Aspects of the Traditional Gambling Game known as Sho in Modern Lhasa-religious and gendered worldviews infusing the Tibetan dice game-1

Daisuke Murakami
unpublished
4 According to my Tibetan informants from outside Central Tibet: Amdo (Qinghai Province and some parts of Gansu) and Kham (approximately, the western half of Sichuan Province and parts of Qinghai and Tibet Autonomous Region), sho is not commonly played among the Tibetan people living there. As for the exile community in India, as far as my observation in 2000 suggests, sho appears to be played in Dharamsala by some men. However, most of these players are gsar 'byor (new arrivals) who recently
more » ... ossed the Himalaya and settled in the community. 5 A Tibetan traditional game of sbag is often translated as dominoes, but looking at its principles it can be termed a Tibetan mahjong. As to its rules and historical development, see Wang (1995) and Otani (2003) . In contemporary Lhasa there are very few who can play sbag, perhaps partly because of the dominance of Chinese mahjong.
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