Gukesh D’s recent win against China’s Ding Liren to become the youngest chess grandmaster and reigning world champion has once again highlighted the ancient connections that India has with chess.
While some like author Jean Louis Cazaux dispute the Indian origins of chess, at the moment, most historians agree that chess originated in the Indian subcontinent, more specifically its northwestern part, from where it spread to Persia and thence, via the Arabs, to Europe.
And if India thus has a claim on discovering or inventing this delightful board game, it has one thing to thank: its ancient war elephants.
G Ferlito and A Sanvito, in their essay, Origins of Chess: Protochess, 400 B.C. to 400 A.D. published in The Pergamon Chess Monthly (September 1990 Volume 55 No. 6), write that, “The game of chess, as we know it, emerged in the North West of ancient India around 600 A.D.”
They add that “the romance Vasavadatta by Subandhu (late 6th or early 7th century A.D.) may have the first reference though it is not clear. Better then Indian poem Harsharcharita by Bana (early 7th century A.D.). In this poem, the words of “chaturanga” and “ashtapada” are mentioned together”.
Chaturanga not only means the game of chess itself. It means the four parts which formed the typical Indian army (infantry, chariots, cavalry, elephants), according to Ferlito and Sanvito.
Meanwhile, ashtapada means a board of 64 squares, which may have been used to refer to the chessboard.
The use of elephants in war originated in India. This is mentioned as far back as the Rig Veda and the two epics of ancient India, the Ramayana and Mahabharata (which also mentions a battle formation called the Chaturanga consisting of infantry, cavalry, chariots and war elephants).
“In India, chariots and infantry together with cavalry and elephants, are mentioned in the epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana which cover a period of 600 years (300 B.C. to 300 A.D.). According to Greek historians, the Indian King Porus, who met the army of Alexander in 326 B.C. at Hydaspes, was at the head of 50,000 men (infantry), 1,000 chariots, 130 elephants and 3,000 horses (cavalry). This testimony proves that at the time the four divisions of an Indian army were already in use. This type of Indian army was called “chaturanga” from “chatur” = four and “anga” = member,” write Ferlito and Sanvito.
However, chariots later fell into disuse in ancient India, surviving as a part of Indian armies down to 300/400 A.D. By the Gupta Empire (320-500 AD), the authors note that the chariot was only a means of transport and by 700 AD, it was all gone.
“So, from a strictly military point of view, the chronology would suggest that the invention of protochess may have taken place between 700 B.C. and 700 A.D. However, if we assume, as probable ground of a protochess game, the vast territory comprising India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and in more general terms, Central Asia, the time limits could be restricted from 400/300 B.C. to 300/400 A.D. because mainly during this period of time were the four divisions of the Indian army used together,” they reason.
How Chaturanga emerged from India and into the world beyond is a fascinating tale.
In the late fifth and early sixth centuries, tribes known as the Hunas entered the subcontinent through the high passes of the Hindu Kush.
While their relationship to their more well-known eponymous counterparts from the Roman Empire under Attila is not clear, these people of various tribal federations like the Hephthalites, the Kidarites and the Alchon Huns wrought terror in then Gupta-controlled northern India.
The Hunas were ultimately driven out by a confederation of Indian princes. They were also defeated on the other side of the Hindu Kush by the Sassanids, the last great Persian Empire.
As Hans Bakker of the British Museum notes in The Huns in Central and South Asia: How Two Centuries of War against Nomadic Invaders from the Steps are Concluded by a Game of Chess between the Kings of India and Iran:
“Concomitant with the restoration of Sasanian authority under Khusraw in Tocharistan, a period of relative peace began under the Maukhari king Śarvavarman in North India. The seventh and eighth decades of the 6th century saw a revival of cultural activities on both sides of the Hindu Kush, and now the King of kings and the King of Kanauj had become neighbours, so to speak, an unprecedented cultural exchange between both realms was beginning to take shape. Famous Sanskrit texts in Pahlavi translation were floating into Iran, among which the Pañcatantra.”
The Maukhari Dynasty ruled from their capital of Kannauj (in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, north India). Once vassals of the Guptas, they were able to carve a fief for themselves and became the contemporaries of the Sassanids in Persia.
As Bakker relates, the Maukhari envoy of King Sharvavarman from Kannauj challenged the the Sassanid court of Khosrow I to play the Chaturanga.
Bakker reproduces the incident below, based on Reuben Levy’s translation of The Shahnama (327 f. Cf. Renate Syed 2008) by Ferdowsi, which mentions it:
‘The Indian envoy presented the Sasanian king with the game of chess, saying:’ May you live as long as the skies endure! Bid those who have been most engaged in the pursuit of science to place the chequerboard before you and let each man express his opinion as to how this subtle game is played. [. . . ] If they discover how this subtle game is played, they will have surpassed all other sages and I will then gladly send to your court the impost and tribute which you exact. If, on the other hand, the council of notable men of Iran fail utterly in this science and prove themselves to be unequal with us in it, you will no longer be able to exact from this land and territory of ours any kind of tribute or impost. You, on the other hand, will submit to the payment of tribute; for science is superior to any wealth however noteworthy.”
Of course, Khosrow’s Vizier was able to play the game with the Maukhari envoy and defeat him. Kannauj paid tribute to Iran from then on.
This incident may have happened towards the latter half of the sixth century. The next century, from 642-651, the Arab Muslims of the Rashidun Caliphate invaded Persia and defeated it. They also learnt to play the fascinating Indian board game, calling it Shatranj as the sounds ‘ch’ and ‘g’ were absent in Arabic.
Shatranj travelled to North Africa and reached Muslim Spain. From there, it went to other parts of Europe and became chess.