Ganjifa

Ganjifa is a 4-player trick-taking card game played with 96 circular cards — 8 suits of 12 ranks each. You play as South against three AI opponents: West, North, and East.

Reading a Card

Each circular card has three zones:

• Outer ring — colored in the suit's color, with a spoke pattern. Gold outer ring = court card (Mir or Vizier).
• Middle ring (cream band) — shows the rank label at the top: M = Mir (rank 12, the King — highest card in any suit), V = Vizier (rank 11, the Minister — second highest), 1–10 = pip cards in descending power (10 beats 9, 9 beats 8, etc., down to 1 which is lowest).
• Center circle — the suit motif, a small illustration identifying which suit the card belongs to.

The 8 Suits

Each suit represents a theme from the Mughal imperial court:

• 🔴 Ghulam (dark red) — Servant. The motif shows a standing court figure. Mir = enthroned ruler, Vizier = standing minister with staff.
• 🟡 Taj (gold) — Crown. The motif shows a jeweled 3-point crown, symbol of imperial authority.
• 🔵 Shamshir (blue) — Sword. The motif shows a curved Mughal scimitar blade with a crossguard.
• 🟢 Qimash (green) — Cloth. The motif shows draped fabric waves, representing the textile trade central to Mughal commerce.
• 🟣 Qulaba (purple) — Harness. The motif shows a circular bridle ring with spokes, representing the imperial stables.
• 🟠 Chang (orange) — Harp. The motif shows an arched harp with strings, representing music at the Mughal court.
• 🟥 Surkh (deep red) — Gold Coins. The motif shows a stack of coin discs, representing the imperial treasury.
• ⬜ Safed (grey-green) — Silver Ingot. The motif shows a trapezoid ingot bar, representing silver wealth.

How a Round Works

1. Trump suit: Determined automatically from your hand each round — the suit of your highest-ranked card (first Mir, then Vizier, else random). Shown in the Trump panel on the right.
2. Leading: The leader plays any card to start a trick. That card's suit becomes the "led suit."
3. Following suit: You must play a card of the led suit if you have one. If not, play anything (including trump).
4. Winning a trick: Only trump and led-suit cards can win. Highest trump wins; if no trump played, highest led-suit card wins. Cards of other suits can never win, no matter how high their rank.
5. Trick winner leads next. 24 tricks per round.
6. Scoring: 1 point per trick won. Win all 24 = +5 slam bonus. First to 50 points across rounds wins.

Controls

• Hover a card to enlarge it and see the suit clearly.
• Click once to select (gold ring appears, card lifts). Click again to play it.
• Dimmed cards are illegal to play this turn. Hover them to inspect, but only bright cards can be played.

Ganjifa traces its roots to Persian ganjifeh playing cards, introduced to India by Mughal Emperor Babur in the early 16th century. The name itself derives from the Persian word for "playing cards."

Unlike European playing cards made of paper, Ganjifa cards were circular discs hand-crafted from lacquered cotton cloth, ivory, or tortoiseshell — then painted by court artists with extraordinary detail. Their circular shape distinguished them from all other card traditions worldwide.

Mughal Ganjifa typically featured 8 suits of 12 cards each (96 cards total), with suits representing imperial themes: gold coins, silver ingots, swords, harps, cloth, crowns, and servants of the court. Regional variants developed over centuries — most notably Dashavatara Ganjifa from Odisha, which used 10 suits to depict the ten avatars of Vishnu, fusing Hindu iconography with the Persian card tradition.

The craft is now nearly extinct. Fewer than a dozen artisans in Odisha — particularly in the town of Parlakhemundi — still practice the traditional art of painting Ganjifa cards, each card requiring days of meticulous work with natural pigments and lacquer. Efforts are underway by cultural preservation organizations to document and revive this vanishing art form.