Shagai refers to the astragalus of the ankle of a sheep or goat. The bones are collected and used for traditional games and fortunetelling throughout Central Asia, and games involving the ankle bones may also be referred to by the name of the bones. They may be painted bright colours.
Such bones have been used throughout history, and are thought to be the first forms of dice. In English language sources, shagai may be referred to as "ankle bones", and playing with shagai is sometimes called ankle bone shooting....
... I am so sorry to do this to you, but this post has been moved to my new website, Divination, and can be found in its entirety here: Shagai - Throwing The Bones
2 comments:
Your goat and sheep are transposed, at least according to wikipedia
Thanks for the info. I'll take another look and decide if I should edit the article or just add a disclaimer. There do seem to be inconsistencies - and ideas vary depending on geographical location and local lore.
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