Malays (ethnic group)
The Malays also have a variant of Mancala board game known as Congkak. The game is played by moving stones, marbles, beads or shells around a wooden board consisting of twelve or more holes. Mancala is acknowledged as the oldest game in the world and can be traced its origin since Ancient Egypt.
As the game dispersed around the globe, every culture has invented its own variation including the Malays.
History of games
Chaturanga (which means 'quadripartite' and also 'army'), the predecessor of Chess, possibly developed in the Indian subcontinent or Central Asia during the Kushan (30–375 CE) or Gupta (320–550 CE) periods from an amalgamation of other game features and was transmitted to Sassanid Persia (where it was known as Shatranj) and China through the Silk Road. The oldest text to mention Chaturanga is the middle Persian work "Wizârîshn î chatrang ud nîhishn î nêw-ardakhshîr" (The explanation of Chatrang and the invention of Nard, c. 600 AD). This texts tells the arrival of Chatrang in an embassy from 'Hind' during the reign of Khosrau I (531–579). The name 'Hind' was often used to refer to eastern regions such as Balochistan. Another game named Chaturaji was similar but played with four sides of differing colors instead of two, however the earliest source for this four sided board game is Al-Biruni's 'India', circa 1030 AD. Historians of Chess such as Yuri Averbakh have surmised that the Greek board game "petteia" may have had an influence on the development of early Chaturanga. "Petteia" games could have combined with other elements in the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms.