10pages
menerge
bhell6.pdf
beverley foulks mcguire
university of north Carolina, Wilmington
ABSTRACT Religious games have inspired some of the most popular board games of the modern era, but they have only recently garnered the attention of scholars of religion. This article examines a seventeenth-century Buddhist board game called Selection of Buddhas that was originally designed in response to the popular Chinese board game Promotion o f Officials. The Buddhist game oriented its players towards becoming a Buddha instead of a government official, and it was meant to appeal to a broad range of players, providing beginners a means of learning religious practices in a low-stakes environment and advanced practitioners an alternative form of entertainment to secular games focused on gambling, status, and fame. Because it embedded religious practices within a game, blurring the boundaries between ritual and play, Selection o f Buddhas garnered both praise and criticism. The article focuses especially on the complex understanding of karma reflected in the Buddhist game: while the board suggests a mechanistic operation of karmic cause and effect as players progress from the first square to the ultimate attainment of Buddhahood, the roll of the dice inscribed with the name of Amitabha Buddha implies that karma can be miraculously transformed if one appeals to Buddhas and bodhisattvas with sincere devotion.
Keywords: Ouyi Zhixu, Buddhism, China, karma, games, play, ritual, seventeenth century
Bevertey McGuire is an assistant professor of East Asian religions in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. She received her Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard University in 2009. Her academic areas of interest include Chinese religions, Buddhism, and comparative religious ethics.
Material Religion volume 10, issue 1, pp. 4 -2 9 DOI: 10.2752/175183414X13909887177466 © Bloomsbury Publishing Pic 2014
Asian religious games have inspired some of the most popular board games of the modern era—including Chutes and Ladders and The Game of Life—yet they remain understudied by scholars of religion. With the exception of studies of the Tibetan game of rebirth (Tatz and Kent 1977) and the Indian game of//7a (Johari 1980), there have only been a handful of articles on Asian religious games such as the Indian game Snakes and Ladders (Finkel 2004a; Topsfield 1985), which depicts the rewarding of good and punishing of evil with ladders drawing players up towards heaven and snakes pulling them down towards hell (Finkel 2004a: 59). Snakes and Ladders stimulated the production of a variety of Western moral games in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Milton Bradley’s Checkered Game o f Life,'1 designed in 1860, which centered on vice, virtue, and the pursuit of happiness and was reinvented a century later into what Jill Lepore calls “a lesson in Cold War consumerist conformity” in which “you count your cash, not your good deeds” (Lepore 2007).
Although later versions of Chutes and Ladders (1943)2 and The Game o f Life (1960) lost the moral valence of their predecessors, a variety of religious games emerged in their place including Jewish board games Chutzpah (1967)3 and Kosherland (1985),4 a Catholic Catechism game called Divinity,5 a Christian game Solomon’s Temple, e and Mormon games with catchy titles like Celestial Pursuit,7 Missionary Impossible, B and Who Wants to be a Celestial Heir.9 The board game Monopoly'0—first published in 1936 by Parker Brothers—has inspired various religious spin-offs such as Jewish-opoly,11 Catholic-opoly, 12 and Mormon-opoly, 13 In this way secular games focused on wealth and worldly knowledge have prompted the design of religious games meant to inculcate religious values and visions. As Nikki Bado-Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris have noted, religious games not only materially represent culture but also mediate between potentially conflicting cultural and religious values (2010:12).
6 This article considers the ways in which a Buddhist board game entitled Selection of Buddhas ftuanfo tu) or The Ten Realms (shi fajie tu)14 mediated between cultural and religious values in seventeenth-century China. Originally designed in response to a secular board game called Promotion o f Officials (Shengguan tu), in which players vied to attain higher rank in the imperial administration that was reproduced in monumental proportions on the game board, players in Selection of Buddhas sought to achieve Buddhahood by ascending an equally staggering number of cosmological realms and levels of spiritual attainment. Flowever, the games differed M
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not only in their goals but the way they were played. Whereas bribes were often incorporated into the playing of later versions of Promotion of Officials, religious practices were embedded within Selection o f Buddhas.
Promotion of Officials Selection o f Buddhas was produced by a monk named Ouyi Zhixu (1599-1655) in his forties and fifties, although he says he first encountered prototypes of the game in his twenties.15 Unfortunately, none of these earlier versions are extant. In the preface to his six-fascicle instruction manual for the game entitled Manual for Selection o f Buddhas ftuanfo pu), written in 1653, Ouyi says that the game was originally fashioned after Promotion o f Officials board games (Shengguan tu), and he speculates that the original designer must have been an eminent Buddhist monk. He reasons that just as scholars and officials had the requisite knowledge to design a game modeled after the imperial bureaucracy, only someone well-versed in the Buddhist teachings could have produced it, and he laments the fact that such ingenious creations have not circulated more widely (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11863).
In the Promotion o f Officials game, players tried to ascend to various civil and military ranks in the governmental bureaucracy. Alongside a broad spectrum of games including backgammon, dominoes, cards, and drinking games, Promotion o f Officials was quite popular in late imperial China (Lo 2000: 400). Although scholars consider the attribution of the game to a Tang dynasty figure named Li He to be dubious, they agree that the game was known and played by 838 ce (Morgan 2004: 520-21 ).16 The game was originally called Selecting a Bureau (caixuan ge), Selecting a Bureau by Dice (shaizi xuan ge), or The Game o f Leaves iyezi) (Lo 2000: 394). Although it is mentioned frequently in texts from the tenth through the early twentieth century, the earliest extant version of the game dates to the eleventh century: Liu Bin’s (1022-88) Official Bureaucracy o f the Han Period {Han guan yi) (Lo 2007: 125-9; Seng 2005: 28-9). This version of the board game consists of 152 sections, including various bonuses and penalties for each of the sections; the winner of the game is the player with the highest rank after twenty-five rounds of throwing the dice. A version based on the Ming hierarchy was supposedly invented by Ni Yuanlu (1594-1644) called Selecting and Purchasing a Hundred Offices (caixuan baiguan duo), in which the number of dice in the game increased from two to four, but because the board is no longer extant, it is difficult to determine how players were promoted or demoted.17 Much more information is available on
instances in which the game is played in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911 ce).
