Videos by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
Presented at India Study Centre (INSTUCEN) in Mumbai on 10 Jan, 2023. The talk briefly outlines t... more Presented at India Study Centre (INSTUCEN) in Mumbai on 10 Jan, 2023. The talk briefly outlines the history of Snakes & Ladders before taking a closer look at early Indian gyan chaupar boards and their possible origins in mystical diagrams of the subtle body. One such diagram drawn by an 18th-century follower of the poet-saint Dadu Dayal (d. 1603) suggests the possible development of free-ranging tools for meditation and visualization into formal systems of ludic interaction. Little is known about the purposes to which early gyan chaupar boards were put, but the approach taken to the game by modern day practitioners clearly indicates its potential for self-exploration and self-knowledge. 35 views
Presented in the Kriti-SAMHiTA Lecture Series hosted by India International Centre in Delhi on 25... more Presented in the Kriti-SAMHiTA Lecture Series hosted by India International Centre in Delhi on 25 Jun, 2022. The history of games in South Asia goes back to the Indus Valley Civilization in the 3rd millennium BCE. The talk invites you on a tour of the history of games in South Asia reaching back to the Indus Valley Civilization in the 3rd millennium BCE. Special attention is devoted to classic games such as chess, chaupar, and backgammon. 15 views
Edited Volumes by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
Sir Henry Wellcome Series 20, Oct 15, 2021
Body and Cosmos is a collection of articles published on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Pro... more Body and Cosmos is a collection of articles published on the occasion of the 70th birthday of Professor Emeritus Kenneth G. Zysk. The articles revolve thematically around the early Indian medical and astral sciences, which have been at the center of Professor Zysk’s long and esteemed career within the discipline of Indology.
The volume is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the medical sciences, the second part to the astral sciences, and the third part to cross-cultural interactions between India and the West, which runs like an undercurrent throughout the work of Professor Zysk.
The articles are written by internationally renowned Indological scholars and will be of value to students and researchers alike.
The volume is edited by Toke Lindegaard Knudsen, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, and Sara Speyer.
Theses by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
PhD Dissertation, 2019
It has long since been established that the modern children's game of snakes and ladders originat... more It has long since been established that the modern children's game of snakes and ladders originated from the Indian game of gyān caupaṛ (game of knowledge), but it has rarely been asked how gyān caupaṛ itself originated, and what exactly constitutes it. The present thesis tells the story of gyān caupaṛ based on nearly 150 unique and mostly unpublished game charts and several little explored secondary sources. The majority of the game charts derive from Vaiṣṇava and Jaina communities in 19th-century western India, though a few reach back to the late 18th century. The thesis argues that the charts developed from tantric drawings of the subtle body used for purposes of meditation and visualization, and only later acquired the properties of a formal game system. Other influences can be traced back to the 12th-century Chinese game of xuanfo tu (table of Buddha selection) and the 15th-century Italian game of gioco dell'oca (game of the goose), but gyān caupaṛ itself does not appear to have been invented before the late 17th or early 18th century. The game charts consist of a sequentially numbered and inscribed grid diagram overlaid with snakes and ladders forming connections between individual squares. The representational value of the charts changes according to the world-views of the different religious communities in which they appear, but they all share a common concern with questions of cosmography, karma, and religious practice. The design is remarkable for its close integration of game mechanics and theme, and while it is possible to reconstruct the rules by which the game was played, little can be said about the uses to which it may have been put beyond that of mere play. Plausible suggestions include education, divination, and self-exploration, but, as evidenced by the later history of the game, such uses have long since fallen away, leaving only the innocent fun of a purely abstract game system.
