Speaker A
Thank you, Theo. Good morning, everyone. A great pleasure today to be introducing Dr. Jacob Schmidt Madsen, whose work I became aware of two or three years ago, I think, when he completed his doctoral thesis.
Exploring the history and spiritual symbolism of Snakes and Ladders and other traditional South Asian board games.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Traditional South Asian board games like Snakes and Ladders have deep spiritual and philosophical meanings.
- Gyan Chaupar served as a metaphor for life, illustrating virtues, vices, and spiritual progress.
- The game boards incorporate subtle body charts and cosmic symbolism unique to Indian culture.
- These games were historically used as teaching tools for moral and spiritual lessons.
- The legacy of these games continues in contemporary Indian cultural practices.
What the video covers
- Dr. Jacob Schmidt Madsen presents on the historical and spiritual significance of traditional South Asian board games.
- The talk focuses on the game Gyan Chaupar, the precursor to modern Snakes and Ladders, and its connections to yoga and spiritual liberation.
- The history of South Asian board games spans nearly 5,000 years, including games like chess, Ludo, and Snakes and Ladders.
- These games were not just pastimes but models of reality and metaphors for life, virtues, and vices.
- Snakes and Ladders originally conveyed moral and spiritual lessons through its gameplay and imagery.
- The talk explores the subtle body and cosmic symbolism embedded in the game boards, especially Vaishnava Bhakti boards.
- Dr. Schmidt Madsen discusses the microcosm-macrocosm relationship and the association of snakes and ladders with nadis (energy channels).
- The game had royal patronage in 18th century Jaipur and remains part of living traditions in India.
- The presentation includes a critical reading of the game’s symbolism and its didactic role in imparting spiritual knowledge.
- The talk concludes with reflections on the unique Indian cultural and spiritual context of these board games.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Speaker Background
- 05:04Overview of South Asian Board Games History
- 09:13Introduction to Snakes and Ladders Rules
- 13:41Didactic Role of Board Games in the West and India
- 18:36Vaishnava Bhakti Boards and Symbolism
- 23:45Cosmic and Subtle Body Symbolism in the Game
- 33:16Living Traditions and Regional Patronage
- 38:46Conclusion and Q&A
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
rare Confluence of subjects for us I think people would be quite surprised to uh to to to find out that we were hosting a talk on on board games in pre-modern India but uh yeah the the connections between that and the center
Speaker A
It's a rare confluence of subjects for us. I think people would be quite surprised to find out that we were hosting a talk on board games in pre-modern India. But yeah, the connections between that and the Center for Yoga Studies work are many and fascinating.
Speaker A
field of historical game studies with special emphasis on traditional South Asian board games he's written extensively on the games of chalkboard Ludo which I don't know about the rest of you but I played a lot when I was a kid and of course
Speaker A
Dr. Schmidt Madsen is a postdoctoral researcher and acting director of the Center for the Study of Indian Science at the University of Copenhagen, and he works, as of course we're going to hear all about, within the field of historical game studies with special emphasis on traditional South Asian board games.
Speaker A
playing at spiritual Liberation so you can see where we're heading towards uh connections with yoga uh playing at spiritual Liberation in 18th and 19th century Western India and that too was from the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of of uh Professor Ken
Speaker A
He's written extensively on the games of chalkboard Ludo, which I don't know about the rest of you, but I played a lot when I was a kid, and of course John, known similar to Snakes and Ladders, which I think most of us probably played as well.
Speaker A
behind the game of knowledge thank you very much thank you very much uh for the introduction Jim uh I will now just share my screen oops there you have it okay and it seems to work so yes uh today we're going to talk
Speaker A
He's currently preparing a book on the history of games in South Asia. His PhD thesis was called The Game of Knowledge: Playing at Spiritual Liberation, so you can see where we're heading towards connections with yoga, playing at spiritual liberation in 18th and 19th century Western India.
Speaker A
years and it covers also several thousand games in that period both original games and variations of games and several of these games some of which Jim just mentioned are known to us today still games like chess Ludo and snakes
Speaker A
That too was from the University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Professor Ken Zisk, who I'm sure many of you will have heard of, who's written extensively on many Indian subjects, particularly medicine.
Speaker A
pastimes but um they also had underlying meanings which today has largely been forgotten so often they were actually considered as kind of models of aspects of reality so if we take a game like chess for example uh the earliest textual
Speaker A
So today, over to you, Jacob, now to talk to us about Snakes, Ladders, and the Subtle Body: Tracing the Grid Behind the Game of Knowledge.
Speaker A
are only fought between Clay figurines so today we still have that association between chess and and War chess was a game of war but not really in the simulational sense that it had previously similarly if we look at a game like Ludo
Speaker A
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for the introduction, Jim. I will now just share my screen. Oops, there you have it. Okay, and it seems to work.
Speaker A
frame is nothing but a Chaucer game definitely play the pawn of your soul and you win the match attain the goal but if deceitfully you load the dice with human birth you pay the price again today few people probably
Speaker A
So yes, today we're going to talk about board games. The history of board games in South Asia is long and varied. It reaches back almost 5,000 years to the Bronze Age in the Indus Valley civilization in the northwestern parts of the subcontinent.
Speaker A
I'll not talk about chopert but instead I'll be talking about Gyan Chopper or the game of knowledge this is the game that is behind what we know today is Snakes and Ladders so I'll start by talking briefly about
Speaker A
It covers several thousand years and also several thousand games in that period, both original games and variations of games. Several of these games, some of which Jim just mentioned, are known to us today still: games like chess, Ludo, and Snakes and Ladders, all of which have Indian origins.
Speaker A
connected to charts of the subtle body and then finally I'm going to say a few words about the Living Traditions of playing uh Gantt Chopper today and how that may also relate back to really early practices of how Gan Chopper was
Speaker A
Today, these games are often considered sort of purely abstract games. Often, they're considered sort of innocent pastimes. But this was not always true of them. They were always placed as innocent pastimes, but they also had underlying meanings which today have largely been forgotten.
Speaker A
the rules of Snakes and Ladders so this for example could be the game board you start your Pawn in the bottom left square and then you move in a serpentine fashion up through the boat to the finishing square at the top right
Speaker A
Often, they were actually considered as kind of models of aspects of reality. So if we take a game like chess, for example, the earliest textual reference that we have to chess is from the Harsha Charita in the 7th century, where we read that during the reign of King Harsha, the arrangement of the four-limbed army only takes place on game boards, and battles between kings are only fought between clay figurines.
Speaker A
tail of the snake and then whoever reaches in the finished square first wins the game and and that's basically all there is to it now Snakes and Ladders first appears in the western world in in Britain to be more
Speaker A
So today, we still have that association between chess and war. Chess was a game of war, but not really in the simulational sense that it had previously. Similarly, if we look at a game like Ludo or Chopat, we find that it appears in several of, especially, the Bhakti poetry from the 15th century onwards, which uses a metaphor for life.
