CHENNAI: Many things have changed in thousands of years, but one thing that has not changed is our ability to foretell the future. Human beings have been trying to predict the future ever since the beginning of time. From simple concepts as to whether it would rain or not rain, to more complex modern-day requirements on the stock market and more — the future has baffled us. The future holds great mystery and no matter what we have discovered, no matter the advances in science, it remains as something that we have never unable to unravel.
Divination, or the capacity to predict the future, has been practised with numerous objects and a variety of approaches including animal entrails, palmistry, and even as seen much closer to home through horoscopes. And it is in this desire to foretell future that lies the very roots of dice and gambling.
Imagine if you could control or predict the number you would throw on the dice. It might be just a few seconds away, but that implies the ability to predict the future. The belief is that if one could win at dice and foretell the throw of the dice or control it, then perhaps one would have the capacity to foretell or control the future in a far more metaphysical capacity.
From the earliest of time as recorded in the poem in the Rig Veda called the Gamblers Lament where the gambler neglects his wife, his cattle, his entire life, to the throw of the bibhitaki seeds to the modern-day Las Vegas type gambling houses, this desire to anticipate the dice throw and thus control what we cannot control, has fascinated us.
Through this fascination and as a response to it, mankind created a number of dice games — games that soon became part of our recreation and past time. Perhaps the closest ancestor to dice is animal knucklebones, the fall of which would define the outcome.
However, as mankind started settling in — a change from their more nomadic lifestyle — entertainment and pastimes became a part of their daily routine. With that, the dice that we used,were now created with more craftsmanship in materials such as terracotta, bone and ivory and with interesting artistic flourishes to be used in games and pastimes.
Excavations of the Indus Valley Civilisation that flourished from 3,000 BC to 2,500 BC have resulted in numerous findings of dice made of terracotta, bone, and more. While some of these dice found have been square, while others are oblong with differing patterns of dots indicating different ways of counting. Some of the square dice have opposite faces, adding up to 7, much like more modern square dice.
In the recent excavations in Tamil Nadu, both four-sided or long dice and 6-sided dice have also been discovered.
These artifacts not only speak of the recreational practices of ancient people but underscore the human desire for play and interaction.
As life grows more complex, we are still grappling with concepts of probability. We build complex models based on data and numbers but yet, in some cases everything fails, our predictions let us down. For all our advances, the future remains an enigma, and we are simply players in what perhaps is a cosmic game of dice.