Gyan Chauper

Gyan Chauper is a dice game derived from chaupar, an ancient Indian board game, that combines play with moral and spiritual instruction rather than pure skill. Dice games have been played in India since Shramanic times, and game boards and pieces linked to this family have been found at Indus Valley Civilisation sites including Mohenjo-daro and Harappa, with dice games of this kind also referenced in classical texts such as the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata. In Gyan Chauper, players advance from Narak Dwar, or hell, toward union with the divine and ultimately Moksha, climbing ladders that represent virtues and sliding down snakes that represent vices; when the game reached England around 1890 it was reworked into the modern numerical Snakes and Ladders, which dropped most of the original moral and spiritual instruction. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/