Philippine Sungka and Cultural Contact in Southeast Asia

Abstract

A study of game rules, playing practices, and four game boards in the American Museum of Natural History collections illustrate the early history and characteristics of the Philippine mancala game known as sungka. The distribution of comparable Southeast Asian mancala games suggests two waves of distribution. The first took place prior to the late nineteenth century and included different configurations of boards found in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Maldives; the second concerns the migration of Philippine people in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that only includes the sungka variant. Both exemplify cultural diffusion patterns in Asia that are extensive and based on a complex cultural phenomenon. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]