The Game of Knowledge: Playing at Spiritual Liberation in Eighteenth & Nineteenth-Century Western India

Snakes and Ladders is one of the most successful board games ever marketed. It was introduced by British game manufacturers in the late nineteenth century, but its history can be traced back to the religious Vaishnava and Jaina communities in eighteenth-century Western India. It was known there as the ‘Game of Knowledge’ and variously used for entertainment, education, divination, and self-exploration. The board was a map of the universe, the pawns were the souls traveling through it, the dice the karma controlling them, and the snakes and ladders the ups and downs on their journey toward spiritual liberation. The Game of Knowledge: Playing at Spiritual Liberation in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Western India tells the fascinating story of board games from its origin in mystical charts of the astral body to its modern adaptation as an abstract children’s game. The story is told through beautifully handcrafted gameboards and little-known texts and manuscripts. The facts are presented with scholarly rigour yet easily grasped by the attentive reader.…