MA Thesis, 2013
This paper is a revised edition of my MA thesis submitted in the Department of Indology at the Un... more This paper is a revised edition of my MA thesis submitted in the Department of Indology at the University of Copenhagen in July 2013. It questions the adequacy of traditional text critical approaches to manuscripts of medieval Indian story literature and suggests an alternative approach more attentive to the complex position of manuscript culture between orality and literacy. The empirical basis of the study is the manuscripts used by Heinrich Uhle in his text critical edition of Śivadāsa's Vetālapañcaviṃśatikā (i.e. the twenty-five tales of the corpse-possessing spirit) published in 1881. The first part of the thesis briefly outlines the history of textual criticism in the West and raises the point that text critical approaches to story literature need to be more fully informed by current research in the field of orality. The second part suggests the origins of the Vetālapañcaviṃśati tales in Indian oral culture and presents an overview of their textual representations in Sanskrit literature. The third part focuses on the compilation of the tales attributed to Śivadāsa and situates it in the context of the orally informed Jain story literature of medieval Gujarat. The fourth and final part revisits the manuscripts of Uhle's text critical edition and demonstrates the advantages of engaging with them critically on the levels of narrative structure and compositional strategy rather than on the level of concrete textual expression. The thesis concludes with an example of how the suggested text critical approach to Indian story literature might be digitally realized in the increasingly popular Text Encoding Initiative (TIE) format.
![Research paper thumbnail of Firenzefragmenterne: palmeblade blandt papyri [The Florence Fragments: Palm Leaves among Papyri]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/64528378/thumbnails/1.jpg)
BA Thesis, 2011
The Florence Fragments consist of six unpublished palm leaves in a collection of papyri at the Is... more The Florence Fragments consist of six unpublished palm leaves in a collection of papyri at the Istituto Papirologico "G. Vitelli" in Florence, Italy. They are written in the Sanskrit and Sinhala languages in the Sinhala script, and seem to form part of a larger collection of verses quoted from known Ayurvedic treatises. This paper presents an overview of my current investigations into the materials, conservation, writing, language, contents, composition, history and dating of the Florence Fragments. Due to the sparsity of the material and the unusual circumstances of its discovery as palm leaves among papyri, interpretations are tentative at best. I continue with a discussion of tradition and innovation in classical Indian scientific literature based on Sheldon Pollock's notion of "the Shastric paradigm" (Pollock 1985), and link it to a sample analysis of quotational techniques applied in the Florence Fragments. The main conclusion drawn is that while Pollock and others tend to focus on commentaries as the sine qua non in traditional innovation, my analysis shows that a more subtle, and ultimately more powerful, manipulation of original material is likely to take place in the act of transmission itself. I propose a further study into this apparently underdeveloped area together with other proposals on how to use the Florence Fragments as a stepping stone for further research.
Papers by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
Board Game Studies Journal, 2024
Dadu is a traditional board game exclusively played within the Muslim Dawoodi Bohra community in ... more Dadu is a traditional board game exclusively played within the Muslim Dawoodi Bohra community in South Asia. Most households have their own handstitched cloth board, together with a set of wood-turned playing pieces and cowrie shells for dice. Though formally a two-player game, it is commonly played in large teams during family gatherings. Non-community members rarely take part and the game remains virtually unknown to outsiders. Descriptions of the game are absent from the scholarly literature and it does not find mention in any of the major game encyclopedias. Surviving boards and communal memory trace the game back to the early 20th century, but the hybrid nature of the game and the origin of the Dawoodi Bohra community in Yemen suggest that it may go back several centuries further. The present article uses ludemic theory to analyze the constituent elements of the game and demonstrate their affinity with elements in other games both inside and outside South Asia. The findings are contextualized within the wider history of the Dawoodi Bohra community, suggesting that Dadu may have resulted from the adaptation of a West Asian Tab game to a South Asian single track race game. A detailed set of rules gathered from interviews with members of the Dawoodi Bohra community is appended to the article.
Unpublished, 2022
Board games constitute a category of non-digital games traditionally defined as being played with... more Board games constitute a category of non-digital games traditionally defined as being played with pieces on a specially arranged surface. The accelerated growth of the hobby games industry since the mid-20th century has challenged the definition and the ways in which board game scholars approach their subject. While studies of traditional board games still tend to focus on questions of identification, classification, transmission and reconstruction, studies of contemporary board games are increasingly informed by the theoretical and analytical underpinnings of digital game studies. This article discusses the history of the term board game and its definition, and tracks changes in scholarly attitudes to board games since their emergence as an independent field of study in the late 19th century.