From Qing dynasty versions of the game, one can determine the rules of play, although the ranking of dice throws remains unclear. Players take turns rolling one, two, or three pairs of dice to determine where they begin on the bureaucratic ladder, and they then follow annotations under the title for each bureau to determine how to proceed based on their next roll (Morgan 2004: 524). The game consists of a board (or sheet of paper),18 four to six dice, a bowl placed in the center of the board into which dice were thrown,19 tokens representing 120 cash, and finally counters representing the players. Confusion surrounds the actual throwing of the dice: some accounts suggest that it descends from pairs of fours representing virtue to pairs of six signaling genius [cai) and thereafter from five, three, two, to one symbolizing stupidity (zang). Mixed throws—throws without any pairs—do not lead to any advancement (Morgan 2004: 530). An unusual, if not unique, feature of some Qing versions of the game is that they not only reproduce a complex administrative framework but also include corruption and malpractice inherent in the system itself, reflected in the frequent “donations” (juan) scattered throughout the board (Morgan 2004: 532). Some people viewed the game as a means of educating officials: a Qing figure named Cai Ce argued that Promotion o f Officials should not be considered a hobby but instead “a graphic learning tool that clearly depicts the workings of the Qing government” (Morgan 2004: 517).
While officials may have played Promotion o f Officials, we cannot assume it was limited to such players. Just as the game Monopoly is not played solely by businessmen and millionaires, the Promotion of Officials board game could be played by anyone literate enough to recognize the characters on the board. That being said, the popularity of the game in the late imperial period in particular may derive from the fact that it replicated the
8 uncertainty that many officials felt throughout their career due to anxiety over examinations and later concerns over possible slander and intrigue (Morgan 2004: 531). Such concerns became increasingly pronounced during the economic boom of the sixteenth century, when the expansion of the school system led to increased numbers of examination candidates competing for degrees, and competition and increasing pedanticism in the examination itself caused frustration for candidates (Berling 1985: 213; Skinner 1976: 336-43), who frequently turned to religion to channel these anxieties (Elman 2000).
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Selection of Buddhas was not the only religious offshoot of Promotion o f Officials. References to a Daoist game called Selection of Immortals fruanxian tu) appear in the work of several Song dynasty poets: in this game players ultimately hope to enter the highest Daoist heaven—the Daluo (Lo 2007: 129; Morgan 2004: 521). Although scholars of Chinese games have overlooked Selection o f Buddhas board games in their research, we can consider them to be another offshoot to the Promotion o f Officials board game. However, while the games share certain features in their rules of play, they diverge markedly when it comes to their underlying emphases. It is not simply a matter of different goals— Buddhahood versus officialdom—but instead an issue of the process by which one becomes a Buddha versus an official. Whereas Promotion o f Officials allows players to bribe their way up the ladder or advance based on rolls of genius or knowledge, Selection o f Buddhas enjoins players to engage in religious practices.
Selection of Buddhas Ouyi Zhixu, the designer of the game, is considered one of the four great masters of the Ming dynasty by later Chinese Buddhists, alongside Yunqi Zhuhong (1535-1615), Hanshan Deqing (1546-1623), and Zibo Zhenke (1543-1604).20 While some esteem him as a patriarch in the Pure Land tradition (Peng 2001: 202-6) and others regard him as an advocate for Tiantai Buddhism,21 in fact Ouyi had no official lineage and drew from variety Chinese Buddhist traditions during his life, including Chan, Vinaya, Tiantai, and Pure Land. In his autobiography, Ouyi relates how a sectarian understanding of the Confucian tradition prompted him at the age of 11 to write essays against Buddhism that he destroyed after reading Zhuhong’s Record o f Self-Knowledge. He describes how he discovered a more inclusive religiosity centered on ritual practice while writing a commentary on Confucius’s Analects at the age of 19.and realized that his body was the result of karmic causes and conditions while meditating at the age of 24. He engaged in a variety of religious practices in his lifetime—such as divination, repentance rituals, and asceticism—and continually grappled with what he perceived to be unfortunate karma.
His concerns about karma and ritual are reflected in his design of the board game. If one examines the image of his board in Figure 1, one can see that players move in a clockwise direction around the board, beginning at the lower right stage and ultimately ending at the final stage of Buddhahood (fo) in the center.
FIG 1 Ouyi’s board. (Reproduced with permission of Harvard-Yenching Library.)
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Ouyi says he was inspired to create his own rendition of the game after seeing some friends indulge in gambling and chess (boy/) in 1629 at Linggu Mountain.22 He writes:
I saw several dharma friends fond of gambling and chess and thought of replacing these with Youxi Chuandeng’s board game, but unfortunately it was nowhere to be found ... I imitated Youxi’s idea and created a board game myself. I doubled the practices causing [enlightenment] for ordinary and wise people and the different predispositions [for Buddhahood] to dem onstrate the diversity o f spiritual capacities. I set up a square for “faith w ithout roots” and powerful dharma-protectors to reveal the path of perfect transformation. [For those w ho are] violent, evil, and violate [the precepts], I followed the Contemplation Sutra and allowed them to take refuge in the Pure Land. [For those] bound to suffer in Avici Hell, [I allowed them to] rely on the Huayan Sutra and ascend to Tu$ita Heaven. The Heavens contain the suffering [of those] fallen from virtue and demoted; the Formless Realm has the disasters [of those who are] poverty-stricken and wander aimlessly through rebirth. (Ouyi 1989; Vol. 19,11864)
Ouyi claims to have designed the game for Buddhist friends—fellow monks or advanced lay practitioners—to give them a substitute for gambling: a game that is fun but spiritually beneficial. In this way Ouyi sought to challenge a game culture that emphasized wealth and status, which incited desires and attachments that cause suffering, by focusing his players’ attentions on religious aspirations. Secondly, Ouyi says that he added squares for religious practices that might appeal to a broad range of players. While we cannot compare his game with earlier versions since they are no longer extant, Ouyi’s board allows players who are seemingly damned to hells to seek relief in M
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the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha or the Tusita dwelling of Maitreya Buddha. His game pays attention to the different capacities and temperaments of players, which in turn calls for diverse spiritual practices. It can serve to train beginners in Buddhist rituals and ensure that advanced practitioners not engage in frivolous non-Buddhist games.
