I expect you were like me and played Snakes & Ladders as a child. It seems rather boring now, just watching each dice throw to see whether you would scale up canary-yellow ladders, or slide down evil-eyed snakes. But the game has a fascinating history, according to Harish Johari in his book The Yoga of Snakes and Arrows. It’s possibly 2,000 years old and was originally called Gyan Chaupad (literally gyan = knowledge; chaupad = a game played with dice). He says the game was devised by sears and saints to teach the principles of dharma (the rules of the universe): as we go through life we perform good actions and come to realisations, which propel us forward spiritually; or we do bad things and our minds are clouded with ignorance, so we fall back on our journey to enlightenment.
Harish’s book comes with a board he designed himself (he was an accomplished artist – it’s quite beautiful: arrows with patterned ridges and spotted snakes with ribbed underbellies in soft purples, oranges, yellows, blues and greens. These are sent against a buddha figure on a pale violet background. The board is framed by humans caught in the wheel of samsara: at the bottom they’re entwined with the snakes of ignorance; at the top they have wings. Men are to the left, ascending via a hot solar route; women are on the right, hauling themselves up through water.
Harish says he based the board on a 150-year old example. Originally a book of chants and slokas (sanskirt verses) accompanied the game. The chants were to be intoned when you landed on a particular square, while the slokas described the meaning of each square. This book has been lost; however, it’s possible to devise meanings from the sanskrit terms on the board, he says, together some knowledge from his own family tradition.
The board is divided in to 72 squares, comprising eight rows of nine. Each row corresponds to a chakra, illustrated by the middle square of each row lying on the chakra points of the Buddha figure. They are as follows:
- Muladhara (root chakra) — physical plane: the fundamentals of being
- Svadhisthana (sacral chakra) — astral plane: the realm of fantasy
- Manipura (solar plexus chakra) — celestial plane: the theatre of karma
- Anahata (heart chakra) — plane of balance: attaining balance
- Visuddha (throat chakra) — human plane: man becomes himself
- Ajna (third-eye chakra) — plane of austerity: time of penance
- Sahasrara (crown chakra) — plane of reality
- The eighth chakra is beyond the body. It relates to cosmic consciousness
The game starts on number 68 – cosmic consciousness, as this is where we all are before we are born. You have to chose to enter the game (you decide to be born), so you need to throw a six to start. When you do this, you can go to square one: genesis. From there, you have to make your way up to square 68 again. The board is supposed to mirror your life, so the squares you land on are issues relevant to you. As Harish says “The saints who invented the game of Leela used the game board to recognise the present state of their own being. By observing their course of movement from one plane to another they could practically observe which snakes brought them down and which arrows took them up.” The book gives detailed explanations of each square.
I tried playing the game myself. After 20 minutes I was still on square 2 (illusion) as the board is littered with snakes (or perhaps it’s my bad karma!). Peter Pandoer, a disciple of Harish, says he used to always have the board open and throw the dice two or three times a day, just to see what issues were relevant to him at that present time, which is maybe less frustrating and would give you more time to reflect. (You can see a video of him playing the game on youtube). I’m not really sure how much the game represents my life, but the subject matter is fascinating (it’s surprising that, to my knowledge, there’s only been one book on Snakes and Arrows) and Harish’s commentary is an informative read. (He was a respected scholar of Vedic philosophy; you can read more about him at www.sanatansociety.com.) There is also an interactive version of a Jain version of Snakes & Arrows at the Victoria and Albert Museum website. http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/1414_jain/snakesandladders/