Snakes and ladders
AI-drafted · awaiting admin review
Snakes and ladders was sold in Britain from the 1890s and in the US as Chutes and Ladders, but it began in India as a game of karma and liberation.
India first (well documented)Culture, games, language & ideas
Indian claim
Snakes and ladders is the Indian game gyan chaupar ('game of knowledge'), also called moksha patam, in which ladders stand for virtues and snakes for vices, and the last square is liberation (moksha).
Evidence for the Indian claim
- Many hand-painted gyan chaupar boards survive in Hindu, Jain and Sufi versions; British officers collected and took them to England in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- The art historian Andrew Topsfield's study 'The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders' (Artibus Asiae, 1985) documents the Indian boards in their Hindu, Jain and Muslim (Sufi) forms.
- The squares carry Indian moral and religious ideas (karma, virtues, vices, liberation), which the British version simplified into 'virtue rewarded and vice punished'.
Commonly credited to
British and American toy makers sold it as a children's game ('Snakes and Ladders' in Britain from the 1890s; 'Chutes and Ladders' by Milton Bradley in the US from 1943), and many players assume it is a Western invention.
Evidence for the other claim
- No Western board with snakes and ladders is known before the Indian ones; the British versions were adapted from Indian models.
- Popular claims that the game was invented by Sant Dnyaneshwar in the 13th century, or that it dates to the 2nd century, have no contemporary evidence.
What historians and scientists say
The game is Indian. The surviving boards and the way it reached Britain are well documented. What is not documented is an exact date or inventor; the earliest surviving boards are from roughly the 18th century.