Khuru (sport)

Khuru (Dzongkha: ཁུ་རུ་; Wylie: khu-ru) is a traditional Bhutanese sport. It involves throwing darts outdoors with a target approximately 20 metres (66 ft). A short segment of the BBC TV programme 'Lost Land of the Tiger' (series 1, episode 2: 2010), filmed at a village game in the southeast of the country, implies the following features:

1. It is a team sport. It seems to involve about 8 to 12 players, but the number of teams is not mentioned.

2. Competitors (all adult males in the clip, although there is a woman instructing the guest) take turns to throw two darts, one after the other.

3. These darts are wooden sticks, approximately 20cm long, with a sharp point at the tip, a bone, wood, or metal collar surrounding the middle 6cm or so (acting as a handle and to give the projectile enough weight to fly and embed), and four wooden fins at the rear.

4. The target is a wooden flat-sided post, perhaps 50cm tall,15cm wide, and 8cm thick, stuck into the ground in front of a low bank. Its top is rounded. The front, sides, and top of the post are wrapped in white paper, and the front face has a design marked on it in, seemingly drawn with a black marker pen. Around the curved top is an arc of six small stars. Beneath this is a circle about 4cm in diameter, with a still smaller circle within it. Directly beneath this is a line, bowed slightly downwards in the middle. A second line, more deeply bowed, appears beneath this, meeting the edges of the post at the same points. A short horizontal mark appears midway between these two curved lines. Beneath the lower curve, and roughly midway up the post, is a circle almost the full width of the post, with a small (approximately 4cm in diameter) circle within it. A feint figure '2' appears below this. The lowest 15cm or so of the face is marked off by a horizontal line, below which is a pattern composed of numerous crosses and a curtain-like design. The significance of these markings is not explained, but the middle concentric circles resemble a target.

5. Over this post is an arch made of thin branches, approximately semicircular, and about 120cm in diameter. At the points where this arch is embedded in the ground, two wooden uprights are erected, approximately 2.5 metres high.

6. Other players (or perhaps judges or helpers) stand close to the target, wearing large white cuffs around their wrists, seemingly helping to indicate the target.

7. The 'court' appears to be double ended, because another, similar target can be glimpsed just behind the thrower.

8. The game is preceded and followed by singing and dancing.

See also

• Jarts
• Sports in Bhutan