Last week I took a fascinating trip through the temples of Salem and Namakkal. I spent my time happily documenting games etched on the floors of temples and monuments while my friends watched, amused. They did have a very pertinent question for me. If I already knew about a game, why did I photograph every instance of its appearance on these floors?

The answer is simple. Most traditional games belong to the oral tradition, and there is very little evidence about their presence, popularity, or geographic spread, as they were often drawn on sand with a stick or with chalk on stone floors. These are the only tangible and physical evidence we have.

As I have spent a couple of decades documenting them and visiting many temples, I see patterns emerge. This is not unlike the Pensieve in Harry Potter books, where Dumbledore remarks, “I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one’s mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one’s leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand when they are in this form.”

While I do not have a Pensieve, I do examine the photographs at my leisure to notice links. For example, multiple boards of the same game in a single temple could give clues to its popularity. A game that has no local presence could indicate migrant craftsmen. Simple patterns repeated in numerous temples could be clues to forgotten games. The list goes on.

Sometimes, games can provide deeper insights. One example of this was at the Tharamangalam temple. While most etchings of games are executed with lines, I saw a very interesting style in the temples of the Hoysala period. Many of the games were executed by a series of cup marks — little depressions to indicate the points where game pieces could be placed or moved. As these are usually at the intersection of lines, one could visualise the board.

I mentally started associating this style with the Hoysalas. Imagine my surprise when I encountered a game etched with cup marks on one of the platforms of the temple. While I am no history scholar, I was surprised to find this style in Salem and reached out to a historian. What I learned was fascinating. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Tharamangalam’s epigraphs is the presence of Hoysala dynasty inscriptions.

Two records (dated 1254 CE and 1279 CE) cite “Posala Mannan Veera Ramanatha Devar” — referring to Vira Ramanatha, a Hoysala prince-turned-king. These inscriptions provide evidence of the Hoysala empire’s incursion into the western Tamil country and their patronage of local temples. Vira Ramanatha was a Hoysala ruler who, after 1254 CE, governed the southern part of the kingdom. His father, King Vira Someshwara, split the empire between Ramanatha and his brother Narasimha III. Ramanatha’s dominion included the Tamil territories conquered by the Hoysalas.

Essentially, from the 1250s to 1290s, there was a Hoysala presence in Tamil Nadu, in rivalry and conflict with the Pandya dynasty. Historical records note that Ramanatha’s inscriptions (1257-1294 CE) are all in Tamil and found across his Tamil territory. The Tharamangalam inscriptions are a perfect illustration of that: even though he was a Kannada monarch, the records here are composed in Tamil, the local tongue, to address the local population and priesthood. The use of the term ‘Posala’ (Tamil for Hoysala) in the inscription underlines that identity.

While it was documented history, one humble etching by a player hundreds of years ago gave us a clue to the history of the region. Such is the power of games.

The story is reported by Vinita Sidhartha of The New Indian Express.