The precursors of chess originated in India during

the Gupta Empire, where its early form in the 6th

century was known as chaturaga, which translates
as "four divisions (of the
military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry,
represented by the pieces that would evolve into the
modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.
Chess was introduced to Persia from India and
became a part of the princely or courtly education
of Persian nobility. In Sassanid Persia around 600
the name became chatrang, which subsequently
evolved to shatranj, and the rules were developed
further. Players started calling "Shh!" (Persian for
"King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and
"Shh Mt!" (Persian for "the king is helpless") when
the king was attacked and could not escape from
attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it
traveled to other lands.
The game was taken up by the Muslim world after
the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the pieces
largely keeping their Persian names.
The Moors of North Africa rendered Persian
"shatranj" as shaterej,
which gave rise to

the Spanish acedrex, axedrez and ajedrez;

in Portuguese it became xadrez, and
in Greek zatrikion, but in the rest of Europe it was
replaced by versions of the Persian shh ("king").
Thus, the game came to be called ludus

scacchorum or scacc(h)i in Latin, scacchi in Italian,

escacs in Catalan, checs in French (Old
French eschecs); schaken in Dutch, Schach in Germ
an, szachy in Polish, ahs in Latvian, skak inDanish,
sjakk in Norwegian, schack in Swedish, akki in Finn
ish, ah in South Slavic
languages, sakk in Hungarian and ah in Romanian;
there are two theories about why this change
happened:
1.From the exclamation "check" or "checkmate"
as it was pronounced in various languages.
2.From the first chessmen known of in Western
Europe (except Iberia and Greece) being
ornamental chess kings brought in as curios by
Muslim traders.
The Mongols call the game shatar, and in Ethiopia it
is called senterej, both evidently derived
from shatranj.
Chess spread directly from the Middle East to
Russia, where chess became known as
(shakhmaty, treated as a plural).
The game reached Western Europe and Russia by
at least three routes, the earliest being in the 9th
century. By the year 1000 it had spread throughout
Europe. Introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by
the Moors in the 10th century, it was described in a
famous 13th century manuscript covering

shatranj, backgammonand dice named the Libro de

los juegos.
Chess spread throughout the world and many
variants of the game soon began taking
shape. Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and
others carried it to the Far East where it was
transformed and assimilated into a game often
played on the intersection of the lines of the board
rather than within the squares.Chaturanga
reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine
empire and the expanding Arabian
empire. Muslims carried chess to North Africa, Sicily,
and Iberia by the 10th century.
The game was developed extensively in Europe,
and by the late 15th century, it had survived a series
of prohibitions and Christian Church sanctions to
almost take the shape of the modern game. Modern
history saw reliable reference works, competitive
chess tournaments and exciting new variants which
added to the game's popularity, further bolstered by
reliable timing mechanisms (first introduced in
1861), effective rules and charismatic players.
The precursors of chess originated in India during
the Gupta Empire, where its early form in the 6th
century was known as chaturaga, which translates
as "four divisions (of the
military)": infantry, cavalry, elephantry, and chariotry,

represented by the pieces that would evolve into the

modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively.
Chess was introduced to Persia from India and
became a part of the princely or courtly education
of Persian nobility. In Sassanid Persia around 600
the name became chatrang, which subsequently
evolved to shatranj, and the rules were developed
further. Players started calling "Shh!" (Persian for
"King!") when attacking the opponent's king, and
"Shh Mt!" (Persian for "the king is helpless") when
the king was attacked and could not escape from
attack. These exclamations persisted in chess as it
traveled to other lands.
The game was taken up by the Muslim world after
the Islamic conquest of Persia, with the pieces
largely keeping their Persian names.
The Moors of North Africa rendered Persian
"shatranj" as shaterej,
which gave rise to

the Spanish acedrex, axedrez and ajedrez;