One of the unique features of Ouyi’s board game is his design for the dice, which he modeled after divination tops or “wheels” used in the Sutra on the Divination o f Good and Bad Karmic Retribution (Zhancha shan’e yebao jing\ T. 839.17.901 c-910c). Just as the latter text plays on the notion of a “wheel” (lun) that can turn people towards the right.path, Ouyi writes, "The throwing of the dice represents moving from the ordinary to the sagely, turning i^huan) evil into good, so that all dharma realms eventually return” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11867). On the six sides of the dice Ouyi writes the six Chinese characters “Na-mo-a-mi- tuo-fo" (“Homage to Amitabha Buddha”), which together form the phrase that Chinese Pure Land devotees use to praise Amitabha Buddha who rules over his western Pure Land.
Ouyi emphasizes the significance of using these characters instead of numbers: while numbers are morally indeterminate (wuji fa) and are thus unable to give rise to good and eliminate evil, the name of Amitabha represents the ten thousand virtues that enable one to progress on the path of enlightenment. Ouyi writes, “One recitation of the Buddha’s name can eliminate 80 million kalpas of samsara and heavy sins” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11868). By embedding the name of Amitabha in the implements of the game, Ouyi lays the groundwork for players to engage in the devotional practice of reciting the name of the Buddha Amitabha (nianfo). Each time one throws the dice and deciphers one’s roll, one recalls the Buddha’s name. Moreover, Ouyi imbues each character with symbolic meaning: “na" represents afflictions of perception IJian fannao) or delusion of discrimination [fenbie huo), “mo” signals afflictions of attachment (a/ fannao) or giving rise to delusion (jusheng huo), “a ” stands for the virtue of generosity (shishan), “mi” connotes the virtue of morality (jieshan), “tuo” represents the virtue of meditation (dingshan), and “fo” signals virtuous wisdom (shanhui) (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11867-8). Recalling the two primary obstacles to enlightenment and the three stages of the Buddhist path—morality, meditation, and wisdom—Ouyi portrays the progression from the first to the last characters as signaling a movement from delusion to enlightenment.
Ouyi not only analyzes the symbolism of the individual characters in Amitabha’s name, he also deciphers religious
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and ethical import into the various possible combinations of those characters. If one separates “Amituo" (Amitabha) from “fo” (Buddha), he states that the former displays virtue that is tainted (youtou), the latter virtue that is untainted (wulou). If one divides “namo" (Homage) from “Amituofo" (Amitabha), the former represents the person who takes refuge, moving from evil to good, whereas the latter signifies that in which one takes refuge, which is entirely good. When one recites the successive characters of the name, one moves from grave sins to those that are less serious, and finally to Buddhahood itself (fo). Ouyi explains that “na” represents the graver sins of wrong view, while “mo” represents the lighter sins of attachment, and that the four characters “Amituofo" represent the four aspects held in common by both Theravada and Mahayana Vehicles: namely generosity, morality, meditation, and wisdom (shijie chan hui). We see an ethical concern implicit throughout Ouyi’s discussion, for example the act of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha being described as a movement from evil to good.
This ethical emphasis is also reflected in the way that Ouyi structures his board. After explaining the various character combinations that we have explored above, Ouyi lists fifteen large divisions of squares illustrated on the board (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11871):
1. Beginning the causal stage of practice 2. Corrupt practices of the path 3. The four kinds of evil rebirths 4. Humans and devas in the desire realm 5. Heavens in the form and formless realms 6. Eliminating evil and giving rise to good 7. Increasing the practice of morality 8. Increasing the practice of meditation 9. Increasing the practice of wisdom
10. Advancing to the position of the Tripifaka teachings 11. Advancing to the position of the common teachings 12. Advancing to the position of the separate teachings 13. Advancing to the position of the perfect teachings 14. Ascending to the Pure Land 15. The stage of perfect realization
As one can see, the board begins with stages of rebirth, continues to stages in the Buddhist path, enters the division of Buddhist teachings according to Tiantai doctrinal classification schemes (panjiao), proceeds to rebirth in the Pure Land, and finally ends at the stage of Buddhahood or perfect realization. In fact, the board mirrors the stages that Ouyi considered fundamental in his M
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own development, from the initial causes for his turning to Buddhism, his consternation over rebirth, his emphasis on the importance of precepts and morality, his turn towards rituals of repentance, his exploration of Tiantai Buddhism, and ultimately his Pure Land practice. Thus we can see the game is not limited to cosmological realms and types of rebirth; it also includes religious practices, religious doctrines, and soteriological possibilities. This underscores the game’s potential for encouraging spiritual development: in the game, one is not merely relegated to a certain realm of rebirth—for example, one can land on a square for repentance rituals or ascetic practices.
One advances depending on the combination of characters on the two dice. The term that is translate “square” (we/) literally means “position” : it is the standard term in Chinese Buddhism for stages of the bodhisattva path, personnel ranking in public monasteries, as well as hierarchical ranking of seats in the meditation hall or sangha hall. By using a term associated with such bureaucratic settings, Ouyi’s game recalls the Promotion o f Officials; however it does not simply recreate bureaucracy in Buddhist terms. The total 234 squares also include the ten good and bad actions, different types of contemplation, different realms of rebirth from hells to heavens, three types of repentance—those of performing actions (zuofe), seeking marks (quxiang), and meditation on non-arising (wusheng)—different types of precepts {jie), and various kinds of mental states. Instead of moving up a bureaucratic ladder, players progress through different circumstances, beginning with stages of rebirth but proceeding to situations in which they can generate good karma to propel them towards the state of Buddhahood.
The Rules of Play Although Kuo Liying suggests that Ouyi’s game must have been popular since he does not explain the way one plays in the manual (Kuo 1994: 160), the game may have followed the same general protocol as the Promotion of Officials board game. Since the latter game was quite popular, there would have been no need to explain the rules of play. Not only can one determine the rules of play, but one can also decipher the throws of the dice, which remains a point of controversy in the case of Promotion o f Officials. One can figure out the various throws by examining the twenty-one stages in the first division of “Beginning the Causal Stage of Practice.” If one looks closely at these twenty-one squares (Figure 2), one sees that the titles of each square are preceded by a two- character combination referring to the throws of the dice.
