Snakes and Ladders began in India as a game about karma, known by names such as Moksha Patam, Gyan Chaupar and Paramapada Sopanam, in which ladders stood for virtues and snakes for vices on the road to liberation. In the late 1800s the game reached England, where it lost its spiritual meaning and became the simple race to square 100 that children still play. Its roots are old, but the exact date and inventor are unknown, and the oldest boards we can still see are a few centuries old.
A game about karma
The Indian ancestors of Snakes and Ladders were not just pastimes. Each square stood for a state of being, a moral action or a heavenly realm, and moving across the board was a picture of the soul’s journey through many lives.
A player might start at a square for birth or origin, then pass squares for illusion, anger and greed. Landing at the foot of a ladder for a virtue such as mercy or devotion carried you upward; landing on a snake’s head for a vice slid you back toward earthly life. The goal at the top was liberation, called moksha, or the heavenly abode of a god such as Vishnu.
The message was clear: good actions lift you up, bad ones pull you down, and much of what happens is out of your hands. Because the dice decide everything, the game mirrored a belief in destiny rather than skill.
Who invented Snakes and Ladders?
Honestly, no one can say. Popular articles often credit the 13th-century Marathi poet-saint Dnyaneshwar. That attribution, though, comes from a Sanskrit text written in 1871, roughly six centuries after his lifetime, so historians treat it as a tradition rather than a fact.
The physical evidence is more recent. The art historian Andrew Topsfield studied dozens of surviving boards from Hindu, Jain and Muslim (Sufi) traditions. One of the best known was collected by Richard Johnson, an East India Company officer stationed in Lucknow around 1780 to 1782, and is now in the British Library. It has 72 squares and includes scorpions alongside the snakes.
Old boards came in many sizes. Topsfield and others describe versions with 72, 84, 100 and even 128 squares, painted on cloth or paper rather than printed on cardboard. None of the surviving boards came with their own dice or pieces, so we do not know exactly how they were played. Some 19th-century writers said cowrie shells were thrown instead of dice.
The many Indian versions
The game was shared across religions and regions, each adapting the squares to its own teachings.
| Name | Tradition or region | What the top of the board represents |
|---|---|---|
| Gyan Chaupar (“game of knowledge”) | Jain and Hindu, northern and western India | Liberation from the cycle of rebirth |
| Moksha Patam | Widely used name across India | Moksha, or liberation |
| Paramapada Sopanam | South India, including Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka | Vaikuntha, the realm of Vishnu |
| Vaikunthapali | Andhra Pradesh | Vaikuntha |
| Golok Dham | Bengal | Goloka, the realm of Krishna |
| Shatranj al-’urafa (“chess of the knowers”) | Sufi, found in India, Iran and Turkey | A dervish’s union with God |
Some of these traditions are still alive. Some families in South India still play Paramapada Sopanam to stay awake through the all-night vigil of Vaikuntha Ekadashi, and Jain communities are reported to play Gyan Chaupar during the festival of Paryushan.
One detail stands out on the older boards: there were more snakes than ladders. The road to liberation was meant to be hard.
The journey to Victorian England
British officials and families in India brought these boards home, and by the late Victorian era the game was being sold in England. The earliest known English edition was registered by the London firm F. H. Ayres in 1892. It used a circular board with a spiral track of 100 numbered spaces.
English publishers kept the moral lesson at first but rewrote it for their audience. Ladders were labeled with virtues such as Thrift, Penitence and Industry; snakes with vices such as Indulgence, Disobedience and Indolence. They also balanced the board, giving it equal numbers of snakes and ladders, which made the game kinder and quicker.
Over time the labels disappeared. What was left was a pure race: roll a die, move your counter, climb or slide, and be the first to reach 100.
Across the Atlantic
In 1943 an American publisher released a version that replaced the snakes with playground slides, on the theory that children did not like snakes, and used a spinner instead of a die. That edition became the familiar name for many American families, while the rest of the English-speaking world kept the snakes.
Then and now
| Indian boards | Modern Snakes and Ladders | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Teaching karma and moral choices | Family fun and counting practice |
| Squares | 72 to 128, many with names and meanings | Usually 100, numbered |
| Snakes vs ladders | More snakes than ladders | Roughly balanced |
| Goal | Liberation or a heavenly realm | Reach the last square first |
| Randomizer | Dice or, by some accounts, cowrie shells | One six-sided die |
Why it still works
Snakes and Ladders survives because it asks almost nothing of players. There are no decisions, so a four-year-old has the same chance as a grandparent, and every roll is a chance to practice counting squares. It is also a lesson in good sportsmanship: you will slide down a long snake one turn from the finish, and so will everyone else.
That same simplicity explains why our computer players do not have difficulty levels in this game. With no choices to make, a computer player just rolls.
Play Snakes and Ladders today
You can play Snakes and Ladders free on one phone, tablet or computer with two to four players, and computer players can fill empty seats if you are short of people. The Snakes and Ladders rules guide explains the 100-square board and the exact-roll finish, and the tutorial for playing with kids has ideas for turning it into a counting game. It works offline after your first visit.
Snakes and Ladders shares its route from India to Victorian England with another family favorite. Read the history of Ludo, then try a round of Ludo, or browse more simple picks in our games for kids.