Card games.

The traditions of India's round, hand-painted cards.

GanjifaRound cards, painted by hand, played by emperors. A game where forgetting one card can cost you everything.

Dashavatar GanjifaTen suits, ten faces of the god Vishnu. One writer even claimed the game could wash away your sins.

GanjappaOdisha's own ganjifa: flowers for crowns, the sun and moon for money, and Lord Jagannatha in the pack.

The Mysore palace gamesA king who spent his life inventing card games, with eighteen suits, a goddess in charge and up to 360 cards a pack.

NaqshForget the long battle of tricks. Naqsh is a quick bet: build a lucky pattern of cards and scoop the pot.

Akbar's twelve-suit packTwelve lords of horses, elephants, demons and snakes. Then an emperor decided the kings looked too alike, and changed the pack.

Where the cards came fromChina, the Mongols, Egypt, Venice, Persia, India. Nobody saw cards being invented, so the story is a detective case.

When European cards came to IndiaSailors brought cups and swords, the British brought spades. India painted them all over again, sometimes round.

More traditions to come.