Origins of chess

Krishna and Radha are shown playing chaturanga on an 8x8 Ashtāpada.

The invention of Chess has been attributed to the Indians both by the Persian people, and by the Arabs who later conquered Persia. The Arab scholar Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī detailed the use of chess as a tool for military strategy, mathematics, gambling and even its vague association with astronomy in India and elsewhere. Mas'ūdī notes that Ivory in India was chiefly used for the production of chess and backgammon pieces, and asserts that the game was introduced from India, along with the book Kelileh va Demneh, during the reign of emperor Nushirwan. In the 11th century Shahnameh, the Persian poet Ferdowsi credits India with the invention of chess. Ferdowsi describes a Raja visiting from India who re-enacts the past battles on the chessboard.

The words for chess in Old Persian and Arabic are chatrang and shatranj respectively. These terms are derived from chaturanga in Sanskrit, which literally translates into army of four divisions. This game was introduced to the Near East from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility.

Early history

India

The board of the Indian Chaturanga

In Sanskrit, "Chaturanga" literally means "having four limbs (or parts)" and in epic poetry often means "army": The Indian army contained four groups namely hasty-asva-nauka-padata which translates as "elephant, horse, ship, foot soldiers." Chaturanga was a battle simulation game played by four people; two players aligned against the remaining two. The initial gambling and the dice aspects of the game, which faced condemnation from both the Hindu and Muslim cultures, were removed as the game progressed and branched into newer games.

Ashtāpada, the uncheckered 8x8 board, sometimes with special markers, served as the main board for playing Chaturanga. Other Indian boards included the 10X10 Dasapada and the 9X9 Saturankam.

Indian military strategy has been faithfully rendered in the game of chess. The initial position of the pieces saw the ships take up the four corners of the board, then the horses, followed by the elephants and finally the Rajas placed on the "throne," or the inner square of the player's quadrant. The infantrymen were lined up in the next row.

Persia

A Persian youth playing chess with two suitors.

The Karnamak-i Ardeshir-i Papakan, a Pahlavi epical treatise about the founder of the Sassanid Persian Empire, mentions the game of chatrang as one of the accomplishments of the legendary hero, Ardashir I, founder of the Empire.

Ferdowsi writes about the introduction of chess in the Shahnameh. A translation in English, based on the manuscripts in the British Museum, is given below:

One day an ambassador from the king of Hind arrived at the Persian court of Chosroes, and after an oriental exchange of courtesies, the ambassador produced rich presents from his sovereign and amongst them was an elaborate board with curiously carved pieces of ebony and ivory.

He then issues a challenge:
"Oh great king, fetch your wise men and let them solve the mysteries of this game. If they succeed my master the king of Hind will pay tribute as an overlord, but if they fail it will be proof that the Persians are of lower intellect and we shall demand tribute from Iran."

The courtiers were shown the board, and after a day and a night in deep thought one of them, Buzurjmihir, solved the mystery and was richly rewarded by his delighted sovereign.

The appearance of the chess pieces had altered greatly since the times of chaturanga with the ornate pieces, and the chess pieces depicting animals giving way to abstract shapes. The Islamic sets of later centuries followed a pattern which assigned names and abstract shapes to the chess pieces, as Islam forbids depiction of animals and human beings in art. The pieces were usually made of simple clay and carved stone.

A variation of chaturanga made its way to Europe through Persia, the Byzantine empire and the expanding Arabian empire. The oldest recorded game in chess history is a 10th century game played between a historian from Baghdad and a pupil.

China

As a strategy board game played in China, chess is believed to have been derived from the Indian Chaturanga. The object of the Chinese variation is similar to Chaturanga, i.e. to capture the opponent's king, sometimes known as general. Chinese chess also borrows elements from the game of Go, which was played in China since at least the 6th century BC. Owing to the influence of Go, Chinese Chess is played on the intersections of the lines on the board, rather than in the squares. Chinese chess pieces are usually flat and resemble those used in checkers.

An alternative theory contends that chess arose from Xiangqi or a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 2nd century BC. David H. Li, a retired accountant, professor of accounting and translator of ancient Chinese texts, hypothesizes that general Han Xin drew on the earlier game of Liubo to develop an early form of Chinese chess in the winter of 204 BC–203 BC. The German chess historian Peter Banaschak points to the many inconsistencies in Li's theories while noting that the "Xuanguai lu," authored by the Tang Dynasty minister Niu Sengru (779-847) remains the first real source on Chinese chess.

