Sacred Snakes and Ladders?

Exploring the significance of serpentine imagery

What’s the meaning of a popular game about trying to ascend and avoid sliding down? In a video below, the British Museum’s Sushma Jansari unpacks snakes and ladders, as well as what’s missing in its U.S. equivalent.

Sushma is curator of a new exhibition exploring links between ancient Indian art and contemporary Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. We discussed it on a recent podcast, and I shared a brief excerpt here on what I jokingly called a “serpent halo”…

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As a Guardian preview of the exhibition notes:

“One reason for the huge overlap between traditions is the environment in which they emerged; the creators of these objects lived incredibly close to nature. In fact, Jansari says, the natural world ‘plays the underpinning role. If you think about when [the pieces] were made – from the second and third centuries BCE onwards – the subcontinent is very much an agrarian society. There are some people living in cities, but most people live in the countryside, getting their food and resources from forests and land. For them, nature plays such an outsized role in their everyday lives: if the monsoon rains come, then hooray, they can actually eat. If the rains are too strong and wash away all the crops, they may well starve.’

“That awesome power is embodied by the figure of the snake, which comes up again and again, representing both the life-giving and destructive aspects of water (they tend to come out when it’s wet), and of course, mortal danger. In many of the sculptures they appear as protectors, the same crown of cobras rearing up behind images of the Buddha or Vishnu.”

Here’s Sushma with more about sacred snakes – in connection to ladders and much else besides. She’s also presenting an extended online talk on June 5, which is free to stream, and if you’re going to be in London over the summer, Ancient India: Living Traditions runs until October 19 at the British Museum:

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