AncientBharat
🐍Moksha Patam ( British converted it to Snake and ladder )
Game was associated with traditional Hindu philosophy contrasting karma and kama, or destiny and desire.
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It emphasized destiny, as opposed to games such as pachisi, which focused on life as a mixture of skill and luck .
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The ladders represented virtues such as generosity, faith, and humility 🐍while the snakes represented vices such as lust, anger, murder, and theft.
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In the original game the squares of virtue are: Faith(12), Reliability (51), Generosity (57), Knowledge (76), and Asceticism (78).
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The squares of vice or evil are: Disobedience (41), Vanity (44), Vulgarity (49), Theft(52), Lying (58), Drunkenness (62), Debt (69), Murder(73), Rage (84), Greed (92), Pride (95), and Lust (99)
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These were the squares where the snake waited with its mouth open. The 100th square represented Nirvana or Moksha.The tops of each ladder depict a God, or one of the various heavens (kailasa, vaikuntha, brahmaloka) and so on. .
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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. .
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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. .
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Presumably, reaching the last square (number 100) represented the attainment of Moksha (spiritual liberation).
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