Southeast-Asia on The Gamecock Codex

Mappa Mundi Gallinae

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A Mappa Mundi Gallinae, drawn in the conventions of an early-modern portolan chart: rhumb lines, compass rose, dotted trade-routes between the great breeding regions, and crimson markers for the principal lines. The densest concentration sits over Java, Bali, and Sumatra — the heart of the Oriental gamefowl — with secondary clusters in South Asia (Aseel, Asil), East Asia (Shamo, Koeyoshi), the Mediterranean (the Old English Game’s deep ancestry), the United Kingdom, and the American South. The routes mark the spread of the fighting cock from India and the Indies outward, by trade, by gift, and by conquest.

Burmese Game

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Burmese Game is the fighting cock of Myanmar (Burma) — a large, heavily-built bird of South Asian derivation, closely related to the Asil but bred for the heavier, more decisive match typical of the Burmese pit.

Malay

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Malay is the tallest of all gamefowl breeds — a strange, almost reptilian bird with a long S-curved neck, a hawk-billed head set low on the shoulders, prominent shoulder hump, and legs that carry the body almost a metre off the ground. It was one of the first Asian breeds known in Europe and was the model from which Buffon and Aldrovandi drew their natural-history descriptions in the seventeenth century.

Sumatra

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Sumatra is a long-tailed, beetle-black gamefowl of the Indonesian island that gives it its name — a bird of almost pheasant-like carriage, kept today for exhibition and as one of the most striking of the long-crower breeds. It is the Western showman’s nearest approach to the wild Gallus varius of Java, although it is descended in fact from fighting stock of Sumatra rather than from any wild species.

Thai Game

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

date: 2026-06-01

The Thai Game — known in Thailand as ไก่ชน (kai chon, “fighting chicken”) — is the bird of the Siamese pit, the closest living relative of the prototype that the Japanese bred into the modern Shamo.

Plate VI — Thailändische Kämpfer

Tue, 01 Jan 1907 00:00:00 +0000

date: 1907-01-01

A hand-coloured engraving from Johann Houdry’s Die Kämpfhühner (The Fighting Fowl, 1907), depicting a Thai Game cock in the characteristic upright stance and sparse, close-fitting plumage of the Siamese fighting strains.