FIG 2 The first twenty-one squares on Ouyi's board. (Reproduced with permission of Harvard-Yenching Library.)
Although there are thirty-six possible combinations that can be thrown on two six-sided dice, Ouyi omits fourteen combinations.23 While Ouyi does not explain why, one can surmise that, since he viewed the characters as ascending in virtue from “na” to “fo,” and since players threw one die at a time (na-mo is distinguished from mo-na), he did not allow certain higher throws (such as “fo”) to be followed by lower throws (such as “na”). In other words, if one receives a “na” or “mo” on the first throw, then any character on the second throw would be acceptable as a combination as both “na” and “mo” represent states of affliction or defilement. However, if one throws any of the characters of “A-mi-tuo-fo" on one’s first throw, one cannot then throw a lower character, for this would imply a mixture of affliction and enlightenment, of evil and good. For example, if one throws "tuo, ” one cannot have the second character less advanced than the first; thus one who receives “tuo" on the first throw has to receive an acceptable character {“tuo” or “fo”) on the second throw. In Ouyi's Selection o f Buddhas board game, a mixed pair means one does not advance (the player essentially loses his or her turn), a logic derived from Promotion o f Officials. Thus certain throws result in stasis rather than advancement. One can imagine that such throws could cause consternation (such as an unfortunate player relegated to AvTcT Hell who repeatedly rolls “na-na”); likewise, one can imagine the pleasure felt by the player who rolls “fo-fo" (Buddha- Buddha) and swiftly advances along the path. Because the character “fo” can only be combined with another “fo," we see how it is especially difficult to receive that combination, which also reflects the idea that it is an advanced stage on the religious path.
14 The remaining rules of play for Ouyi’s Selection of Buddhas game follow those of the Promotion of Officials game. The player begins on the first square “Beginning the Causal Stage of Practice” and throws the dice to determine which of the twenty-one squares he will advance to first. From there, the manual explains where one should advance according to the combination of that throw. For example, if players throw “na-na" on their first throw, they are sent to the second square signaling “The Most [Heinous of] the Ten Evil Actions.” From there, if they throw “na-na" again, they are sent to Avici Hell, and if they throw “na-mo" or “mo-mo" they are relegated to M
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the “Uninterrupted Hell.” Combinations such as “na-a," “mo-a," and “a-a” send one to “Interrupted Hell." Thus we see that characters signaling evil or vice (na, mo) can relegate one to hell immediately.
However, it is interesting to note that even those who roll these unfortunate combinations can still advance along the path as they continue to play. Implicit in Ouyi’s board game is the notion that even those who commit the most heinous sins need not lose hope. He allows for them to advance, but he does not obviate karmic retribution entirely. Detailing the severe consequences for those who throw “na-na," “na-mo,” and “mo-mo," he says that those who receive “na-mo" or “mo-mo" have done many evil actions and thus polluted themselves, and they will be in Avici Hell for one great kalpa, and those who throw “na-na,” “have had extensive heterodox views, denied cause-and-effect, and must enter into Avici Hell, and it will be difficult to escape for innumerable kalpas” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11872). It is important to note that even though Ouyi admits the difficulty of escaping, he does not consider it entirely impossible. As for those who receive “na-a,” “mo-a,” or “a-a," they have substantial evil karma but also have the slightest amount of virtue (signaled by the first character “a” of Amitabha’s name); thus while they are in hell they will occasionally encounter a cool breeze, and for short periods of time they will have small pleasures. For this reason they go to “Interrupted Hell," and their time here is shorter than those in Avici Hell (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11873). Although these combinations seem bleak, in future turns the players can throw combinations that extricate them from such squares. For instance, those who have the fortune of receiving a “fo” on their second turn can advance to the stages of “Worldly Benefit” [shijian fu), “Hearing the Dharma," “Repentance Seeking Marks,” or even the lowest stage of rebirth in the Pure Land (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11871). Thus we see that even those squares that seem most fixed (e.g. Avici Hell) offer the player another chance and allow for change as quick as a roll of the dice.24
In his manual of the game, Ouyi especially highlights the importance of Buddhist repentance rituals. Those who are resistant to repentance easily fall into hells, while those who are penitent can advance to stages otherwise impossible. As we have seen, his board not only includes levels of rebirth, cosmological realms, and stages in the Buddhist path, but it also reserves certain squares for repentance purposes. For example, in first section of the manual on the various hells Ouyi not only enumerates the ten evil actions but specifies that it is the continual engagement in such activities, “day and night, not once
attempting to reform or repent” that eventually serves as “cause for [rebirth in] hell” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11872). He suggests that those who are penitent can change their karmic potential even if they have committed evil actions. Ouyi prescribes various repentance rituals for those in the middle realms of hell, so they might advance to the stage of animal rebirth, and he advocates repentance rituals for those in the animal realm to advance to that of the hungry ghosts. He emphasizes that people who commit the same crime—such as the serious sin of transgressing morality (po shiluo), which “destroys the means of escape the world” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11917)—do not necessarily face the same retribution: those who roll “na-na" and “na-mo" are sent to Avici Hell, while those with more promising combinations have better future prospects.25
Not only does Ouyi embed devotional practices into the roll of the dice and include religious practices in the squares on the board, but throughout his Manual for "Selection o f Buddhas," he emphasizes the importance of continuous religious practice. At every square except that of ultimate realization, players can always reform themselves or strive for further cultivation. In the earliest squares, Ouyi states that those born in higher realms— devas, asuras, and humans—still have attachments to views or harbor arrogant thoughts, even when they practice virtuous acts such as generosity. In such instances, Ouyi urges them to consider past sins (guozui) or rebuke themselves (heze) for their spiritual deficiencies (Ouyi 1989, Vol. 19, 11900-1). One can easily imagine that players might reflect on their own faults when they find themselves in such squares. Insofar as the game has the potential to trigger such awareness, it can serve an analogous function as confession rituals, which Ouyi esteems for their ability to bring past faults to light and to become the first stage in cultivating remorse. By including opportunities for self-reflection in the structure of the game, Ouyi allows for his game to serve a similar function as confession rituals.26
Playing with Karma Selection of Buddhas reflects Ouyi’s complex understanding of karma. While the board establishes a progression from the beginning stage of the religious path to the ultimate attainment of Buddhahood, players are by no means assured they will successfully reach the final square. Each square provides an occasion to concentrate on good or virtuous stages of religious development; however, the game also reflects the uncertainty of karma by incorporating a degree of chance with the roll of the dice. His game thereby displays two understandings M
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of karma: the former a mechanistic view of karma as cause and effect, and the latter an organic understanding of karma as open to the intervention of Buddhas and bodhisattvas—in this particular case, the Buddha Amitabha. In the preface to his manual, Ouyi wrote that the virtue of his game was “its ability to cause people while playing to suddenly realize the suffering of the six paths of rebirth and the difference of the Three Vehicles of liberation, and sincerely consider it incredible” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11865). Ouyi suggests that the game has the capacity to make players realize the significance of karma and rebirth. Moreover, since the goal of the game is to become a Buddha, players come to appreciate the difficulty of extricating themselves from particular types of rebirth (such as the lowest of hells) and the miraculous ease with which one progresses along the board if one has a particularly good roll.