in Portuguese it became xadrez, and
in Greek zatrikion, but in the rest of Europe it was
replaced by versions of the Persian shh ("king").
Thus, the game came to be called ludus
scacchorum or scacc(h)i in Latin, scacchi in Italian,
escacs in Catalan, checs in French (Old
French eschecs); schaken in Dutch, Schach in Germ
an, szachy in Polish, ahs in Latvian, skak inDanish,
sjakk in Norwegian, schack in Swedish, akki in Finn

ish, ah in South Slavic

languages, sakk in Hungarian and ah in Romanian;
there are two theories about why this change
happened:
1.From the exclamation "check" or "checkmate"
as it was pronounced in various languages.
2.From the first chessmen known of in Western
Europe (except Iberia and Greece) being
ornamental chess kings brought in as curios by
Muslim traders.
The Mongols call the game shatar, and in Ethiopia it
is called senterej, both evidently derived
from shatranj.
Chess spread directly from the Middle East to
Russia, where chess became known as
(shakhmaty, treated as a plural).
The game reached Western Europe and Russia by
at least three routes, the earliest being in the 9th
century. By the year 1000 it had spread throughout
Europe. Introduced into the Iberian Peninsula by
the Moors in the 10th century, it was described in a
famous 13th century manuscript covering
shatranj, backgammonand dice named the Libro de
los juegos.
Chess spread throughout the world and many
variants of the game soon began taking
shape. Buddhist pilgrims, Silk Road traders and
others carried it to the Far East where it was

transformed and assimilated into a game often

played on the intersection of the lines of the board
rather than within the squares.Chaturanga
reached Europe through Persia, the Byzantine
empire and the expanding Arabian
empire. Muslims carried chess to North Africa, Sicily,
and Iberia by the 10th century.
The game was developed extensively in Europe,
and by the late 15th century, it had survived a series
of prohibitions and Christian Church sanctions to
almost take the shape of the modern game. Modern
history saw reliable reference works, competitive
chess tournaments and exciting new variants which
added to the game's popularity, further bolstered by
reliable timing mechanisms (first introduced in
1861), effective rules and charismatic players.

India

Krishna and Radha playing chaturangaon an 8x8

Ashtpada
The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game
called chaturanga, which flourished in India by the
6th century, and is the earliest known game to have
two essential features found in all later chess
variations different pieces having different powers
(which was not the case with checkers and go), and
victory depending on the fate of one piece, the king
of modern chess.[9] Other game pieces
(speculatively called "chess pieces") uncovered
in archaeological findings are considered as coming
from other, distantly related, board games, which
may have had boards of 100 squares or
more. Findings in the Mohenjodaro and Harappa (26001500 BCE) sites of
the Indus Valley Civilization show the prevalence of
a board game that resembles chess.
Chess was designed for an ashtpada (Sanskrit for
"having eight feet", i.e. an 8x8 squared board), which
may have been used earlier for a backgammon-type
race game (perhaps related to a dice-driven race

game still played in south India where the track

starts at the middle of a side and spirals in to the
center).Ashtpada, the uncheckered 88 board
served as the main board for
playing Chaturanga. Other Indian boards included
the 1010 Dasapada and the
99 Saturankam. Traditional Indian chessboards
often have X markings on some or all of squares a1
a4 a5 a8 d1 d4 d5 d8 e1 e4 e5 e8 h1 h4 h5 h8:
these may have been "safe squares" where
capturing was not allowed in a dice-driven
backgammon-type race game played on
the ashtpada before chess was invented.
The Cox-Forbes theory, started in the late 19th
century, mainly from the works of Captain Hiram Cox
and Duncan Forbes, proposed that the four-handed
game chaturaji was the original form of chaturanga.
[19] Other scholars dispute this and say that the twohanded form was the first.
In Sanskrit, "chaturanga" ( ) literally means
"having four limbs (or parts)" and in epic poetry often
means "army" (the four parts are elephants, chariots,
horsemen, foot soldiers). The name came from a
battle formation mentioned in the Indian
epic Mahabharata. The game Chaturanga was a
battle simulation game which rendered Indian
military strategy of the time.

