Gyan Chaupar

The board behind Snakes and Ladders · a map

The game of knowledge: a board of moral ascent, carried to England and emptied of its meaning on the way.

How to read it

This maps the board by kinds of square rather than by rule. It draws the structure the boards share; it isn't a playable set of rules, and the boards themselves differ by tradition and region.

tap a station to go to it

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The ground

The plain squares

Most of life is ordinary squares.

Most throws move you from one plain square to another. The lowest regions are ordinary life — neither sinful nor blessed — and most of the board's traffic happens here.

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The ladders

Virtues: generosity, knowledge

A virtue lifts you.

Certain squares carry a quality — generosity, faithfulness, knowledge — and landing on one lifts you up the board. The two ends of each ladder are linked in meaning.

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The snakes

Vices: vanity, greed, anger

A fault carries you back.

Others carry the opposite — vanity, greed, anger — and send you down. Nothing is lost for good; you walk that stretch again.

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The versions

Moksha patam, gyan bazi

Every tradition drew its own board.

Most Vaishnava boards have 72 squares and end in Vishnu's heaven. The Jain board has 84, laid out on the cosmic body. A Sufi board has 100, one for each name of God.

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The exit

Moksha, liberation

Arrival cannot be forced.

You must land exactly on the last square. Overshooting doesn't end the game; you stay and throw again. Getting to the top isn't the same as getting out.

Exit became winning, and a mirror became a race.

Gyan Chaupar, also Moksha Patam. Surviving boards are mostly eighteenth-century; their dating is contested.

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