Further development of chess

Among its more notable entries in the 13th century Libro de los juegos is a depiction of what Alfonso X of Castile calls the ajedrex de los quatro tiempos ("chess of the four seasons"). This game is a chess variant for four players, described as representing a conflict between the four elements and the four humors. The chessmen are marked correspondingly in green, red, black, and white, and pieces are moved according to the roll of dice.

Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan, spawning variants as it went. The names of its pieces were translated into Persian along the way. Although the existing evidence is weak, it is commonly speculated that chess entered Persia during the reign of Khusraw I Nûshîrwân (531–578 CE).

When Persia was conquered for Islam, chatrang entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. Its name became shatranj, which continued in Portuguese as xadrez, in Spanish as ajedrez and in Greek as zatrikion, but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word shāh = "king". There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curiosities and with them their name shāh, which Europeans mispronounced in various ways

Two kings and two queens from the Lewis chessmen at the British Museum, London.

The game spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. From the Muslim world it may have penetrated into Europe through Spain from Morocco, or through Italy from Sicily and Tunisia, or through Byzantium from Syria; perhaps by all three routes.

The commonly held view is that chess reached Europe in 10th century. However in 1992 a group of British archaeologists found in the ancient city Butrint an object which looks like a chess king or queen. If it really is a chess piece, this would mean that chess reached Europe already in 6th century. Still, no other chess pieces were found there, and the artifact could be also something else.

Chess was introduced into Spain by the Persian Ziryab in the 9th century, and described in a famous 13th century manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos. Chess with dice from the Romanesque period was found in France with Charlemagne figure sculpted on king pieces.

Origins of chess pieces

Chess-like pieces

Ever since the earliest times, and especially with regards to the most ancient of preliterate societies, chess-like pieces — isolated from whatever boards they could have been played on — were only simple figurines cut from stone, or made from clay and fired. As some researchers have come to believe, some tokens represented goods or merchandise in transit; including them in a caravan made the trading trip that much more legitimate, and may have invested in them a degree of talismanic luck. Trading partners relied upon the tokens as representatives of the real thing: a cube could represent a crate, a tiny horse figure could represent a horse, and a pod on a stalk could represent a bushel of grain. Insofar as ancient commerce goes, this sort of thing has immense practicality when it comes to balancing one's ledgers, and indicating whether partial shipments are meant to be completed with future shipments. No less important is the matter of exacting tribute from a subject people, and keeping track of how much tribute has been arrived at. This becomes all the more important in an economic network having no common currency, and where debts are satisfied with payments in kind.

Chess pieces as talismans

An argument can also be advanced that chess pieces hewn from stone were miniature versions of totems, useful for representing and predicting the conflict of divine forces in nature or society. As did many other ancient people, the Romans kept little wood statues — lares et penates — by them in their houses and at work for good luck and good health, and considered spiritual power to be present in them, and emanate from them, wherever they were placed.

Chess pieces as objects of art

It was not until significant advancements in technology were made that little stone figures were placed on a rectangular grid, and used for some game pieces, that chess came close to being invented. The existence of sets of miniature figures could well have made the invention of chesslike games inevitable, and a mere matter of time.

See also

• Timeline of chess

References

• Murray, H. J. R. A History of Chess (Northampton, MA: Benjamin Press, 1985) ISBN 0-936317-01-9

• Wilkinson, Charles K (1943). "Chessmen and Chess". The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin. New Series 1 (9): 271–279. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)

• Hooper, David Vincent (1992). The Oxford Companion to Chess. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198661649.

• Bell, Robert Charles (1979). Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0486238555.

• Kulke, Hermann (2004). A History of India. Routledge. ISBN ISBN 0415329205. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Meri, Josef W. (2005). Medieval Islamic Civilization: An Encyclopedia. Routledge. ISBN ISBN 0415966906. {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help); Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

• Wilkins, Sally (2002). Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures. Greenwood Press. ISBN 0313317119.

Further reading

• Davidson, Henry (1949, 1981). A Short History of Chess. McKay. ISBN 0-679-14550-8. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)

External links

• Chess. (2007). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved July 30, 2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online
• "Chess," Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2007
• Initiative group Koenigstein, different authors on origin of chess.
• Goddesschess, various authors on the origins of chess, the feminine in chess, and other subjects.
• The Origins of Chess, Valencia Spain - The Cradle of European Chess by Dr. Ricardo Calvo
• Article from ChessBase.com