Dice
“akṣa”
object · 4 works · 8 mentions · 10 anchored passages
dice · the dice · All-dwellers · Bhadra · Dvāpara · Kali throw · Tretā · akṣa · gaming board · prize die
in the texts
Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)
Gaming dice and their named throws, addressed to secure a winning outcome and defeat a rival gambler.
The winning throw is placed in my right hand;
O dice, give me a fruit-bearing heaven, like a cow rich with milk.
Hither the Bhadra, hither the Dvāpara, and the Tretā — away with the Kali!
Republic
Gaming object used metaphorically to describe rational deliberation about how to respond to misfortune.
To deliberate, I said, about what has happened to us, and, as it were in the fall of the dice, to determine the movements of our affairs with reference to the numbers that turn up, in the way that reason indicates would be the best, and, instead of stumbling like children, clapping one’s hands to the stricken spot and wasting the time in wailing, ever to accustom the soul to devote itself at once …
Theaetetus
Objects used in Socrates's illustration of relative quantity, comparing six dice to four or twelve.
Given six dice, for instance, if you compare four with them, we say that they are more than the four, half as many again, but if you compare twelve with them, we say they are less, half as many;
These three assumptions contend with one another in our minds when we talk about the dice, or when we say that I, who do not, at my age, either increase in size or diminish, am in the course of a year first larger than you, who are young, and afterwards smaller, when nothing has been taken from my size, but you have grown.
Rigveda
Dice made from vibhīdaka nuts, personified as deceitful and destructive.
Do not play with dice;
even a king does homage to these dice.
The gambler's abandoned wife burns with grief;