Some people formerly played chess using a die to

decide which piece to move. There was an unproven
theory that chess started as this dice-chess and that
the gambling and dice aspects of the game were
removed because of Hindu religious objections.
Scholars in areas to which the game subsequently
spread, for example the Arab Abu al-Hasan 'Al alMas'd, detailed the Indian use of chess as a tool
for military strategy, mathematics, gambling and
even its vague association with astronomy. Mas'd
notes that ivory in India was chiefly used for the
production of chess and backgammon pieces, and
asserts that the game was introduced to Persia from
India, along with the book Kelileh va Demneh, during
the reign of emperor Nushirwan.
In some variants, a win was by checkmate, or
by stalemate, or by "bare king" (taking all of an
opponent's pieces except the king).
In some parts of India the pieces in the places of the
Rook, Knight and Bishop were renamed by words
meaning (in this order) Boat, Horse, and Elephant,
or Elephant, Horse, and Camel, but keeping the
same moves.
In early chess the moves of the pieces were:
King: as now.
Queen: one square diagonally, only.
Bishop:

In the version that went into Persia: two

squares diagonally (no more or less), but could
jump over a piece between

In a version sometimes found in India in

former times: two squares sideways or frontand-back (no more or less), but could jump over
a piece between.

In versions found in Southeast Asia: one

square diagonally, or one square forwards.
Knight: as now.
Rook: as now.
Pawn: one square forwards (not two), capturing
one square diagonally forward; promoted to queen
only.
Two Arab travelers each recorded a severe Indian
chess rule against stalemate[24]:
A stalemated player thereby at once wins.
A stalemated king can take one of the enemy
pieces that would check the king if the king
moves.
Iran (Persia)

Iranian shatranj set, glazed fritware, 12th

century. New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.[25]

Persian manuscript from the 14th century describing

how an ambassador from India brought chess to the
Persian court.

Shams-e-Tabrz as portrayed in a 1500 painting in a

page of a copy of Rumi's poem dedicated to Shams.
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. The oldest recorded game in chess history
is a 10th century game played between a historian
from Baghdad and a pupil.

A manuscript explaining the rules of the game called

"Matikan-i-chatrang" (the book of chess) in Middle
Persian or Pahlavi still exists[citation needed].
In the 11th century Shahnameh, Ferdowsi describes
a Raja visiting from India who re-enacts the past
battles on the chessboard. 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 issued 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, Bozorgmehr, solved the mystery and was
richly rewarded by his delighted sovereign.

(Edward Lasker suggested that Bozorgmehr

likely found the rules by bribing the Indian
envoys.)
The Shahnameh goes on to offer an apocryphal
account of the origins of the game of chess in the
story of Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers who vie
for the throne of Hind (India). They meet in battle
and Talhand dies on his elephant without a wound.
Believing that Gav had killed Talhand, their mother is
distraught. Gav tells his mother that Talhand did not
die by the hands of him or his men, but she does not
understand how this could be. So the sages of the
court invent the game of chess, detailing the pieces
and how they move, to show the mother of the
princes how the battle unfolded and how Talhand
died of fatigue when surrounded by his
enemies. The poem uses the Persian term "Shh
mt" (check mate) to describe the fate of Talhand.
The appearance of the chess pieces had altered
greatly since the times of chaturanga, with ornate
pieces and 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. These pieces were usually made of
simple clay and carved stone.
East Asia

China
As a strategy board game played in China, chess is
believed to have been derived from the Indian
Chaturanga. Chaturanga was transformed and
assimilated into the game xiangqi where the pieces
are placed on the intersection of the lines of the
board rather than within the squares. The object of
the Chinese variation is similar to Chaturanga, i.e. to
render helpless 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, with pieces
differentiated by writing their names on the flat
surface.
An alternative origin 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 204203 BC. The German chess
historian Peter Banaschak, however, points out that
Li's main hypothesis "is based on virtually nothing".

He notes that the "Xuanguai lu," authored by

the Tang Dynasty minister Niu Sengru (779847),
remains the first real source on the Chinese chess
variant xiangqi.