By increasing the squares for practice in his board, Ouyi heightens the players’ sense that their actions—karma—dictate whether or not they will attain Buddhahood. By including a dice that causes players to call upon the Buddha Amitabha, he also emphasizes the power of Buddhas to intervene on behalf of players. As players wind their way around the board in various stages, Ouyi says they “rise and fall according to their karma” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11946), and he urges them to remain vigilant lest they be led astray by pride or attachment to their spiritual achievements. Even at fairly advanced stages Ouyi warns that greed, attachment, and desire can obstruct good roots, offering the following analogy: “Like a fire that for many kalpas burns Mount Sumeru and causes it to melt, greed and desire can also bind the heart in this way, rendering one unable to recite the name of the Buddha (nianfo)” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11955). Greed and desire—which undergird the Promotion o f Officials game—can render even the most advanced practitioners unable to engage in basic religious practices such as reciting the name of the Buddha Amitabha. For this reason, Ouyi urges them to engage in repentance rituals to purify themselves. During his discussion of bodhisattvas at “the Abode of Bodhicitta, ” Ouyi admits that they may have eliminated discriminating views and karmic afflictions, but he suggests that they perform repentance meditating on non-arising in order to prevent the discriminating mind from arising again (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 12131-2).
Although Ouyi acknowledges that every player has the potential to reach the final stage of Buddhahood, he stresses that the players are responsible for their own cultivation. Ouyi recalls that all sentient beings have the direct cause of Buddha nature (zhengyin foxing): “it neither
18
arises nor ceases, but instead originally and eternally abides. Although it is covered by adventitious defilements and afflictions, its origin neither increases nor diminishes; it is also without purity or defilement” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 12085). All sentient beings possess this original nature, but cultivation activates this innate potential by removing adventitious defilements and afflictions. For example, in the stages of wisdom and the final stage of “Seeking Rebirth in the Pure Land” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 9,12091), Ouyi suggests that direct or secondary (yi zheng) causes of hearing the Buddha’s name, recollecting the Buddha, or making vows—all of which are religious practices—enable rebirth in the Pure Land.
Only in these later entries such as the final stage of “Absolute Fruit of Perfection” —which he calls “the end of cultivation” (Ouyi 1989, Vol. 19, 12187)—does Ouyi draw attention to this innate potential for Buddhahood. Whereas the Tripitaka, Shared, and Separate Teachings were arranged according to the fruition of effects, the Perfect Teaching need not follow this order because of its superior understanding. Instead, one should view it in terms of the cause of inherent Buddhahood. Ouyi then constructs a question-and-answer dialogue in which he responds to the inevitable question of why the Perfect Teaching should differ: “Each of the previous three positions was expediently named ‘result’ according to their teachings, but if one looks from the perfect position, then they all belong to cause” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 12158-9). Looking back on the progression of the game, he describes it as a process of transforming both oneself and one’s environment by virtuous activities. Ouyi writes, “From these three—delusion, karma, and suffering—which arise from deluded perceptions of sentient beings, one must recollect, transform, and realize the three virtues of liberation, wisdom, and the dharmakaya, and then make the three virtues one’s body and one’s land. The subject and object of reliance everywhere mix, layer upon layer without limit” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,12186). At each stage players are able to shed a further layer of delusion and discover their innate potential for Buddhahood.
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Ritual and Play: A Slippery Slope By embedding religious practices into the dice and board of the game, Ouyi blurs the boundaries between ritual and play. Theorists have long posited a relationship between ritual and play, pointing out that play involves well-defined activities that differ from ordinary life, occur in demarcated spaces, are often repeated, are performative, and establish a temporary order or subjunctive “as if” world
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(Huizinga 1955: 19-20; Schechner 1993: 26; Seligman et ai. 2008: 70). For beginners, Ouyi’s game can serve a preparatory function, introducing them to religious practices, immersing them in a Buddhist cosmological and soteriological framework, and orienting them entirely towards becoming a Buddha. As Roy Rappaport notes, the formative and transformative potential of ritual depends on it being received by specially prepared individuals (Rappaport 1999: 114), but ritual preparation can occur outside of ritual or religious contexts. Games represent a unique opportunity for such preparation because they share so many salient features with ritual—creating an alternative order that is experienced and shared by players—yet they create a low-stakes environment where players need not commit to a particular religious viewpoint or fear making mistakes that have religious consequences.
Just as Ouyi himself saw the game as appealing to people of various intellectual and spiritual capacities, some people viewed it as an opportune way to draw people to Buddhism. Those who asked Ouyi to write an instruction manual for the game wrote:
Playing this game even once is enough to enable one to thoroughly understand all of the Buddha’s teachings. We ask that you also write a manual in order to clearly explain it. Those who are simpletons would thereby understand its worldly and otherworldly principles, and those who are wise would dare not mistakenly and foolishly engage in further transgressions. (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11866)
They praise the game for its ability to serve as an entry for simple-minded people into Buddhist teachings and to heighten intelligent people’s awareness of karma and rebirth. As we have seen, Ouyi himself claimed to have designed the game for both ordinary people and advanced practitioners alike. Over the course of twenty years, Ouyi considered various designs for the game, expanding the number of dice (shai) from one (that of Youxi’s game) to four, to six, and finally settling on tw o—for the sake of convenience—and emphasizing that the squares for practices (x/ng) underwent the greatest changes of all (Ouyi 1989, Vol. 19, 11865). These choices are not incidental: they instead reflect Ouyi's commitment to make the game one that is relatively easy to play and appeals to a broad constituency of players.
