Kotu Ellima is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Sri Lanka (formerly called Ceylon) played by the Sinhalese people.
The game was documented by Henry Parker in Ancient Ceylon: An Account of the Aborigines and of Part of the Early Civilisation (1909);[1] the game was printed as "Kotu Ellima" which is actually a misspelling because his source for the game was Leopold Ludovici's Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (1873), and specifically in the chapter entitled "The Sports and Games of the Singhalese", and Ludovici wrote the name of the game as Kotu Ellime or Taking of the Castles.
It closely resembles peralikatuma and sixteen soldiers (or sholo guti) which are also played in Sri Lanka and other parts of the Indian subcontinent with the only difference being the number of pieces.
In Kotu Ellima, each player has 24 pieces, and at the beginning of the game the whole board is covered with them except the central point reminiscent of standard alquerque.
Only the central point is left vacant in the beginning of the game.