Speaker A
um if we take a and look at some of the the squares on the board for example we can see here how a vanity here uh Illustrated as a girl brushing her hair in front of a mirror will you know lead
Speaker A
Here's an example from Mirabai, for example: "The vast world and its four-fold frame is nothing but a Chaupar game. Definitely play the pawn of your soul, and you win the match, attain the goal. But if deceitfully you load the dice with human birth, you pay the price again."
Speaker A
that sort of raise her up um uh in in society and make her a a good member of society and again uh and a little bit of course and effect on the right you know the boy kicking and whipping the dock will end
Speaker A
Today, few people probably associate a game like Chaupar with the cosmos and as a metaphor of existence. We'd probably rather think of it as an innocent and perhaps even quite boring children's game.
Speaker A
mode and was imparting uh the difference between virtues and vices to people was uh something that had like a long history uh in the west and goes back several centuries an example here might be another game from from London from
Speaker A
But today, I'll not talk about chess, and I'll not talk about Chaupar, but instead I'll be talking about Gyan Chaupar, or the Game of Knowledge. This is the game that is behind what we know today as Snakes and Ladders.
Speaker A
inwards towards the center and when you land on specific squares specific things will happen you'll have to look that up in a booklet next to the board a few examples here might be that if you land for example on the square of hope you'll
Speaker A
So I'll start by talking briefly about the origins and history of Snakes and Ladders. Then we'll go a little bit deeper into some of the early Gyan Chaupar boards on which Snakes and Ladders was based.
Speaker A
contention well you have to um for feeder counter that is really pay a stake to each of the player um and players and then move again so this idea of Virtues and vices is something that that had existed for a
Speaker A
Then we'll start looking at how they might possibly be connected to charts of the subtle body. And then finally, I'm going to say a few words about the living traditions of playing Gyan Chaupar today and how that may also relate back to really early practices of how Gyan Chaupar was originally used.
Speaker A
it's a game about uh virtuous Behavior so the big difference uh between these games what really happens in the late 19th century is suddenly that we get this visual imagery of the snakes and ladders and that is really the real
Speaker A
And then finally, there'll be time for some questions. But let's start out with Snakes and Ladders that all of us know, and just to make sure that we're all on the same page, I'll very briefly explain the rules of Snakes and Ladders.
Speaker A
of knowledge now um the game of knowledge is also to an extend a game about the consequences of good and bad action PAB and punya but it's also as we shall see about a lot more so we might say that it's often
Speaker A
So this, for example, could be the game board. You start your pawn in the bottom left square, and then you move in a serpentine fashion up through the board to the finishing square at the top right.
Speaker A
so let's first look at the gun Chopper a little more to find out what what is it really what is it that distinguishes that from from Snakes and Ladders so Gant Chopper is what the late philosopher John Hawkman would call an
Speaker A
Now, if it didn't point in the game, you land on the foot of a ladder, your pawn moves up to the top of the ladder. Conversely, if you land at the head of a snake, your pawn moves back to the tail of the snake.
Speaker A
those positions are then associated with some kind of meaning making it you capable to sort of interpret something from the games or even though it's completely abstract and structured you can still derive meaning from it and the way that that works in the case of Gantt
Speaker A
And then whoever reaches the finished square first wins the game, and that's basically all there is to it. Now, Snakes and Ladders first appears in the Western world, in Britain, to be more exact, in London in the late 19th century.
Speaker A
then each player in the game has a single Pawn and and this single Pawn will move along the track um then to move the pawns along the track you throw Quarry shells and this is sort of my own poor attempt at a graphic
Speaker A
We find it there as a didactic game and some sort of moralistic game, a game for children to teach them sort of what's right and what's wrong.
Speaker A
number of quarries the line with the mouth upwards that's the number of spaces that you'll move ahead in in the game so here you have these uh these randomizing agents that will drive your pawns forward along this this track then
Speaker A
If we take and look at some of the squares on the board, for example, we can see here how vanity, illustrated as a girl brushing her hair in front of a mirror, will lead to a fall in status. You'll end up being a housemate, perhaps.
Speaker A
moves and then you dust whatever happened whatever the square says I mean normally you just stop or if it's a ladder you move up if it's a snake you move down so you have absolutely no agency in the game it's completely lock
Speaker A
Or the young girl who takes pity on the old man, the old blind man with a dog sitting at the steps, well, she performs the virtue that sort of raises her up in society and makes her a good member of society.
Speaker A
middle of the top row of the board meaning that you can overshoot the winning position uh and as you can see if you overshoot the winning position there's a snake that'll take you back down into the game and you'll have to
Speaker A
And again, a little bit of cause and effect on the right: the boy kicking and whipping the dog will end up being bitten by the dog.
Speaker A
however the way it's interpreted it works like this all these um link positions they now become spiritual stages on the way to Liberation which is the winning space at the top of the board the pawns that you moved around they
Speaker A
So we have that sense there are some very sort of symbolic lessons to be learned from these games as they appear here in the late 19th century.
Speaker A
connectors these apparently arbitrary connectors then becomes loaded with a symbology of karma positive and negative Karma um leading to a rise or fall in your spiritual level in the world as you progress through the game so as a as a whole we might say that the
Speaker A
Now, games that have this didactic mode and were imparting the difference between virtues and vices to people was something that had a long history in the West and goes back several centuries.
Speaker A
point it was mass produced in lithographs and some of those lithographs also made it outside India into the west and this is probably the most likely um uh point of inspiration for British game manufacturers to add Snakes and
Speaker A
An example here might be another game from London from the early 19th century being called Virtue Rewarded and Vice Punished. So that's kind of direct, and as you see here again, we have sort of a spiral design with squares labeled after different virtues and vices, and you move inwards towards the center.
Speaker A
didn't have to when you landed on a square earlier there might be an inscription that said well go back to go back five spaces but you have to be able to read in order to do that the snakes
Speaker A
When you land on specific squares, specific things will happen. You'll have to look that up in a booklet next to the board. A few examples here might be that if you land, for example, on the square of hope, you'll have to forfeit your next turn.
Speaker A
it sort of works really well like that and and that was adopted by the British game manufacturers and when it was being made as lithographs in late 19th century India it had at that time already existed for more than a
Speaker A
If you land on a square virtue, it's the final square of the board in the center of the board. Well, then you basically win whatever has been staked on the game.
Speaker A
the game was different corresponding to the different uh religious knowledge systems that was representing what differed was basically the layout of the board the number of squares and exactly how they're put together the placement of the snakes and ladders and
Speaker A
And again, if you land on the square of contention, well, you have to forfeit counter, that is really pay a stake to each of the players, and then move again.
Speaker A
whereas on a Sufi board the winning Square will be the Throne of Allah so um let me just see here yeah and the majority of these boards they derive from from Western India most of them were affiliated with vaishnava or jaina
Speaker A
So this idea of virtues and vices is something that had existed for a long time in board games. And here, of course, interestingly, it's also combined with the idea that you're still staking something on the game.
