Snakes and Ladders
by Eric Edelman
Title
Snakes and Ladders
Artist
Eric Edelman
Medium
Digital Art - Digital Collage
Description
Snakes and Ladders--known as Chutes and Ladders in America--is based on an ancient Hindu game called Moksha Patam. It is meant to teach that life is rooted in karma, or destiny. In the game, the progression of one's token along the numbered spaces on the board represents Life, the Ladders symbolize Virtues (or advancement), and the Snakes stand for Vices (or failure).
The game is extremely simple: all players put their tokens on the starting space (in this case containing the number "1"), and each player takes a turn rolling a die (one of a pair of dice) to determine how many spaces to move his or her token.
If the token reaches the bottom of a ladder (the lower-numbered space the ladder's base sits on), the token is immediately elevated to the higher-numbered space at the top of the ladder, and at the player's next turn continues the game from that higher-numbered space.
On the other hand, if the token reaches a space occupied by a snake's head, the token immediately descends to the lower-numbered space where the snake's tail rests; at the player's next turn, the token continues the game from that lower-numbered space. The first player to reach the hundredth space (shown here as a star) wins the game.
Snakes and Ladders came to England from India in Victorian times, and became very popular. Most of the board layouts for the game are square grids of eight-by-eight, ten-by-ten, or twelve-by-twelve spaces; however, the present artwork was inspired by a late nineteenth-century spiral game-board layout for Snakes and Ladders.
(All artwork, descriptions, & other text created & copyright by Eric Edelman. All rights reserved.)
Uploaded
October 7th, 2012
Statistics
Viewed 3,384 Times - Last Visitor from Fairfield, CT on 04/20/2024 at 2:51 AM
Embed
Share
Sales Sheet
Comments
There are no comments for Snakes and Ladders. Click here to post the first comment.