NB! The present article was written in the late spring of 2022 on the encouragement of the Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (https://eolt.org/), which unfortunately stopped updating their website before the article could be properly responded to. Consequently, it has not undergone any process of peer review.
History of Science in South Asia Journal, 2022
This study focuses on the singular courtly game of phañjikā described in the 12th-century Mānasol... more This study focuses on the singular courtly game of phañjikā described in the 12th-century Mānasollāsa attributed to King Someśvara III of the Western Cālukya Empire. It shows that phañjikā belongs to the family of cruciform race games, which also counts the famous games of caupaṛ and paccīsī among its members. Phañjikā, however, predates the earliest evidence for both of those games by several centuries, and should therefore be considered an early indication of the popularity that cruciform race games would come to enjoy in elite and royal households from at least the 15th century onward. The study also shows that phañjikā did not enjoy the same status at court as other board games, such as chess and backgammon, also described in the Mānasollāsa. It was primarily associated with the women at court, and only engaged in by the king for the pleasure of witnessing the passionate emotion that it stirred in them. Based on the low status of the game, and the prevalence of race games in all levels of society, the study argues that phañjikā was likely an elaborate courtly adaptation of a simpler folk game. This would explain its absence from the literature outside the Mānasollāsa, as well as its many correspondences with a wide range of cruciform, square, and single-track race games only documented in more recent sources. The study suggests that more scholarly attention should be paid to the regional literatures of India, as they developed in the first half of the 2nd millennium CE, for a more detailed understanding of the early history of medieval Indian race games to be arrived at.
Jaina Studies Newsletter, 2021
This brief paper summarises the most important findings related to Jain versions of the game of s... more This brief paper summarises the most important findings related to Jain versions of the game of snakes and ladders as detailed in my doctoral thesis "The Game of Knowledge: Playing at Spiritual Liberation in 18th- and 19th-Century Western India" (University of Copenhagen, Denmark, 2019).
Board Game Studies Journal, 2021
This article appeared in a special issue of the Board Game Studies Journal dedicated to misconcep... more This article appeared in a special issue of the Board Game Studies Journal dedicated to misconceptions in board game studies. It challenges the popular view that the cruciform game of caupaṛ or paccīsī dates back to ancient times, and shows that available evidence only allows us to trace it back to the 15th century. At the same time it suggests that certain ludic elements found in the game may derive from earlier games, such as phañjikā described in the 12th-century Mānasollāsa.
The Matheson Trust for the Study of Comparative Religion, 2013
This paper introduces the subject of a religious Indian board game commonly known as gyān caupaṛ.... more This paper introduces the subject of a religious Indian board game commonly known as gyān caupaṛ. The game, which would go on to inspire the modern children's game Snakes & Ladders, appears to have been especially popular in the Jain and Vaiṣṇava communities of Western India in the 18th and 19th centuries. The paper was submitted as my MA Specialized Topic paper in Indology at the University of Copenhagen in January 2013.
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Videos by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
Edited Volumes by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
The volume is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the medical sciences, the second part to the astral sciences, and the third part to cross-cultural interactions between India and the West, which runs like an undercurrent throughout the work of Professor Zysk.
The articles are written by internationally renowned Indological scholars and will be of value to students and researchers alike.
The volume is edited by Toke Lindegaard Knudsen, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, and Sara Speyer.
Theses by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
Papers by Jacob Schmidt-Madsen
NB! The present article was written in the late spring of 2022 on the encouragement of the Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (https://eolt.org/), which unfortunately stopped updating their website before the article could be properly responded to. Consequently, it has not undergone any process of peer review.
The volume is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the medical sciences, the second part to the astral sciences, and the third part to cross-cultural interactions between India and the West, which runs like an undercurrent throughout the work of Professor Zysk.
The articles are written by internationally renowned Indological scholars and will be of value to students and researchers alike.
The volume is edited by Toke Lindegaard Knudsen, Jacob Schmidt-Madsen, and Sara Speyer.
NB! The present article was written in the late spring of 2022 on the encouragement of the Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (https://eolt.org/), which unfortunately stopped updating their website before the article could be properly responded to. Consequently, it has not undergone any process of peer review.