Speaker A
concentration of these game boards are found in Western India and most of them has a vaishnava or jaina orientation and the Very earliest boats that we find they date from uh the late 18th century and these what you see here is the the
Speaker A
So it's really still a game of hazard of staking things, even though it's a game about virtuous behavior. So the big difference between these games, what really happened...
Speaker A
that it really isn't necessarily a lot older than the boats that you see here um we don't have any texts we don't have any depictions of the game prior to this even in places where we'd expect the games we mentioned it doesn't appear as
Speaker A
I said earlier in the bhakti Poetry games are often used as a metaphor of life and the game that is most commonly used is the game of of choppert and it would seem that if any of those poets
Speaker A
were aware of Gyan Chopper that would be the much more obvious choice of a metaphor for life because that's exactly what it is but they always just refer to chopard in fact the only example we have of someone referencing against Chopper
Speaker A
is a metaphor for life um is um ramakrishna paramahamsa in Bengal in the late 19th century in the in the 1880s where he's talking about this Bengali variant of the game called which he uses a metaphor for Spiritual
Speaker A
progress but but that's the earliest example we have of that and Beyond them in my opinion probably not being much older than these charts maybe going back to the late 17th century but I wouldn't think I think before my research also
Speaker A
suggests that it's the vaishnava charts that are the earliest and for um the rest of my talk I'll be using a sort of a critical reading of of the vaishnama bhakti boards as my example and this critical reading is based on
Speaker A
several dozens of boards where I've been comparing the readings and all the squares and the placements Of The Snakes and Ladders and there's not a lot of variation between them but there is some important variation and sometimes variations that are distinctly trying to
Speaker A
associate them with a specific sort of uh sectarian milieu but um but the standard gain looks something like this and so what you have here is really a grid of 72 squares and the squares are sequentially numbered corresponding to
Speaker A
the direction of movement that you also know from traditional Snakes and Ladders from one in the bottom left corner and then in a serpentine fashion of the boat to the top left corner tamagoon number 72. and then all the squares are also uh
Speaker A
inscribed as you can see and the inscriptions here fall into three main categories one has to do with the organization of the universe one has to do with human existence in the universe and one has to do with the
Speaker A
fundamental building blocks of the universe so for example first uh as the organization of the universe you'll see that here in the central column we have the port separated um into the different planes of existence going from bulok up to such a
Speaker A
log the seven locusts or the seventh plane of existence which are layering the board meaning that each row of the board become equivalent to a plane of existence and then you have vaikund or they have another Vishnu at the very top
Speaker A
as the place of liberation um then as uh this you might say that this is sort of the cosmography element of the boats there's also so the lift element of the boat the human existence element of the board which consists of
Speaker A
numerous squares with positive and negative qualities indicating positive and negative uh States and actions in the world and some of those that I've highlighted here are are pairs um like these dualities uh um that we know of and then on the left
Speaker A
we also have the three sort of main path to Liberation calm York the way of action or the discipline of action Mark um the way of knowledge and then of course bhakti the way of devotion uh which in this case will take you
Speaker A
directly uh back to your lead to direct you up to vicond indicating that this is indeed a version of a bhakti chart where bhakti is is the real shortcut to liberation and finally on the board we have these
Speaker A
different principles of creation that are um mostly related to the sankya system of philosophy the way of enumerating the different principles or building blocks of the universe and in the top left corner you'll see the three gunas the three qualities that
Speaker A
is inherent in all matter throughout the Universe and then in the top right you have pracrity which is the primordial matter of the universe and it is from the primordial matter that all other matter in the universe evolves uh and faculty is one
Speaker A
of the tattoos there are 25 tatuas or fundamental principles and they are they are consists of different groups and we have two other groups uh enumerated here in the board we have the mahabhutas or the gross elements that you see um from
Speaker A
Square 51 53 and 56 to 58 it's not as like uh water Earth Wind Fire and and air or either and we also have the tan mattress or the subtle elements that you see a little bit further down
Speaker A
um sound taste smell touch and form is missing here um but again this is not sort of an attempt at a complete enumeration but it shows uh the linking um between uh the sound care system and the board by by giving some some
Speaker A
elements some hints is not a complete representation but it gives you little bits and pieces to form a larger picture yourself and interestingly here if you notice really the way the board is set up the direction of evolution of the cosmos
Speaker A
runs uh opposite to the direction of play so we you start with the gunas and then you have prakratri in the top right corner and then if you move in a serpentine fashion down the board you get this
Speaker A
sense that the Universe evolved from pracrity and then later you have the mahabhutas and you have the tan mattress this again is not completely mirroring how the things work in in sankya but there's definitely a sense that that the
Speaker A
Universe evolves uh top down in the opposite direction of play meaning that the direction of play starting in the bottom left with John Merrell birth um becomes an involution of the cosmos you're moving in the opposite direction of the evolution of the cosmos towards
Speaker A
Liberation at the top and this also May beginning already here to hint a little bit about some of the connotations that we find with these subtle body charts that we look on a little later and it leaves a couple of squares left
Speaker A
on the board acne and durati that doesn't really fit into the categories um but we can look at them again when we discuss the solid body Choice acne for example I I believe is associated um with uh digestive uh fire in the body
Speaker A
um but uh but we'll look at that a little later and then finally of course the greatest ovulate uh with with the snakes and ladders and again you can see here that the the main ladder is the one reaching
Speaker A
from bhakti to to vicond so overall you can say the chart represents the totality of phenomenal existence but that really only gives sort of a static view of the game board as an image the the interesting thing is
Speaker A
really when we start to explore it ludically what happens when you engage this chart as a game um and we need to have that dimension in order to really understand how it works and what experiences it affords uh its
Speaker A
users so we know that we don't know exactly how Gant Chopper was played I mean we know um mechanically how it was played and we we also know that it was played in different modes it could be played for
Speaker A
educational purposes it could be played sort of ritualistically on special occasions it could be played as a mere Pastime or it could be played with some for some kind of divinatorial self-exploratory purpose and again it's not exactly clear how that worked but if
Speaker A
we look at how the game plays we might get a sense of how it could be used um in this sort of divinatory self-exploratory mode so what happens when you play is that first you you take your pawn and yes you
Speaker A
only have one Pawn that really becomes the representative of you on the game board and you place it here on the first Square genre or birth so you kind of birth it into the game board and immediately your attention is changed
Speaker A
you no longer look at the board in its totality but you zoom in on a single Square um so you're not looking at a map of the universe now no you're looking at the square in which you were born and
Speaker A
perhaps you're looking at the squares after uh following uh where you might end up when you start moving along the track in the game then you take up your Quarry shells and throw them sort of handing yourself over
Speaker A
to to the Divine fate uh whatever you throw uh will now determine how your Pawn or your soul uh moves along this track of existence and then you start moving in the game so for example you'll throw a five and
Speaker A
you'll move from birth to more to dilution uh you were born into the universe uh now you're deluded you have arrived in the universe you're deluded you you'll bewildered uh you can't make sense of sense of life you throw a four
Speaker A
you end up on top and you start doing um austerities uh you start following some kind of spiritual discipline which takes you directly by letter to swag look or Heaven the plane of heavenly existence so things are going really
Speaker A
well now you throw again and you throw a six and you end up on at the harm or your religiosity perhaps um you lose sight of your religious Duty because things were going so well um since you entered heaven so you sort
Speaker A
of forget about your religious Duty and you slide back down to the delusion where you started and then you throw again this time you don't end up in top practicing austerities and going back to Heaven as you might have hoped for but
Speaker A
you end up in calm uh passion or desire and sensuous pleasures and so when you look ahead on the track your next throw well if you throw a one uh you'll be delivered right back up to heaven but
Speaker A
there's also a chance that you might throw a three or a seven we'll send you back down again you throw I should say with seven Curry shells for every throw will be a number between zero and seven so you'll look ahead and see well these