While some people considered the game’s wide- ranging appeal and comprehensive scope to be an advantage, it caused consternation for others. One of his later disciples, Jianmi Chengshi, wrote on the side of a reprint of the board:
This board is meant to serve as a means of drawing one into the Buddha’s teachings; therefore both ordinary people and monks can enjoy it. But do not give rise to playful thoughts [literally: “thoughts of a game,” youxixiang]l One must have a respectful mind, first worshipping the Buddha and then throwing [the dice]. Those with ordinary capacities are not worth the trouble that the elder master of Lingfeng took to create the board! (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11862)
Jianmi acknowledged that the game was designed for various types of people but insisted they have the proper state of mind while playing, and he expressed frustration over what he considered a disrespectful use of the game. He urged players to adopt a devotional stance towards the game, characterizing the throwing of dice as a religious ritual that should be performed with a proper attitude of reverence and worship.
His exasperation reflects the ambiguity of the game, which one is clearly meant to play, but which also serves to train players in religious practices. While their designers may envision their aims and create rules constraining the way they should be played, games circulate beyond their sites of production and be used in ways that differ from their creator’s intentions. For this reason, David Morgan urges scholars “to study the response to objects as they are displayed, exchanged, destroyed, and circulated in order to determine what they mean to people, that is to say, how they build and maintain life-worlds” (Morgan 2008: 228). Ouyi’s board game has circulated from its inception to the present day: not only was Ouyi’s game reprinted in 1891, his manual translated into English in 1907, his manual printed in a collection of Buddhist monographs entitled Buddhist M onograph Series (,Foxue Congkan) in 1936,27 and a colored print of the game produced in 1943,28 but a Taiwanese Buddhist organization called Taizhong Lotus Society (Taizhong nianshe) reprinted the game and made a digitized version of the game that one can freely download today.29 The colored print added a Buddha image in its center square
20 and included details from Ouyi’s manual concerning the dice rolls and subsequent advances within each square, but the game rules and order of squares have never changed. As Mary-Ying Ngai recently documented, Ouyi’s game was also transmitted to Korea, Japan, India, and Southeast Asia (Ngai 2011: 239-350).
While it is beyond the scope of this article to explore in depth the meaning later players attributed to the game, we can appreciate the range of responses by considering several examples from the early twentieth century to the present day. Rev. Timothy Richard, the Protestant missionary who translated Ouyi’s manual into English M
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in 1907, went so far as to say that it encapsulated the entirety of the Chinese Buddhist tradition. Entitling his translation Guide to Buddhahood: Being a Standard Manual o f Chinese Buddhism, he notes in the preface how “the book is full of repetitions meant for thoroughly grounding beginners,” and he pairs it with the Mahayana Buddhist text The Awakening o f Faith as “a sort of Alpha and Omega of Chinese Buddhism.” (Richard 1907: v) He presents Ouyi’s instruction manual as a primer for Chinese Buddhists, excising almost all of the discussion about the game in Ouyi’s preface, except for a brief explanation of the characters on the dice. Displaying a distinct Protestant bias, Richard sought to obscure all dimensions of the game under a veil of doctrine.Others acknowledged Selection o f Buddhas as a game but argued that one could no longer access its deeper meaning. In a Buddhist periodical entitled Tongyuan published on January 25, 1943, Ke An describes Ouyi’s Selection o f Buddhas as a popular game meant to inculcate virtue and played at temples during the New Year.30 At the end of his article, Ke expresses doubts over whether any of his contemporaries could truly play it on the same level as their predecessors, calling upon the Buddhist trope of the “decline of the dharma" to lament how he lives in an age in which the Buddha’s teachings are corrupt. He writes: “It is difficult for a single instrument of a trivial game to penetrate (or communicate) the painstaking efforts and virtue of those before [us], and those who are able to use this board as a game today would already belong to such a refined class. Since the teachings have become so withered and corrupted, can there be any such person?” (Ke 1943) Like Jianmi, Ke lamented the fact that his contemporaries could not appreciate the depth of the game—that they lacked the superior capacities to play the game properly.31
Yet there is another example of Buddhist nuns who acknowledge both the playful and religious aspects of Ouyi’s game. Ven. Guo Guang, Provost of Dharma Drum Sangha University (Fagushan sengqie daxue), recounted playing the game with her female monastic students and urging those who landed in lower realms of hell to “recite harder” as they rolled the dice. She also noted a difference between students who played the board game versus those that played the online version mentioned above. The former students had a better appreciation for the connection between the roils of the dice and the squares they were sent to, since her colored version of Ouyi’s board game included excerpts from Ouyi’s manual within the individual squares. By contrast, those who clicked on the button of the online game were simply sent to the next square without any explanation. Whereas the board game
heightened the student’s awareness of karmic cause and effect, the online game engendered a sense of uncertainty and randomness.
Religious and Secular Games Selection of Buddhas serves as an outlier in many respects to the religious games discussed by Nikki Bado- Fralick and Rebecca Sachs Norris in Toying with God. They argue that religious games tend to reduce complex religious narratives to short phrases, frequently lack moral complexity, and serve an educational or utilitarian purpose that often robs the games of fun (Bado-Fralick and Norris 2010: 12, 56). They note that Buddhist games—such as Karma Chakra and Buddha Wheel—have the additional shortcoming of being structured as race games but lacking a competitive spirit, since players that reach Buddhahood are then expected to help other players do the same (Bado-Fralick and Norris 2010:16). As we have seen, Selection of Buddhas does not reduce complex cosmologies and soteriologies but instead reproduces them on its board, it presents karma in morally complex ways and, despite its educational purpose, players still appreciate its playful dimension—to the dismay of those like Jianmi Chengshi and Ke An. While Selection of Buddhas may not appear competitive, it can certainly be played In a spirited way. A Korean version of Selection of Buddhas is played today in Zen monasteries on New Year’s Day, and the documentary Zen Buddhism: In Search o f Self depicts a group of nuns having quite a bit of fun playing the game, even celebrating the top three players by having them sit in lotus position while the remaining nuns prostrate three times to worship them as they would the Buddha.32 This shows how players can spontaneously improvise and add elements to games, in this case exalting the winners as Buddhas.
