MM9: What an Old Indian Snakes-and-Ladders Board Was Teaching

Read the ethical labels on Wellcome's Jnana Bagi board without turning a modern dice result into a judgement on the player. A learning offering to Saraswati Maa.

On a modern numbered board, a ladder may simply carry your counter upwards. On a historical board, its starting and ending squares may also carry an argument about how life should be lived.

MM9 readers can explore that difference through one identified object: Jnana Bagi, catalogued by Wellcome Collection as MS INDIC ALPHA 276. Looking at a particular board keeps the history more interesting than a vague claim that every old game meant the same thing.

Follow one ladder and read both ends

The Wellcome catalogue places this object under Jainism and describes an ethical teaching purpose. The squares carry virtues and vices as well as numbers. Its longest ladder connects 17, labelled “Compassionate Love”, with 69, “The World of the Absolute”.

Those labels change what a reader notices. The connection is not merely between two numbers. It presents a moral and spiritual relationship through a game mechanism that moves a counter from one place to another.

Now cover the words

Imagine looking only at 17 and 69. You would know where the ladder begins and ends, but the named relationship would disappear. Put the words back and the teaching purpose becomes visible again.

This is why the object's own religious context matters. Calling it a Saraswati ritual would replace the museum's Jain context with something the record does not establish. A devotee of Saraswati can study it respectfully without claiming it was made for her worship.

Ask the goddess to help you read faithfully

The connection to Saraswati Maa is your present act of learning: seeking knowledge about an object, attending to its words and keeping its background intact.

At her offering area on Ishta Mel, offer the displayed white flowers, books, fruits, kheer and deepak together.

ॐ ऐं सरस्वत्यै नमः

Saraswati Maa, accept my offering. Bless my study of this board. Let me understand what its labels teach, remember whose tradition it belongs to and avoid adding claims that the object does not support.

Return to today's numbered board

If a friend reaches a ladder in a present-day dice game, the immediate explanation is the move and the board's instructions. It does not establish that the friend possesses the virtue named on this older object. Landing on a snake is not a verdict on their character either.

For MM9 readers, history can deepen a game's meaning without deciding what today's players deserve. The old labels teach something worth reading; the modern move remains something worth describing accurately.