🇮🇳 Indian Games

Snakes & Ladders: The Ancient Indian Game That Became a Global Classic

Snakes and Ladders is one of the most recognised board games in the world. Played by children and families across every continent, the game's simple mechanics — climb the ladders, slide down the snakes — are universally understood. Yet most people who play Snakes and Ladders today have no idea that the game originated in ancient India as a profound spiritual teaching tool.

The story of Snakes and Ladders is a journey from 2nd-century BCE India through the British Empire and into the living rooms of the entire world. Here is the complete history of one of humanity's oldest and most beloved games.

The Ancient Origins: Moksha Patam

The original version of the game was called Moksha Patam (also known as Gyan Chaupar or Leela). It is believed to have been created by Gyandev — a 13th-century saint and poet of the Warkari tradition in Maharashtra — though some historians date variants of the game even earlier, to the 2nd century BCE.

"Moksha Patam" translates roughly to "board of liberation." The game was not designed as entertainment — it was a moral and spiritual teaching instrument. Every square on the board represented either a virtue (leading to spiritual upliftment) or a vice (leading to downfall), and the game taught players about the consequences of their actions in life.

The Original Snakes and Ladders: Virtues vs. Vices

In the original Moksha Patam, the squares were not random. Each ladder and snake had specific moral significance:

Ladders (Virtues)	Snakes (Vices/Sins)
Faith (Shraddha)	Disobedience (Avigya)
Reliability (Bharosa)	Vanity (Ahankar)
Generosity (Daana)	Lust (Kama)
Knowledge (Gyana)	Anger (Krodha)
Asceticism (Vairagya)	Greed (Lobha)
Good deeds (Satkarm)	Theft (Chori)
Grace (Anugraha)	Lying (Jhooth)

The game was played during religious festivals and used as a teaching tool for children. The randomness of the dice represented the role of fate and karma in human life — while virtuous actions (ladders) could elevate you, fate (the dice) still played a role in your progress. No amount of virtue guaranteed a straight path — this was a deeply realistic reflection of Hindu philosophical thought.

Regional Variations Across India

As the game spread across India over the centuries, different regions developed their own versions with locally relevant virtues, vices, and artistic styles:

• Gyan Chaupar: The Jain version, focusing on Jain virtues and the path to enlightenment.
• Leela: A variant played in some parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat with different moral themes.
• Paramapada Sopanam: A Tamil version (literally "steps to the highest place"), still played in some South Indian communities during religious festivals.

Each version retained the fundamental structure — ladders for virtues, snakes for sins, and a dice-governed journey toward liberation — but adapted the specific moral lessons to the local cultural and religious context.

The British Transformation (1800s)

British colonists in India encountered Moksha Patam during the 19th century. They were fascinated by the game but wished to adapt it for their own use. In 1892, the game was introduced to Britain under the name "Snakes and Ladders".

The British version made several significant changes:

• Removed the spiritual framework: The specific virtues and vices were stripped away, making the game purely recreational rather than morally instructive.
• Standardised the board: The board was standardised to a 10×10 grid of 100 squares (from various sizes in Indian versions).
• Balanced snakes and ladders: The British version roughly equalised the number of snakes and ladders, whereas Indian versions often had more snakes than ladders (reflecting the difficulty of achieving moksha).
• Removed religious imagery: Hindu and Jain religious iconography was replaced with generic illustrations of snakes and ladders.

The Victorian British loved the game's moral undertones — the idea that vice leads to downfall and virtue leads to success resonated with Victorian values — even though they had stripped the specifically Indian religious context from it.

Snakes and Ladders Goes Global

From Britain, the game spread rapidly across the world through the British Empire and global toy trade:

• United States: The game arrived in North America in the early 20th century. Milton Bradley published it as "Chutes and Ladders" in 1943, replacing snakes with playground slides and explicitly adding moral lessons to each ladder and chute.
• Europe: The game spread across Europe under various names, often with locally adapted moral themes.
• Australia and Africa: The game became popular across British colonies, where it was often used in schools as a moral teaching tool — ironically returning it to something closer to its original Indian purpose.

Snakes and Ladders in Modern India

Today, Snakes and Ladders remains one of the most played board games in India. It is a staple of primary school classrooms, family gatherings, and children's birthday parties across the country. The game has also inspired numerous mobile apps, with Indian versions of Snakes and Ladders apps downloaded hundreds of millions of times.

There is a beautiful irony in the game's journey: it began in India as a spiritual teaching tool, was stripped of its spiritual content by British colonists, spread around the world as a purely recreational game, and returned to India decades later as a beloved family game — carrying faint echoes of its original moral purpose in the intuitive sense that ladders are good and snakes are bad.

How to Play Snakes and Ladders

The rules are beautifully simple:

1. Each player starts at square 1 (bottom-left of the board).
2. Take turns rolling a die and moving your token forward by the number shown.
3. If you land at the bottom of a ladder, climb to the top.
4. If you land on a snake's head, slide down to its tail.
5. The first player to reach square 100 (or beyond, with exact roll required in some versions) wins.