Game of Chess
The game of chess has had a long and distinguished history in cultures throughout the world. There are many facets to the ways in which chess has affected the cultures of various nations and cultures and their ways of relating to each other, but one aspect of this story that students and practitioners of the game may find of particular interest in seeing how the game reached its modern day form is the very early history of the first forms taken by chess. This epic narrative has seen the game move from what are believed to be its earliest origins in a specific region of India to Europe during the Middle Ages, over the course of which period the game has been picked up by various cultures for various means and has been slowly but surely toward the rules under which chess is currently played.
Though historians of the game differ on the extent to which it can be reliably ascribed to a particular time and place, but the most common milieu given for chess’s beginning is in 6th century Northwest India, in the region under the control of the Gupta empire. The game was first named, in a very basic form, in the Sanskrit language, a close relative of the languages of Western nations where it would one day achieve preeminence among board games. This name, “caturanga,” is translated as “four units,” referring to divisions of an army. The four titular divisions in this early form of chess consisted of pieces representing the infantry, the cavalry, the elephants, and the chariots. These figures in the game find their modern day equivalents, respectively, in the pawn, knight, bishop and rook.
The popularity of chess began with this very early form of the game, which already manifests the tendency to be transmitted to other, nearby cultures and assume a place in their social structures. The earliest physical evidence of chess being played by a people derives from the first such point of departure for the game of “caturanga,” to the neighboring area of Sassanid Persia, This move occurred around the year 600 and found the game being given the name “chatrang.” More reliable documentation exists for this kind of chess than for its possibly earliest form in India. Scholars have located three romantic epic poems written in the language designated as Medium Persian, Pahlavi, in which the game of “chatrang” plays a pivotal part in the heroes’ lives. In another step toward the dissemination of chess as a commonly played game throughout the cultures of the world, Muslim warriors conquered Persia in the seventh century and in the process found the game in an intermediate stage in which it was known as “shatranj.” From this point on the game was spread to European cultures, probably by way of ports where commercial and trade activity thrived. This process had already occurred in the ninth century, and by the year 1000 it was being played widely throughout Europe, beginning the long reign of chess.