Speaker A
are your options and this of course will create dramatic tension as you play the game now what's interesting here is that what really happens is that as you play the game you create a unique sequence of squares that you land on and that
Speaker A
becomes uh your personal experience of the board and you connect them narratively so you sort of create a spiritual biography for yourself as you move through the board and you'll also notice certain recurring patterns as we had here for example uh first he landed
Speaker A
in square number six on on more in dilution and a little bit later he was back there again so what is this pattern is this something that I need to reflect on so the game becomes um very personal and very focused on
Speaker A
where you are and what are the options ahead of you and you sort of forget about um the totality when you play the game and in that sense the game sort of stops becoming a map of human existence but
Speaker A
rather it becomes your own route through that existence and this really is the power of games this ability to use a simple interactive model to simulate um a much larger much more complex much less formalized system you simulate key
Speaker A
aspects of of a larger system using a smaller system that's really in the essence uh what games does when used in a simulational mode so now the charts themselves they're really mostly silent about how they should be understood there are hints like the
Speaker A
identification between a pawn and a soul is mentioned the identification between quarries and car or uh and and fate or Karma uh is also mentioned but largely they're not they don't explain themselves and we don't have any early
Speaker A
text really explaining what the games are about however there are on the charts certain uh verses that are inscribed on them outside of the playing field that'll give us some hint as to how the game charts may have understood themselves
Speaker A
for example there is a single verse occurring across a great number of the jaina game boards um which uh which REITs um something uh like this uh these are my uh own uh translation from the Rajasthani Raj Basha and there's some uncertainties uh
Speaker A
in it so if you see any obvious mistakes here you're very welcome to let me know so it reads with great effort one is freed from falling down the night nine great energy channels and Artis and roaming the 84 luck birth situations or
Speaker A
yonis what is the chopper of chichundria it is the game of the nameless brachman if one plays this game one extinguishes one's anger and does not roam around existence one is joyful at heart the game of knowledge ibaji reduces sin
Speaker A
tears apart delusion and increases knowledge so here we get the sense that the the snakes the the the nine great nadis are associated here with the snakes and the nadis are of course the energy channels that that runs in the subtle
Speaker A
body so here there's this connection that maybe the snake imagery is understood as a naughty imagery and there's also here for the Jain about the idea that uh each of the 84 squares on the board represents one lakh yonis that
Speaker A
is one lakh possible wombs or birth situations places where you might be reborn in this world there are uh yeah 84 lakh 8.4 million different births in the jaina system of knowledge now if we move to the weissner boards we
Speaker A
find uh some similar verses uh on them the Weisner boards are not as heavily inscribed as the jaina boards but we do sometimes find verses on them for example um we have here a verse uh which talks about there being nine energy channels
Speaker A
again nadis and then uh not 84 luck yonis but 72 cortas squares or as I say here bodily cavities in the sense of um the the enclosures in the subtle body where various Divine principles exist uh creating this relation between the
Speaker A
microcosmos of the body and the macrocosmos of the universe um and there's a similar thing is Set uh on another Vice number board uh the game is called the past time of knowledge once you played with attention it has
Speaker A
nine energy channels nadis and 72 chord tasks uh again these squares on the board but also um the rooms the in in the body in the subtle body in it everything is laid out like the whole universe uh exists in
Speaker A
this game now nadius and quotas uh relate to this uh subtle body terminology um and we can for example find in the not body of literature references uh to this system so uh for example from the gorakhbani uh we have a verse which
Speaker A
describes the again the nine nadis again the nine energy channels and the 72 quarters or the 72 rooms uh in the body and we have uh another not verse from another text which explains a little bit more about how these quotas are to be
Speaker A
understood uh from the patati where we see that the 27 asterisms the 12 houses of the zodiac the nine planets the nine like stars the 15 titties or lunar days all dwell in their own 72 000 internal cavities kushta in Sanskrit of the
Speaker A
interwomanadis in the body the translation is a little free but I'm just adapting these translations um from existing works these are I haven't worked in in detail in these texts like the people who translate to them but clearly here
Speaker A
we see that again the Costas here or the court has enumerated as 72 000 before we saw the numerous 72 uh similarly nadis are often enumerators are 72 000 naughties um but again uh also talked about as as
Speaker A
72 whether you're at the Thousand not doesn't really matter and clearly uh the game board the 72 squares of the game board is then interpreted as being these 72 uh quota in in the body so here's some relation to this subtle
Speaker A
body terminology and uh for the sake of completeness as you also we mentioned that there's also a verse from the Sun poet Kabir that appears on several of the jaina charts um and this was from the Kabir cantabali
Speaker A
He Who Walks between boundaries is a man he who goes beyond them is a saint but he who transcends the limited and the Limitless his greatness is unfathomable in what Bill's uh translation so again this shows a connection uh to
Speaker A
um to this world of sun poetry and all these Traditions these tantric yogic Sun Traditions they ex coexisted with the earliest board in the Northwestern parts of India in the 18th century and it seems quite clear that whoever made
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these games or at least wrote the verses on them uh were aware of these traditions and there's of course also the interesting possibility that the game bolts May to some extent have grown out of these traditions so um
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when we return to our game board and we take with us sort of this new uh new light that we just saw the charts and more as uh being associated with with this the subtle body we get sort of
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a different interpretation or different reading uh of the chart uh before we saw very much of those macro Cosmic event this description of the totality of phenomenal reality in the universe but this other interpretation shows a sort of uh a microcosmic Counterpoint to that
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interpretation so now we can look at all the squares here's the quotas in in the early medical literature the quotas are really sort of the physical compartments uh in the in the physical body where the visceral eye but in subtle body
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terminology as we saw is these enclosures we're in these divine principled asterism all these different aspects of reality uh exist and we also know um this idea of quarters or enclosures from other mandalas and yantras it's not something that's unique to to the game
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boards here and the central column we had these seven locals with the vikond on the top now um the seven lawcasts they're also mapped onto the subtle body along the central axis called the meru danda which is sort of the the spine of the body the
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the um the axis of Miro that runs along the body and they're mapped onto the body along the spine similarly to the chakras so we might also see the central column really as seven chakras with uh Liberation positioned on the top
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furthermore uh incorporating the different nadis we saw there was a association between the snakes and the Nazis and it seems likely that there's also an association then between the ladders and the nadis and now the letters really are not always drawn as
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ladders sometimes they're merely drawn as lines and sometimes in Nepalese charts for example they're also drawn as snakes but benign snakes contrary to the negative uh snakes that take you down they're also snakes that take you up um and then of course uh the presence of
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Ganga yamuna and Saraswati in squares 47 to 49 um then which appears somewhat odd perhaps on the charts we have it well they also of course doubles as names for the main three nadis and sushumna um so what we end up with here is really
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an image of the subtle body so the game board is no longer just a metaphor for the karmic journey through existence is also a metaphor for an inner transformation and and Transcendence and if we look at the way that you move up
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the chart this Serpentine fashion then becomes reminiscent of the Kundalini Shakti uh the coiled serpent at the base um of the lowermost chakra and that is described as having a varying number of coils but but often uh the number eight
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is used the Kundalini is set to have eight coils which then might correspond to the eight rows on on the game board and the whole Act of playing the game um might also be seen really as a way of
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raising the Kundalini Shakti uh and unlocking the different chakras um and and reaching uh Liberation on the other side now if we look at tantric and Yogi charge of the subtle body as we know them they're usually figurative like the one that you see