It is this goal of Buddhahood that distinguishes the competitive spirit of Selection o f Buddhas from other games. In the case of Promotion o f Officials, players
22 compete for fame, which Ouyi views as hazardous. In a dharma-talk he states:
Fame only increases one’s sense of self and one’s evil karma [mo ye). An upright person must examine [this] carefully. The nature of the mind in the present moment of thought does not decrease among ordinary people or increase among sages; if one loses [the present moment of thought], one becomes an ordinary person, and if one awakens to it, one becomes a sage. (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 16,10473)
For Ouyi, fame is anathema: it only gives rise to a sense of self-importance and ego. Promotion o f Officials fuels M
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this desire for fame and threatens to lure otherwise upright people away from the path and their potential for Buddhahood. In another talk Ouyi notes that although people have the “seeds of enlightenment,” they trade their virtue and “good roots” for material things. Ouyi laments, “Trading the mani-jewel for a piece of clothing or a bit of food is pitiful. We have the same nature of the mind as all Buddhas, and similarly we have the same six sense faculties. How can there be the slightest deficiency?” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 16, 10471) Herein lies the difference between Selection of Buddhas and Promotion o f Officials: whereas positions within the official bureaucracy were limited resources and therefore engendered competition, everyone has the potential for Buddhahood.
Ouyi explicitly structures the game to enjoin practices that cultivate good karma and realize one’s inherent potential for Buddhahood. In another dharma-talk, Ouyi states: “All dharmas are without nature, they all transform according to the mind. If one’s mind is on fame and profit, all hastens towards fame and profit; if one’s mind is on enlightenment, all hastens towards enlightenment. Thus it is said that hell is the dharma-dhatu, and even the Buddha is the dharma-dhatu" (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 16,10473-4). Ouyi’s game directs the mind’s attention towards enlightenment rather than fame: each and every square is fixed on that goal. What initially appears to be an overwhelming array of levels of rebirth, states of meditation, and stages of cultivation can be appreciated as an attempt to encompass all of the various circumstances that can uncover and reveal one’s innate Buddhahood. In the same dharma-talk, Ouyi later states, “Therefore, when those with true bodhicitta encounter objects, circumstances, people, and things and generate thoughts of the form, voice, smell, taste, touch, and teachings of the Buddha, each moment of thought will correspond with everything like the ocean, and they need not discuss skill or proof of cultivation. Instead they will [see] the wonder therein” (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 16,10473-4). In each and every moment of the game, players direct their attention towards becoming a Buddha and therefore they constantly have the thought of enlightenment (bodhicitta) in their minds.
Ouyi’s Selection o f Buddhas is one of an entire genre of religious games that to date has been relatively understudied. Just as Ouyi’s game sought to challenge a secular game culture focused on fame, money, and status, religious board games have emerged in the past few decades in response to a similar game culture in the West. Ouyi saw his game playing a role in the religious development of both beginning and advanced practitioners: preparing future ritualizers by having them
recite the name of Amitabha Buddha with every roll of the dice, and providing advanced practitioners with a spiritually productive form of entertainment. The designers of contemporary religious games may see similar potential in their own spin-offs of Monopoly and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Whether they also maintain a creative tension between devotion and play remains to be seen.
Appendix: Glossary of Chinese Text
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notes and references
1 Checkered Game o f Life. 1860. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley. The game was descended from Snakes and Ladders as well as the earlier English game, the New Game o f Human Life. 1790. London: John Wallis.
2 Chutes and Ladders. 1943. Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley.
3 Chutzpah Yiddish—The Game o f the Good Life. 1967. Chicago: Cadaco.
4 Kosherland. 1985. Designed by Miram Mendelson. Chicago: Jewish Educational Toys.
5 Divinity: The New Catholic Catechism Learning System. Carlsbad, CA: Divinity Religious Products.
6 Solomon's Temple. 2001. Hayesville, NC: Cactus Game Design, 2001. Designed by Doug Gray
7 Celestial Pursuit. 1984. Randall Book Co.
8 Missionary Impossible. 1996. Designed by Curtis Taylor and Todd Hester. Aspen Brooks.
9 Who Wants to be a Celestial Heir. 2000. Springville, UT: Cedar Fort.
10 Monopoly. 1936. Salem, MA: Parker Brothers.
11 Jewish-opoly. 2004. Designed by Jason Feinman. Opoly Enterprises.
12 Catholic-opoly. 2006. Luke Enterprises.
13 Mormon-opoly. 2006. Sandy, UT: Sounds of Zion.
14 These ten realms refer to those of hell-beings, hungry ghosts, animals, asuras, humans, gods, gravakas, pratyekabuddhas, bodhisattvas, and Buddhas. The first three realms result from evil karma, the second three from good karma, the next tw o are attributed to Theravada and the final tw o are Mahayana.
15 The original image of the board is contained in the Harvard-Yenching Library, and it has been reprinted with their permission. The Manual for “Selection o f Buddhas" is included in Ouyi’s Collected Works (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11861-2), and I have used their page numbers for citation purposes. Ouyi said that the phrase “being selected as a Buddha” (xuanfo) originally derived from the awakening of Danxia Tianran (739-824) (1989: Vol. 19, 11863), an episode recounted in the fifteenth fascicle of the Record o f the Transmission o f the Lamp Published in the Jingde Era (Jingde chuandeng lu). There a Chan interlocutor asks Danxia where he is going, and when Danxia responds he is going to sit for the official exams—to “be selected as an official” (xuanguan)—the interlocutor encourages him instead to “be selected as a Buddha” (T. 2076.51.310b23). The phrase “to be selected as a Buddha” (puanfo) was also used to describe Chan meditation halls.
16 In traditional sources Li He, a prefect of Hezhou, is said to have designed the game as a criticism of how officials in the Tang period were appointed out of turn. He equated the numbers on dice with ranks and titles, called it dice selection, and purportedly said that there was no substance to the selection—that winning only depended on the colors of the dice (Lo 2007:129).
17 Given the fact that this would have been a contemporary game at the time of Ouyi Zhixu, one wonders whether Ouyi may have considered increasing the number of dice in his own game to imitate such secular game models.
