications and situating Kelantanese practices within broader South and Southeast Asian traditions. The immediate post-war context—several traditional entertainments in flux due to the recent lifting of the Sultan’s ban and the growing influence of cinema—gives the piece a sense of cultural urgency absent from the earlier, more detached administrative accounts.

Chinese Games

Malay Games

MBRAS Sources

Chinese Games

Malay Games

References

  1. Hare G.T (1898). The game of chap-ji-ki JSBRAS 31: 63–71.
  2. M. Hellier (1907). Note on the Malay game ‘jongkak’ JSBRAS 49: 93–94.
  3. T.B. Elcum (1907). Malay chess JSBRAS 49: 87–92. Read on JSTOR
  4. C. Bazell (1928). The rules for some common Malay games written by students at the Malay College, Kuala Kangsar and communicated by C. Bazell {Headmaster JMBRAS 6(4): 46–48.
  5. C.W.S. Kynnersley (1885). A description of the Chinese lottery known as Hua-Hoey JSBRAS 16: 203–250.
  6. R.O. Winstedt (1917). Rules in Malay chess JSBRAS 77: 261.
  7. H. Overbeck (1915). New notes on the game of “chongkak” JSBRAS 68: 7–10.
  8. Samusah (1932). The Malay game of apit JMBRAS 10(1): 138–140.
  9. O.T. Dussek (1919). Notes on Malay indoor games JSBRAS 80: 69–71.
  10. A.H. Hill (1952). Some Kelantan games and entertainments JMBRAS 25(1): 20–34.
  11. R.O. Winstedt (1906). Some notes on Malay card games JSBRAS 45: 85–88. Read on JSTOR