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here a jainer example and often they are also embellished with illustrations of the chakras like you see here or sometimes also other illustrations and they're also often inscribed so so none of this is really is really new um and you can see a similar approach
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being taken especially on the on the jaina charts which often uses the outline of a of a human figure around the board and this human figure stands in the coyote stock a pose of meditation which is sort of a a postal meditation
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and where you stand upright associated with Jainism um and so so that would be sort of the individualistic perspective of this man standing in a meditative pose but at the same time it also becomes the law caparusia the cosmic man within whose
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body the whole universe is set to exist in in Jain and cosmology so there seems to be also an awareness here on the jaina charts very explicitly and Visually of this correlation between microcosmos and macro Cosmos and um
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yes so even though that the charts that we normally see they don't have these uh gritted squares in the center we do have some very interesting examples or at least one very interesting example from Bengal from the 18th century
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now the chart that you see here first appeared in an article in the Calcutta review in 1849 written by Babu Bibi and bihari Som and uh yeah I'll just read you the description of his of his whereabouts of
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its Origins uh and Psalm writes the late Baba ganga Govinda singha who flourished in the late 18th century a wealthy native residing in a village near murshidabad spent the greater part of his fortune in making researchers into the Hindu sastras not satisfied with the
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pundits of his own village he came to reside in natya the famous seat of Sanskrit learning in Bengal he invited several pundits from the upper provinces The Original Seed of Hinduism it was by a set of these pundits known by the name
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of daudus that the originals of these two maps were drawn according to the principles of the tantras expressly for the use of their employer so what we see here is that this chart and the other one that I'll show you in
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a minute um derived from uh pundits that came from the upper provinces and known by the name of daudus which I take to be followers of darudayal that is uh daru panties and now uh the datu pandis are uh darudayal is
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famous 16th century uh poet sent Saint from from Western India and uh Monica Horseman for example has shown uh the uh close association between the dardu panty and the not Traditions that we just uh saw a few quotes from earlier and the
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was widespread in Western India at least from from the 17th century onwards and in the 18th century it was uh received Royal patronettes in in Jaipur in the new city of Jaipur and uh incidentally uh the Jaipur region is the area where
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we find the highest concentration of Gyan Chopper boats anywhere in India all of this all of this 72 square vaishnava bhakti variety so it's interesting to to to find these uh these correlations there and um whatever the the exact connection
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here the um between um the presence of the data punt in in Jaipur uh at the same time as we begin to see these um early Gan Chopper boards it's interesting to note uh the second chart here which is another chart of the
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subtle body you can see there are two different varieties here uh the first one is sort of more traditional figurative one um whereas the second one has this grid um placed on it and but you can see the central column here
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is um is embellished with symbols relating to the chakras and also symbols relating to cosmography like the turtle and the snake at the bottom forming the the base uh upholding uh of the world as it exists and there's also the presence of
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snakes um down along the sides 10 snakes in total uh similar to the 10 snakes uh on the vaishnavigyan Chopra boards now the numbers that you see on the board uh there on the chart were not really there
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on the chart because this is a reproduction of the original chart so here the numbers really correspond to a list of inscriptions so each number stands for an inscription on the chart and I'll now show you um this uh this inscription of the chart
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here in a diagrammatic form and unfortunately many of the terms were translated into English so we don't really know the original wording but I reconstructed the original wording where I felt certain that that was what was intended and then I left a few
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a few squares in English where we're completely sure but what we see here is we see a board that is similar in similar regards to to the Gantt Chopper boards the central body of the board is also an eight by
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nine grit even though a few squares in the central column have been subdivided into several squares and if you count the totality of squares you'll end up on 84. uh hamsa and the punya Pala and the papapala in the top and right left
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corner um are are not really uh squares I just put them here to indicate to indicate where they are on the drawing but they're not individual squares so there is you can either see it sort of as a 72 square chart on 84
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square chart and the whole chart is structured around the central column uh which has this Eightfold chakra system coming from adahara up to the brahmarandra along along the uh the central spine which also includes here uh yeah kurma
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and ananta as you saw also on the drawing and then you also see in the center acne uh this word that we couldn't really place on again chop about boats um and here in the English translation as far as I recall it's it reads gastric
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fire which I take to be to be the acne the digestive fire um in in the body and apart from this organization of this of the central column we also have these snakes that are linking squares and they're always linking opposites we're
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linking positives and negatives now this is of course different from how the snakes work in the snakes and ladders game or um in Gan Chopper but um so so there's no sort of inherent value whether the snakes are positive or
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or negative um but clearly they're linking again pairs like dharm and atarm um uh and and so on and so forth and then uh we have uh this distinction between punya and papa uh in the top and right left corner which are uh where
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that the hands are Illustrated on the chart so if you see the chart from the direction of a figure on the chart his right hand is his punya on his left hand is his parba um then going further we also find several
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terminological um correspondences we can't show up about first of all all these terms they're always grouped in groups of two three or four on the board again a reminiscent of how terms are grouped against Chopper boards and we even find some uh terms that are
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identical to the dropper boards for example uh the three gunas uh Thomas Raja satwa and we also have three of the mahabhutas down on the bottom T just up value fire water and and wind and in the top right corner we have the
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sequence of saluk these different stages of Union with the Divine which is found not on the board that I showed you but which is found in also in this sequence and in the same place on the chart of uh a variety of
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gun Chopra boards associated with the with Maharashtra deriving from our ashra and associated with ganeshwa the 13th century poets and in Maharashtra um so the whole layout the whole organization the elements uh all this is reminiscent of what we might expect
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really from again Chopper board but then again clearly this is not a game board in the sense that Gant Chopper is a game board and we we don't know what this chart was actually uh used for but there is definitely a
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chance that it went beyond the mere idea of of illustration that it was also uh used for visualization or meditation uh practices and if this was indeed the case it becomes interesting to to ponder the idea whether a chart such as this these
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uh sort of non-formalized ludic activity in the sense of visualizing a progress through the chart meditating on specific squares in the chart whether that could really be seen as something that was feeding into this formalized gamified system of
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the same practice on a Gantt Chopper board that the Gant Chopper bought might really gamify and formalize a system of yeah visualization and meditation and then somehow stand at the crossroads between a spiritual practice and a spiritual Pastime
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this at least is a hypothesis that I think is is worth considering and of course we need more information about how were these uh early subtle body chart used and how with the early gown Chopper charts used because uh one of
