The history of {game}
Where these games come from, and how they travelled.
Timeline
Java
The game is named after the city of Surakarta in central Java, and is also called permainan, which simply means 'a game'. It was documented by European writers in the twentieth century, and its earlier history is not well recorded.
It has no known relatives. The looping capture appears in no other traditional board game we know of, which is unusual: most board-game ideas turn up in several places. This one seems to be a single invention.
A modern favourite
Surakarta became popular outside Indonesia in the late twentieth century, helped by how well it photographs: the arcs make it one of the most recognisable boards ever designed. It is small enough that computers play it very strongly, and large enough that people still enjoy it.
Works consulted
Cited, never copied. Where accounts disagree we say so rather than choosing the tidier story.
- R. C. Bell, Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations, for the board and the capture rule.
- Twentieth-century ethnographic descriptions of the Javanese game, for the setup and names.