India Unbound
The Front Runner
Snakes and ladders, ludo, the number zero and even the word 'sugar': so many things we use every day have Indian roots! Let's find out more.
Did you know?
In the old Indian version of snakes and ladders, the ladders stood for good qualities like generosity (sharing freely), and the snakes for bad ones like anger. There were fewer ladders than snakes, because being good takes effort!
Ludo grew out of pachisi, an old Indian board game. Pachisi travelled to other countries too, where it became games such as Parcheesi.
The word 'sugar' travelled all the way from Sanskrit! It comes from 'sharkara', which first meant grit or gravel. And the colour name 'indigo' comes from an old Greek word meaning 'from India'.
Try this: Design a Kindness Board
Draw a 5 by 5 grid of 25 squares and number them 1 to 25, starting at the bottom. Add three ladders on squares with good deeds, like 'helped a friend', and three snakes on squares with bad habits, like 'left the tap running'. Play with a dice and use buttons as counters. The first to reach 25 wins!
Go further: The Mighty Zero
Zero looks like nothing, but it is one of India's greatest gifts to the world. Long ago, Indian mathematicians began using zero to show an empty place in a number, as in 105. In the 7th century, Brahmagupta went further. He treated zero as a number of its own, called it 'shunya' and wrote rules for using it. For example, any number minus itself is zero. Today, computers work using just two digits: 0 and 1!