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the sad things of course is that we don't really have any descriptions of people's experiences with playing Jan Chopra in the early days um people may have played it as a simple Pastime but there was certainly also a
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mode that you could play this game in that was different and if you want to understand anything about that today or we have to go on really is whatever Living Traditions remain and coming here uh to sort of the the
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final little section um we if we look to India today uh and see what is really the living tradition of playing these games we find that the game exists to a very limited extent I mean it has mostly been completely
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replaced by snakes and ladders but it still exists to a limited extent and you find it for example in the Jain communities um again especially in Western India I hope this is actually a chat from madhya Pradesh um where it's used as a didactic tool
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for children so it's not really considered a game for adults um which I believe it was earlier um but here it says as a symbol um a detective tool where you'll learn something about Jain and cosmology and some key Gene terminologies some saints
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a bit of this and a bit of that the chain boards are completely different from the device board in their contents they don't have time to go into that now but it's more uh clear that what you learn when you play the Jane game you
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should learn how the game universe is put together you learn key terminology related to Jainism so that's one mode of playing the game that we find today is a didactic mode and then we also find uh in South India
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that we have these sort of very colorful Illustrated charts that are played on special occasions for example uh during the vikun de kadashi in in South India uh this these game boards around the time where that Festival is uh will
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start appearing in in Temple shops and you can buy them and your men sort of be playing them uh throughout uh the night stay awake and play this game and it'll give you Merit um but nothing other than that is really
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Associated within people that have interviewed elderly people that have interviewed that remember doing this in their childhood so that they had absolutely no idea about really the content of the game they were just playing it for fun and as a way to to
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keep awake so it was more sort of a ritual act that you were going through um without any deeper uh recognized meaning behind it and these are really the two main existing traditions of playing the game in India uh that seems
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to have root uh in the past in the west however the game was introduced in 1975 by Harry stuhari um sort of a well-known uh Indian scholar and philosopher who published the game um with a fold-out game bolt you can
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play on and a book A book of commentary with a description of each individual Square in the game which gave the same sort of uh interpretation to the game boards playing on sort of this micro and macro Cosmic dichotomy
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and again you can see here the figure of uh a cross like yogic man sitting in the game board and his head goes up to the uh to the square just beneath the topmost square of the board and the
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chakras are placed in his body and then there is sort of the cosmic Consciousness um which is Johari's translation of Icon at the top of the board so and if this was played in a new age communities from
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from the 70s onwards and the book has been translated into many languages and it still exists to some uh to some limited uh degree in the west you can you can still buy it here and there and right now the game is actually
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experienced as a Revival especially uh for some reason in russian-speaking communities uh you'll find a number of websites which are offering courses in the game which is selling the game um you can become a coach um you can train for months and learn
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how to play this game with others there are group sessions being set up for these games it's become an instrument on the scene of alternative spirituality for for one of a better better word and it even happens that my own thesis has
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been uh translated into Russian in a sort of truncated fashion without footnotes or literary references or appendices or anything uh but just you know as a core of it which is like an immense uh effort to to you know
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translate this book and and try to push it and even believe that uh there is a market uh for this um so but again it just shows the vibrancy of of this community that you find in the russian-speaking parts of
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the world and actually this summer I had my first session of really playing the game um I was playing it with uh belarussian instructor and we played for five hours and the game was focused on a single question that I asked to the game board
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and then for those five hours while we were playing the game landing on different squares and then exploring this question from different angles so it was kind of a therapeutic uh experience uh with a coach going through it and I must say it was a very powerful
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experience and it really showed the potential of this game as a tool for self-exploration in a way that I'd probably consider the intellectually but it was only really when playing it this Summer that I fully understood how powerful this can be and how powerful it
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might also have been um 150 or 200 years ago when it first appeared in India so the bottom line is that we don't know how this game was played in the past um and surely it was played differently
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than in this today in these new Agee alternative religion settings but I do feel based on my experience that the spirit of playing the game the way of deep engagement with the game to learn something about the world to
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define something about your own future or to help you in your life choices that that element is something that may really uh go all the way back to the original charts so in a sense even though John Chopper has
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long since been replaced by snakes and ladders in India um the spirit of playing it uh still still lives on today I believe and I think I'll stop here I've been talking for about an hour so uh now it's
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probably a good time to to stop and uh take some some questions uh if there are any thank you thank you very much indeed Jacob that was absolutely fascinating um I've had I had loads of questions unfortunately my laptop sort of died to
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death halfway through and I had to switch onto my phone so I can't see them in front of me um but yeah I had uh well actually one of them you answered at the end there because I was wondering whether there
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was a commercial opportunity we could collaborate in the center for yoga studies and and you and creative game board and I mean maybe maybe we could do one sort of combined with twister or something like that for all the yoga
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practitioners but anyway more seriously sort of first of all I'm wondering where the term Chopper and also then you you quoted uh barnabata and uh I mean Chopra can kind of understand maybe it's from uh what would it be four feet or Buddha
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or something but I can't really understand why it'd be ashdar pada for the for it for a chess board in particular well the the astapada is uh it means I mean apata in the sense of also a square
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so it's the eight square board so it's the board with eight times eight squares you also have the uh um it's a ten by ten uh and and the earliest mention of that you find in the Buddhist the black Magellan from the
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early centuries of the Common Era uh is where you first find that choppered uh is a little more difficult to to really explain you have these chapters put at least this the four folds you have the when you use it when
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you make the Soma in The Vedic ritual you have these uh four stones that you put into sort of four pockets and you use it somehow to to I guess prepare the Soma plant um and there's it has it's sometimes
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connected with that uh but really I think that it's it's rather um chapter in the sense of either four feet or chatus pakta in the sense of a forklof uh that is really for a piece of cloth that is put together
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um and the earliest occurrence literary occurrence that we have of the word is in uh from Sufi romances from around 1500 is where it first appears but there we learned that it's said that um in in Rajasthan you know there's a chopper
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board in every Palace so so clearly it was already um quite prevalent at that time but that's the earliest occurrence we have really of the word so Gyan dropper of course Builds on that so Chopper here is really a stand-in for a game like if you
