Chaupat: A board game born in India.

The game of Chaupat comes from India, it also has a closely related game called Pashisi, both are the origins of the cross-and-circle games, both which are now known as 'Ludo' (below). However Ludo today is a a much simpler game which Chaupat and Pashisi are. 

The players aim is to race their pieces around the board, the moves are determined by the score from throwing cowry shells. When two pieces of the board land on each other they merge to form a super piece. 

All seven cowry shells are used in each throw.

Scoring is as follows:

All 7 facing down – 7 points
1 facing up, 6 facing down – 11 points
2 facing up, 5 facing down – 2 points
3 facing up, 4 facing down – 3 points
4 facing up, 3 facing down – 4 points
5 facing up, 2 facing down – 25 points
6 facing up, 1 facing down – 30 points
All 7 facing up – 14 points

The biggest resource for the rules and how it was played are from Wikipedia,  It's hard to find an exact date of when it was made but It is played in a great Indian epic called Mahabharata, the epic it's self is from before 400 B.C.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopat

http://listverse.com/2013/01/20/10-most-important-board-games-in-history/