Tradition · board game tradition
Moksha Patam / Snakes and Ladders
Also known as Mokṣa Paṭam, Mokshapat, Snakes and Ladders, Chutes and Ladders, Gyan chauper, Jnan chauper, Paramapadam, Vaikuṇṭhapāḷi, Paramapada Sopāna Paṭamu, Saanp Seedhi
A race game on a grid of numbered squares in which ladders lift a player's piece and snakes drop it, played in India as Moksha Patam, 'liberation lesson', and in a Jain form as gyan chauper, 'game of wisdom'. Ladders stood for virtues, snakes for vices and the last square for moksha, and snakes outnumbered ladders because the good path is harder. It reached England in the 1890s, where Victorian virtues replaced the Indian ones, and America as Chutes and Ladders from 1943.
- Function
- Arts & performance
- Confidence
- Mixed / layered
Worth knowing
A Sufi version played in India, Iran and Turkey, shatranj al-'urafa, makes the board a dervish's journey towards union with God. In Tamil Nadu devotees of Vishnu play Paramapadam through the night of Vaikuntha Ekadashi to stay awake.
The game's antiquity is asserted but not securely dated: the earliest firmly dated board in the source is an English one registered by F. H. Ayres in October 1892, and a possible Buddhist version of the Pala-Sena period is unreferenced.
Connections (4)
- AnaloguePachisi / Ludo
Snakes and ladders came out of a family of Indian dice board games that included gyan chaupar and pachisi, and the two made the same journey west: pachisi was adapted as Ludo and Parcheesi, while gyan chaupar was sold in England as Snakes and Ladders, the earliest English version registered in 1892. Indian tradition also set the pair against each other, pachisi treating life as a mixture of skill and luck, Moksha Patam as the working out of destiny.
- AnalogueChaturanga / Chess
Chaturanga and Moksha Patam are both Indian board games that left India under new names. Chaturanga, first clearly mentioned in sixth-century Gupta north India, was adopted in Sasanian Persia as chatrang or shatranj and became the chess of late-medieval Europe. The Persian word then attached itself to the other game: the Sufi version of snakes and ladders played in India, Iran and Turkey is called shatranj al-'urafa, recasting the climb to moksha as a dervish's journey towards union with God.
- Associated withJainism
Gyan chauper or jnan chauper, the game of wisdom, is the version of the game tied to Jain philosophy, built around karma and moksha. A player's climb up the board stood for a life journey through virtues and vices, with liberation at the top and rebirth in lower forms of life as the penalty for vice. Moksha Patam boards made the same moral point by putting gods at the top and giving the board more snakes than ladders, because the path of good is harder.
- Located atNational Museum, New Delhi
The National Museum in New Delhi holds a gyan chaupar board, the Jain version of the game. Boards of this kind were covered with symbolic images, gods and majestic beings at the top and animals, flowers and people below, with each ladder and snake attached to a named virtue or vice. They are the material evidence for the Indian moral game that Victorian England relabelled with ladders of Thrift, Penitence and Industry and snakes of Indulgence, Disobedience and Indolence.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Snakes and ladders" and "Chaturanga". Andrew Topsfield, "The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders", Artibus Asiae (1985); Andrew Topsfield, The Art of Play: Board and Card Games of India (2006).
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