Moksha Patam · मोक्ष पटम

The old Indian game of snakes and ladders, played as one life, in English and Hindi, in a single HTML file. Every square tells part of a story from the Panchatantra or the Upanishads, in the order a life would meet them.

Play: https://codebpr.com/moksha-patam/ (add ?lang=hi to open in Hindi)

The board as a life

Squares	Stage	Stories from
1–20	Childhood	Panchatantra fables
21–40	Brahmacharya (student)	Taittiriya, Chandogya, Katha, Mundaka; Aruni from the Mahabharata
41–60	Grihastha (householder)	Brihadaranyaka, Isha, Taittiriya, Mahabharata
61–80	Vanaprastha (forest-dweller)	Brihadaranyaka, Kena, Chandogya
81–100	Sannyasa (renunciate)	Mundaka, Mandukya, the four Mahavakyas
101–110	Divine realms, with Moksha at 105 partway along them	Bhagavad Gita 9.21 on the fall past 110

How the snakes and ladders are placed

• Nothing on squares 1–5. A newborn can't climb by virtue or fall by vice.

• Childhood vices are small slips (chatter, fibbing, laziness) with short falls. Adult enemies like anger, craving and greed only appear in the householder years. Ahankara (ego) waits at 99 and is the longest fall of all.

• Ladders are biggest in the middle of life (truth, resolve, giving, duty) and short near the end. No ladder reaches heaven, so the divine row is reached on foot.

• Moksha is an exit, not a summit. It sits at 105, partway along the divine row, as Vaikuṇṭha sat a few steps before the end of the old boards. Landing exactly on it is liberation. Passing it carries you into the higher heavens (Lakshmi, Saraswati, Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva), which are still the wheel.

• Heaven runs out. Nothing above Moksha turns back. A player who passes 105 walks the heavens, 106 to 110, and the throw that would carry them past 110 is the fall: the merit is spent and the life ends there: kṣīṇe puṇye martya-lokaṃ viśanti, when merit is spent you return to the world of mortals (Gītā 9.21), and every world up to Brahma's returns (8.16). Most of the surviving rules texts send the overreacher back to the world in the same way. Shiva's card at 110 shows the fall after his own.

• No exact roll, and a way back down. A roll that would pass 110 walks up to it and back down by the remainder, so no roll is ever wasted. It is also how you reach the exit again once you have overshot it: from 110 a 5 comes back down onto Moksha, and so does a 6 from 109.

• Fall, then the remedy: five snakes drop you one square before the ladder of the virtue that heals them:

  • Pride of learning → Guru-bhakti
  • Greed → Dana
  • Anger → Daya
  • Hypocrisy → Tapas
  • Clinging → Vairagya

  The tail's card says the ladder is one step above.

• 14 snakes to 11 ladders, on purpose. The documented historical boards set no ratio: the Jaina board has 9 snakes to 6 ladders (and 9 footprints), the Marathi 108 40 to 22, the Vaiṣṇava board 10 to 10, the Mughal board 13 to 17 (docs/BOARDCRAFT.md §1). The popular claim that snakes outnumbered ladders two to one is folklore, and so is the claim that the old boards were balanced or ladder-heavy. This board is snake-heavy as a deliberate thesis, that the good path is the harder one, not as a restoration.

Ladder	Virtue	Story
6→15	Maitri · Friendship	Crow, mouse, tortoise and deer (Panchatantra)
12→24	Buddhi · Wit	The lion and the clever hare (Panchatantra)
23→37	Guru-bhakti	Aruni holds back the flood (Mahabharata)
28→45	Satya · Truth	Satyakama Jabala (Chandogya 4.4)
34→53	Shraddha · Resolve	Nachiketa at Death's door (Katha)
44→63	Dana · Giving	"Datta" from the thunder (Brihadaranyaka 5.2)
51→67	Daya · Compassion	"Dayadhvam" from the thunder (Brihadaranyaka 5.2)
57→75	Dharma · Duty	King Janaka
65→83	Vairagya · Detachment	Maitreyi's question (Brihadaranyaka 2.4)
72→89	Tapas · Austerity	Bhrigu and Varuna (Taittiriya 3)
85→94	Viveka · Discernment	Two birds on one tree (Mundaka 3.1.1)

Snake	Vice	Story
14→8	Vachalata · Chatter	The tortoise and the geese
19→11	Asatya · Fibbing	The blue jackal
29→17	Alasya · Laziness	Subhashita
39→22	Vidya-mada · Pride of learning	The lion-makers
47→31	Kama · Craving	Yayati
55→43	Lobha · Greed	The greedy jackal and the bowstring
59→50	Krodha · Anger	The brahmin and the mongoose
62→46	Moha · Attachment	Dhritarashtra
69→52	Matsarya · Envy	Duryodhana at Indraprastha
77→58	Mada · Pride	The gods and the Yaksha (Kena 3)
88→71	Dambha · Hypocrisy	The cat who played ascetic
93→64	Asakti · Clinging	Jada Bharata and the fawn (Bhagavata 5.8)
99→61	Ahankara · Ego	Virochana and the reflection (Chandogya 8.8)
past 110	Kshina-punya · Merit spent	The fall, which ends the life: when merit is spent, back down into the world (Gita 9.21)

A 20,000-game simulation (npm run sim) puts a single life at a median of 28 turns, with one game in twenty taking 49 or more and none over 100. About half of lives reach Moksha (47.6%); nearly all the rest pass it and fall from the heavens (49.2%), and a few run out of years (3.2%). The distribution has a long tail, so the sim reports the median and the 95th percentile rather than the mean.

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