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read most early translations of text where there are references to games they'll always always talk about you know they were playing on a draft sport well they were playing on a chessboard and then when you look at the original
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wording it's of course something completely different but you just use any old game that people will know as sort of a placeholder for any game so you have to be very careful uh really about these references uh and that goes
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for all all game literature has a sort of a common um Pitfall to just accept uh these early translations as as references to to existing games there's often just placeholders okay thank you very interesting I wonder also yeah fascinating that you said that
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the uh the Sufi romance is the play martians or Prem qatar's mentioned I mean it seems unlikely but also they have these interesting allegories of the of the yogic journey but I don't suppose that the the chocolate is mentioned in
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that context well the Japanese uses a metaphor it's it's used um partly to sort of reveal the true nature of of persons like if you can play Chopra well it proves you're a prince for example so it's um I mean
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playing games is also part of the class the the the skills that you have to master you know in order to be a cultured person um so playing chess or Choppers and especially playing it um two people but controlling two sides of
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the board each a sort of uh a premium Mark of being a really good player but it's also used um as a love metaphor uh in the Sufi romances um and there is all this whole thing in introoper for example you can you can
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twin Pawns but is you can if you have two of your own Pawns in the same square they form a pair and they move around they become stronger and that becomes then sort of a metaphor for sexual intercourse
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um and the the pawns themselves are often have this Dome shape which is often described as a breast shape uh that's the shape of the female breast and the whole uh terminology that's associated with the different throws that you can make when you throw the
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dice um they often use stick dice with four sites like uh long dies with four sites and the different number combinations is then also given some interpretation that gives it this sort of erotic mode um there is especially
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um in uh padmavati the Romans from from 1540 there's a long sequence of a chopper game that sort of slowly sort of slides into sort of a sexual intercourse uh using the same game metaphors okay well fascinating and I got one one
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last sort of comment question I I can't see the uh slido so I don't know if anyone else can get in there because I'm now on my phone but um I was particularly interested as well when you were talking about the the uh the nine
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snakes corresponding and then being directly uh made parallel with the nine channels in the body and the 72 000 quarters or 72 quarters because I I wasn't aware of parallels in Sanskrit text but I had a quick look and of course there are a few
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and I think they rather Support also your uh suggestion that the the board the games originate in the North and the west of India because it seems particularly text from that region that have this system at night and and you
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quoted from the city down to puddity I think but I don't think I then factors of birth in there as well which mentions the nine rivers or nine yeah so and that that text I think is certainly from
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Punjab or Kashmir that that kind of region and so I thought yeah that's uh quite a quite a a you know useful way of identifying where where the games might have originated I thought that was fascinating yeah it was very just a
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comment on that that I mean that's I mean that accounts for the snakes the latter uh symbolism is more difficult uh but there is also in the uh go there is a verse right in the beginning which talks about the mukti subhana so
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the latter to Liberation and if you go down to South India you find the game calling being called uh so the latter to the highest place so um yeah so this idea of Supan is at least there in the terminology though
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it's it's it's less clear and on the Jane boats for example it's not it's often not ladders but rather lines and they seem to be more like a transmigratory lines these the shreenis that the souls they transmigrate along
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when they move between bodies um so yeah but yeah it's it's it's it's these little bits and pieces that we have to go on when we try to find out what how did the charge really understand themselves and and where did
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they originate okay it was one one last just question I ask you to confirm something so as I understood it you think that the games with these motifs are later than the text I mean that's the evidence you have at the moment
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there's that they didn't sort of evolve in parallel I mean the crossover seems so close and so in but but um it'd be lovely to think that they were kind of in dialogue as they evolved but perhaps perhaps that's it's well
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it's difficult to say right um but it's it's I mean the verses that you find on the charts that um that give some kind of interpretation of the game but they're not find found anywhere else I mean nowhere and I know
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of only a single booklet describing uh the game that appears to have sort of been been used for playing the game perhaps which incorporates one of these verses but uh Harris Johari who republished the game in 1975 he writes
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in his introduction that there used to be a game of or a book of shlokas that came along with the game so each time you land on the Square you'd read a shock um a little bit like when you're doing
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uh divination do you have this particularly these dice oracles and when you throw a certain number uh you read a little poem and then you use that as the basis of your divination or your take on whatever it is that you're investigating
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when you're playing the game so it's possible that some kind of booklets existed at one point uh with more information but again none of them have come down to us and I also suspect again that it would be probably mostly sort of
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an oral tradition of people knowing about this terminology and being able to guide you through the game I I think it's quite likely that the game was played with some some kind of of guide and we will often find it in Royal
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settings also in Rajasthan for example um in the Royal Court in in Jaipur among other places okay great thank you now I'm going to ask if perhaps Theo if there's anything on the slider we can go to because I
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can't see it I've managed to make my computer start but I can't well at least it started and we do we have a couple of really good questions coming in um and if we run out I have one um but we'll uh let's go to Richard
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Williams who actually has two questions I think I'm gonna ask you to unmute Richard hi thank you thanks to you hi hi Jacob nice to see you nice to see you thanks for for sharing this um I'll be quick so
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one question was can you say more about the Sufi boards please and in particular what would the snakes and ladders themselves be associated with in uh Sufi cosmology and secondly I was interested that these boards you identified um were sort of popping up in the late
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18th century and you had one example from Lucknow and so on so do you think there's a possibility uh these boards were influenced by European games that were making their way over to India via colonialism thank you yes okay let me
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start with the last question first um the the origin of games is is really complicated uh it's a complicated story because uh games rarely travel as a full package I mean usually they're combined of different elements so I what I
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suspect is that the formal system that I showed you of how the game is made how you have the sequence of squares how you move around along them with one Pawn you go up and down all this but this whole
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formal system did not exist in India prior to this game it did however exist in Europe in what we know as the game of the goose which is an original and Italian game from the 14th first attested in the in the 14th century and
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the earliest known Boards of the game of the goose are actually from India they were manufactured uh commissioned to be manufactured in Gujarat in the 16th century we have some very interesting and those are the earliest game of the
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goosebots we have so we know that the game of the goose was present in India at least as something that was being commissioned we can also see on the uh the manufacturer of the boats that whoever did them were not used to doing