18 Andrew Lo remarks that unlike games such as Chinese chess (xiangqi) that had boards made of wood or stone, the playing surfaces for these games were made of paper and not considered
26
collectibles, which may explain why no examples of promotion games survive from earlier than the seventeenth century (Lo 2004: 65),
19 As Irving Finkel notes, such bowls were designed as a method to prevent cheating and are precursors to modern dice cups with lids (Finkel 2004b: 60).
20 For a study of Ouyi's life and thought, see Shengyan (1975).
21 The foremost issue in previous scholarship on Ouyi has been determining whether or not he should be categorized within the Tiantai tradition. For a summary of the debate, see Chen (1996).
22 Ouyi describes purchasing his first Selection o f Buddhas game when he was 20 years old in what is now Nanjing, playing another version of the game designed by Youxi Chuandeng (1554—1629) while at the “Lotus Hermitage” on Wulin Mountain in 1623, and seeing another version of the game while at Songling in 1625 (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19,11863-4). Ouyi first published his own version of the game in 1643.
23 These are a-na, a-mo, a-na, mi- mo, mi-a, tuo-na, tuo-mo, tuo-a, tuo-mi, fo-na, fo-mo, fo-a, fo-mi, and fo-tuo.
24 If such people roll any combination with the character for Buddha (fo), they have the opportunity to advance to the realms of animals and hungry ghosts, and if they throw a “fo- fo," they can even become a bodhisattva emitting great light. Whether this signals the spiritual potential of sentient beings to advance from hell to the highest stages of the bodhisattva path, or whether this means that someone was originally a bodhisattva dwelling in hells for compassionate reasons is not clear. Nevertheless, it is evident that Ouyi gives players many chances to improve themselves and advance on the path.
26 Those who receive “mo-mo" are those “whose minds are covered by ignorance and attachment, who do not know how to reform or repent, and therefore they
fall among the middle class of animals.” From there they ascend to those who have kept some of the precepts or those who have been able to attain a degree of meditative attainment, to “na-fo” and “m o-fo,” both of whom “although they are entangled by views and attachment do not turn their back on the Tathagata and therefore are able to hear his teachings,” to “a - f o those who have “forever cut off the continuance of marks, and in order to eliminate sins, have engaged in repentance seeking marks,” to “mi-fo" who have observed the emptiness of sin, and in order to renew the precepts, have performed repentance [meditating on] non-arising,” to “tuo-fo” who “by reciting the name of the Buddha (nianfo) with an undisturbed, single mind focus on bringing [good] karma to the next rebirth,” and finally “fo-fo" which signals that “the transformation Buddha has responded to one’s recollection and has come to welcome one to transcend into the Pure Land.” Ouyi explains that repentance by performing rituals entails relying on the Vinaya to express one’s regret to enable the eliminate sins (mie zui), repentance seeking marks can remedy a small offense, and finally repentance by meditating on non-arising should be performed by those who seek escape and abandon the origin of transgression (Ouyi 1989: Vol. 19, 11918).
26 We find an emphasis placed on cultivating remorse for mistakes in the earliest Chinese Buddhist texts such as the Scripture in Forty-Two Sections (Sishierzhang jing). After detailing the ten good and bad activities (784.17.722b6- b10), the Buddha says: “People have many mistakes, and they do not themselves regret (z/ta) or contemplate their mind. Their sins return to themselves like water returning to the sea, becoming deep and widespread” (784.17.722b11-12).
27 This is included in the Minguo fojiao qikan wenxian jicheng bubian (Supplement to the Complete Collection o f Republican-Era Buddhist Periodical Literature),
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28 The colored print was produced by the Buddhist SOtras Circulation Office of the Branch of the Association of Buddhism in Binjiang Province (Fojiao zonghui Binjiang sheng zhibu fojing liutong chu). The squares were identical with Ouyi’s board, but they included images as well as details from his Manual for Selection o f Buddhas (Ngai 2011:129).
29 Website of Ouyi Zhixu’s Xuanfo tu (Ouyi Zhixu xuanfo tu gangzhan), http://fomap.sayling.com. Accessed on May 25, 2011.
30 While Ouyi’s Manual does not refer to special occasions for playing Selection o f Buddhas, these twentieth and twenty-first century examples all refer to monks and nuns playing the game during the New Year. This association may have developed during the Qing dynasty, when Chinese literati began playing Promotion o f Officials as a form of entertainment in New Year celebrations (Ngai 2011:72).
3' It is interesting to note that it is during this same period in 1945 that Chen Baichen (1908-94) staged his play entitled The Game o f Promoting Officials (Shengguan tu), satirizing corruption in the government (Chen 1981). It makes one wonder whether the playwright—and those who reprinted Ouyi’s board g a m e - found resonance in these earlier games because they too felt frustrated by social and institutional changes and perceived tension between material success and religious pursuits.
32 For a discussion of the game that is used, see Buswell (1992: 48).
Bado-Fralick, Nikki and Norris, Rebecca Sachs. 2010. Toying With God: The World o f Religious Games and Dolls. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press.
Berling, Judith. 1985. Religion and Popular Culture: The Management
of Moral Capital in The Romance o f the Three Teachings. In Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski. Taipei: SMC Publishing, Inc., 118-218.
Buswell, Robert. 1992. The Zen Monastic Experience: Buddhist Practice in Contemporary Korea. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Chen Baichen. 1981. Shengguan tu [The Chart of Official Promotion). Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe.
Chen Ying-shan. 1996. Ouyi Zhixu sixiang de tezhi ji qi dingwei wenti [The Characteristics of Ouyi Zhixu's Thought and an Appraisal of his Status). Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiu jikan [Bulletin of the Institute of Chinese Uterature and Philosophy] 8 (March): 227-56.
Eiman, Benjamin A. 2000. A Cultural History o f Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Finkel, Irving. 2004a. The Ups and Downs of Life: The Indian Game of Snakes and Ladders. In Asian Games: The A rt o f Contest, ed. Colin Mackenzie and Irving Finkel. New York: Asia Society, 58-63.
Finkel, Irving. 2004b. On Dice in Asia. Orientations 35: 56-60.
Huizinga, Johan. 1955. Homo Ludens: A Study o f the Play Element in Culture. Boston: The Beacon Press.
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