This beloved game is in fact an evolution of "Moksha-Patamu", an ancient Hindu game originally used for religious instruction. It symbolizes man's moral journey through life on the road to perfection. According to Hinduism, the capacities for good, and for evil, exist in equal measure in all of us. Virtue and good deeds, symbolized by the ladders, shorten a person's journey to enlightenment through a series of incarnations, while evil deeds, symbolized by the snakes, serve to hinder a person and lengthen the journey, and all comes to pass by a seemingly random toss of the dice...

The allegorical nature of the game has been, unfortunately, lost in most Western versions, and nowadays it is treated as a simple- but enjoyable- obstacle race.

The winner is the first to reach the end. Pieces move along the board by throwing the dice.
If a piece lands on the bottom of a ladder, the player moves the piece to the top of the ladder, thus shortening their journey; however, if a piece lands on the head of a snake, the player must slide their piece down to the snake's tail, and lengthen their journey.

An extremely entertaining game where nothing is certain. Great for the entire familly!