Long before children traded Pokémon cards on school playgrounds, India had its own beloved deck. Ganjifa, a game of hand-painted, circular cards, once entertained Mughal royalty and travelled through princely courts across the subcontinent. 

Today, this centuries-old art survives largely because one royal family in Maharashtra refused to let it fade away.

A treasure from Persia

The word Ganjifa comes from the Persian ganj, meaning treasure. The game arrived in India in the 16th century and found eager patrons in Mughal emperors Akbar and Shah Jahan, who turned it into a favoured royal pastime. 

Akbar is even credited with standardising a 96-card version played across eight suits of twelve ranks each, while also devising an expanded set that mirrored the branches of his own administration.

Unlike the rectangular decks familiar today, Ganjifa cards were round, and every single one was painted by hand. Suits told stories drawn from mythology, often depicting the Dashavatara, the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, alongside kings, chariots, courtly life and, in some regional styles, signs of the zodiac. As the game spread across India, local schools of painting shaped it differently. 

The Ganjifa of Mysore, for instance, carried its own distinct visual language under the patronage of the Wodeyar kings, quite unlike the style that took root on Maharashtra's Konkan coast.

The earliest cards........

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