Did you Know?

while I was going through  a book,I came across an interesting piece of information about  snakes & ladders . “Moksha Patam “was earlier known as snakes and ladders and just realised ,that the game snake and ladder originated from India .And  then I was so eager to know about the game that i decided to write this piece .

The game is a simple  and was very popular with young children .

It was known as moksha patam or vaikunthapaali or paramapada sopaanam (the ladder to salvation). The game made its way to England and was sold as “Snakes and Ladders”, then the basic concept was introduced in the United States as Chutes and Ladders
Known as Moksha Patam, the game was popular in ancient India and emphasized the role of fate or Karma  . A Jain version, Gyanbazi or Gyan chauper , dates to the 16th century. The game was called Leela   and reflected the Hinduism  consciousness surrounding everyday life. The underlying ideals of the game inspired a version introduced in victorian England  in 1892.Moksha Patam was associated with traditional Hindu and jain philosophy and  contrasting karma and kama, or destiny and desire. It emphasized destiny, as opposed to games such as pachisi, which focused on life as a mixture of skill (free will) and luck. The game has also been interpreted and used as a tool for teaching the effects of good deeds versus bad. The ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility, while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder, and theft. The morality lesson of the game was that a person can attain salvation (Moksha) through doing good, whereas by doing evil one will inherit rebirth   to lower forms of life. The number of ladders was less than the number of snakes as a reminder that a path of good is much more difficult to tread than a path of sins. Presumably the number “100” represented Moksha (salvation). In Andhra pradesh  , Snakes and Ladders is played in the name of Vaikuntapali.The phrase “back to square one” originates in the game of snakes and ladders, or at least was influenced by it .

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