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The prevailing academic consensus is that ''', the Cavalry , the Runners and the Elephant s. The king has to be well protected and the flanks of the army are guarded by elephants which may also be moved to a more frontal position during the progression of the battle. Indian military strategy has been faithfully rendered in the game of chess.Kulke 2004: 9 In India the game was meant as a simulation for battle. The words for chess in from India and became a part of the princely or courtly education of Persian nobility. The earliest Persian reference to chess is found in the Middle Persian book '' Karnamak-i Artaxshir-i Papakan '', which was written between the 3rd to 7th century. This ancient Persian text refers to Shah Ardashir I , who ruled from 224 – 241 , as a master of the game. However, ''Karnamak'' contains many fables and legends, and this only establishes the popularity of chatrang at the time of its composition. 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 Figurine s 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 Roman s 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. EARLY HISTORY Many of the early works on chess gave a legendary history of the invention of chess, often associating it with Nard (a game of the Tables variety like Backgammon ). However, only limited credence can be given to these. Even as early as the tenth century Zakaria Yahya commented on the chess myths, "It is said to have been played by Aristotle , by Yafet Ibn Nuh ( Japhet son of Noah ), by Sam ben Nuh ( Shem ), by Solomon for the loss of his son, and even by Adam when he grieved for Abel ." In one case the invention of chess was attributed to Moses (by the rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra in 1130 ). India In Sanskrit , "Chaturanga" literally means "having four limbs (or parts)" and in Epic Poetry often means " Army ". The game reflects fourfold division of the ancient Indian army. Besides the king and his counsellor or General in the center, the army consisted of the following units:
Captain Cox and Professor Forbes put forth a theory (the Cox-Forbes Theory ), that chess originated from the four-handed version of chaturanga, which was called Chaturaji . The Archaeological Survey Of India notes that the resemblance between various terracotta gamesmen from Lothal and modern chessmen may place the origins of Chaturanga earlier to the period of the Indus Valley Civilization . This evidence gives the appearance of chess having its origins in one of the Harappan games.Memoirs of the Archaeological Survey of India (1985). Supt. Government Printing, India. pp 503 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. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 31, 2007, from Encyclopedia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9024151 Chinese chess also borrows elements from an earlier game of Go , which was known to the Chinese People before chess arrived from India. Owing to the influence of Go, Chinese Chess is played on a 9x10 board with 90 points, rather than 64 squares. Chinese chess pieces may be flat and may resemble those used in Checkers . A theory, championed by David H. Li , contends that chess arose from Xiangqi or a predecessor thereof, existing in China since the 2nd Century BC .1 According to Li, literary sources indicate that Xiàngqí may have been played as early as the 2nd century BC. The oldest surviving remnant of ancient Chinese Liubo (or Liu Po) dates to circa 1500 BC . Nevertheless, Liubo, though sometimes considered a battle game, was played with dice. According to a hypothesis by David H. Li , general Han Xin drew on Liubo to develop a Chinese form of chess in the winter of 204 BC - 203 BC . Middle East as early as the 3rd century.]] 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 appearance of the chess pieces had altered greatly since the times of Chaturanga. Chaturanga had ornate pieces, and the chess pieces could depict animals. The Muslim sets of later centuries followed a pattern which assigned names but not shape to the chess pieces, as Islam forbids depiction of animals and human beings in art. The pieces were made of simple clay and carved stone. chess (Set design). (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 1, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-80432/chess A variation of chaturanga made its way to Europe through Persia, the Byzantine Empire and the expanding Arabian empire. The oldest recording game in Chess history dates to a 10th Century game played between a historian from Baghdad and a pupil. Chess: Introduction to Europe. (2007). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 1, 2007, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-80430/chess FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF CHESS 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 |
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