Gambling and its regulation: a History through Sanskrit Literature

 

Gambling and its regulation: a History through Sanskrit Literature

S.V. Oak, Project Fellow ,  

Bharatratna Dr. P.V. Kane Sanskrit Study Centre, 

University Sub-centre , KKSU Ramtek

  With the advancement in technology and social media, there has also been an advancement in gambling activities in the name of online gaming. The Public Gambling Act 1867 is the most significant enactment when it comes to laws that regulate gambling in India.      

   Today, Gambling comes under the state list of the seventh schedule of the Indian constitution. The Public Gambling Act has been adopted by many states wherein gambling in public and the maintenance of common gaming houses of any sort become illegal, while some states seem to allow licenced casinos to operate in their territory and levy taxes on the operators. 

    Some states have also enacted laws to regulate online gaming. Sanskrit literature gives us many interesting insights about the activity, the legality and the regulation of gambling in India in the times when this language was mainstream. In the ṛgveda, there comes a hymn of 14 verses that goes by the name of, akṣa sūkta meaning ‘an ode to the dice’, where a habitual gambler laments over his addiction to gambling and its consequences. 

    He tells how this habit has destroyed his reputation, made him bankrupt and poisoned his personal and social relations. This hymn is not dedicated to any of the deities whom the usual vedic sacrifices are offered to. In fact, this is dedicated to the akṣas, the dice.

He describes his situation where he seems to have no control over his actions and behaviour. The dice seem to compel him towards the gambling house to gamble away in spite of all the financial troubles of his life. At some point, he has been so desperate that he has even sold his fertile, cultivated land for gambling.

    It is public knowledge even to this date that in the Mahabharata it was a common practice of the ruler class to occasionally gather and engage in gambling. We all have heard about the incidence where a cakravartin yudhiṣṭhira gambled away his reign, his wealth, his weapons, even his freedom and the freedom of his brothers as well as wife. 

    Later in the virāṭa parva, yudhiṣṭhira admits himself in the court of virāṭa, disguised as a gambler, to assist the king’s gambling escapades as the king’s chief of gambling. Even after losing all his belongings, being effectively evicted from the urban settlements of his own former kingdom, he had still carried along with him the same set of dice that he had employed in the infamous game of gambling in the assembly of the Kaurava.

    Vātsyāyana , the author of the Kāma Sūtra, includes gambling in the list of 64 arts that learners including women must be exposed to for the all-rounded development of one’s social personality. The smṛti literature has a mixed point of view over gambling. Almost every smṛti kāra recognizes the conflicts arising out of gambling to be valid grounds for legal procedure. 

But Manu condemns gambling and says that in a way gambling is as grave an offence as theft. He advises rulers no to allow gambling in the slightest quantity in any shape or form. 

   Kauṭilya advises to regulate gambling by opening authorised gambling houses and appointing designated officers for the sake of monitoring the transactions therein. These officers are to collect taxes from the winners and fines from the parties who gamble outside these authorised gambling houses. There is no tax to be collected from the losing parties as means to encourage gambling in the authorised places. 

   There is no fine to be collected from the losing party when a dispute arising out of deceitful gambling is brought to court, otherwise such a party who has already face a loss of wealth may avoid seeking redressal of the grievance. 

   The activities so regulated include gambling with dice, gaming activities involving animals, but not healthy competitions involving demonstration of genuine skills.