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them they're carved in wood and the the carvings are really off so it's clearly not like standard measure to produce them though we do have at the mugal court um under orange sep in the late 17th century we do have uh examples of
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passionate game of the goosebots where you basically have uh it's it's a Talisman uh so you enter this magical world and you travel around it uh fighting dragons and finding treasure and these games are called ganj uh treasure uh the treasure is then in the
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center of the boat and you have you have to acquire it so we know that the game of the goose and this this way was ex was in India at the time and I suspect that mechanically uh snakes and ladders
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again Chopper are influenced by the game of the goose on the other hand thematically games of spiritual progression uh they have a long history uh in China especially we have these games going back to uh the early part of
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the second Millennium in China based on a model of games going back even further um and those are Buddhist games so and and if you go to Nepal you find a coexistence of versions of these Chinese games now Tibetan games uh and Gantt
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Chopper so thematically uh there seems to be some kind of possible inspiration from uh Tibet and China and game mechanically some inspiration from Europe and then of course uh the the fashioning of the board which I've been talking about here uh in particular uh
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is is then what is really I think uniquely Indian uh the way that the board is set up the way it's inscribed uh the way that you have this uh depiction of this micro and macro Cosmic symbology placed onto the boards I think
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that's the really Indian part of it um as for the Sufi charts uh well um the the Sufi charts are organized you know not according to chakras but according to the different Heavens so you move up through the
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different heavens and they are uh usually uh 10 by 10 so more similar to Modern Snakes and Ladder Sports and may also have inspired them actually and on the Sufi boats you have uh you don't necessarily have snakes and ladders you
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often have snakes and arrows arrows is a thing with the Sufi boats sometimes you have chains and arrows you have sort of different uh figurative elements so the snakes and ladders were not really apparently like the big thing originally
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with the Sufi boards um and yeah and then you're you're moving up towards the Throne of Allah the the largest snake on the Sufi board the the snake that'll take the furthest back on on the vaishnava board it's if
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you go if you reach there you go all the way back to the second Square uh Maya whereas in the Sufi board the long longest snake going down is shaitan uh if you hit that you fall down right down
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to the bottom of the game um so and then you also have different uh Angels uh on the Sufi boards but it's very much the same in the sense of Deuce and don'ts uh taboos and uh that that's
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written on it and then with sort of a sprinkling of of Sufi uh terminology but the Sufi boats appear to have been adapted in the early 19th century um in these uh uh yeah Sufi environments and some of them are very elaborate uh
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like beautifully Uh Wood car bored inlaid with mother of pearl and everything um so so they were really I think considered like beautiful full art objects um and and they they traveled uh westwards and you also find a whole uh
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derivation of them in in the Ottoman Empire and also even down in Syria um so they have an outline in that direction great thank you for that uh Jacob I think we've got time for one or two more
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there's a there are a couple of questions that are kind of more um technical so someone's asking for the kind of um a reference for the version of a game uh in the British library and someone else is giving details of the
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game being played in Brazil and what I'm going to suggest is if those people send those questions and comments to us at CYS then we can forward them to you and uh to your email and put you in contact
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because that'd be really nice um I think but in the meantime I think Ruth has uh question hiya thanks ever so much for that presentation I adored the illustrations and how fascinating I just had a quick question about this the snakes as good
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or bad and Kundalini as sort of going up the center as far as I could tell she wasn't represented as doing that so you just had this sort of multiple negative oriented snakes I wanted to say a bit
Speaker A
more about that thank you so sorry can you repeat it again I didn't quite understand um I think in your presentation you talked about benign snakes as well as negative snakes and you talked about the eight coils of Kundalini which I haven't
Speaker A
actually seen many people talk about that much so I find that really interesting that you're you're saying that the the serpentine movement upwards and that the eight coils are somehow important to that so yeah I'm really interested in how the snakes are being
Speaker A
represented both in negative and in benign ways right so um it's it's primarily a feature on Nepalese game charts that you have been nine snakes and the benign snakes they are they're turned upside down so the head of the snake is at the bottom and
Speaker A
when you land on it you slide upwards to the tail which is then at the top so they're like inverted snakes and they're usually painted in uh orange colors and then usually the the snake leading from bhakti to vaikund is a
Speaker A
white snake with uh multiple heads representing shisha the snake official um and with regards to this the idea that the that the eight rows of the game board might somehow do the eight coils of Kundalini I mean that's that's really
Speaker A
pure speculation on my side uh it's not a tested uh anywhere and I think what often happens with games uh there is this whole discussion Like A Game's abstract or are they representational and the representational part of it is
Speaker A
something that you can project onto a game but I mean game boy's inherently uh don't have any inherent meaning they're just formal systems naked formal systems and then you can apply uh different kind of interpretive strategies to them that
Speaker A
can make them become something else and that is what is happening so I think it would be the way that we talking about the game board and the way it's interpreted is also I think a living thing I mean if somebody suddenly it
Speaker A
Dawns on him that oh there are eight rows Kundalini has eight coils you know that can become part of the metaphor it doesn't mean necessarily that the game was designed with that in mind but what's what's interesting to me is
Speaker A
when I look at these diagrammatic subtle body chart that I showed you and also other diagrammatic mandalas and yantras that I mean the way of representing uh the different divinities and these different quotas in the diagram is very evocative of of snakes and
Speaker A
ladders and Kundalini on the subtle body chart is also sometimes drawn as a coiled serpent or it's as a you also sometimes have naughties on these diagrams as uh serpent sort of intertwining up around the chakras up to the central spine of
Speaker A
the body there's even a game board in the city Palace library in Jaipur which shows really is the only game ball that has chakras inscribed on it and also have the snakes coiling around them so is yeah so so the whole
Speaker A
snake metaphor in the association with nadis it's very much a sliding thing because sometimes it will be even on game boards that only have lines for snakes that are not really figuratively snakes at all you'll have a verse
Speaker A
identifying the snakes as nadis even though there are no snakes on the boats so it seems quite clear that that that that is how they're interpreted but again you know what came first we don't know but it just seems that these games are so
Speaker A
special they're difficult to make they're inscribed um you cannot just draw them on the ground and play them so it seems to be objects that was really created um invented by someone and then spread it's not it just it's not like other
Speaker A
games which are just naturally evolving as variations over other games this seems to be sort of a concerted effort to create this games based on some kind of uh platform or diagram which I then hypothesize may have something to do
Speaker A
with these uh subtle body charts and other similar diagrammatic forms fantastic um I'm aware of the time um Jim did you have anything to add or shall we wrap up we're happy um I can wrap up I've had lots more
Speaker A
questions I wanted to actually wrote just just very tiny but with the calories what is it a 50 50 chance of them Landing up or down no it's about a 40 45 55. okay yeah yeah I thought yes great I've got loads
Speaker A
of other another yeah same I want I want to know about the distribution the thing I want to talk about is the distribution of where the game is found in the Contemporary um contemporary world so the fact that
Speaker A
it's more Russian and well you find it and when you don't but yes again we would be here all day I think if I talk about that so we'll move that to email Jacob um thank you for a fantastic talk
Topics:Snakes and LaddersGyan ChauparSouth Asian board gamesspiritual liberationsubtle bodyIndian culturehistorical game studiesyogaVaishnava Bhaktimicrocosm macrocosm
