‘I think I have always respected chess. I just thought I wasn’t smart enough nor patient enough for it,’ said Poela Keta, a 21-year-old resident of South Africa who binge-watched Queen’s Gambit during a study break. After watching the T.V. show, guess what Keta did? She ordered herself a brand-new set of chess.
After Queen’s Gambit aired on Netflix, the popularity of chess surged incessantly, sending the sales through the roof. Chess Bazaar in India noted a three hundred per cent increase in sales in the months after the show, but did you know where the game of Chess began?
The history of chess can be traced back to the Gupta Empire (Seventh century) in India when it was known as Chaturanga, meaning four-limbed. Scholars suggest that the term identifies with the army structure of the time, which consisted of elephants, horses, chariots, and infantry. At the time, Chaturanga was played on a board called Ashtapada, an eight-by-eight board with 64 squares.
Chaturanga has been often referred to in the epics of Indian mythology, such as Mahabharata and Ramayana. A passage from Harshacharitra also mentions Chaturanga. Since Harshacharitra records the early seventh century, it poses a possibility for the game of Chaturanga to have developed at least in the middle or late sixth century.
In the Shahnameh, a Persian poetry epic, Ferdowsi notes that Chaturanga made its way to the Persian empire during the reign of Khusrau Nushirwan (531-579) through an Indian sage. The Arabic writer Ibn Khallikan takes note of this legend; however, in his accounts, while the game is credited as an Indian invention, it was brought to Persia as its own.
According to the legend, a sage from India visited Nushirwan and offered him a game he had invented. His game was a representation of a battlefield where foot soldiers, chariots, horses, and elephants were present. The tactics of the game excited the king so much that he asked the sage to demand a reward.
The sage made an unusual demand. He said: the board has sixty-four squares; place a single grain on the first square, place the square of the first one in the second, and so on, increasing the value exponentially. Initially, the king thought that the sage was silly for asking for something so small, but he soon realised that grains from his entire kingdom could not satisfy his wish. The king told the inventor that his wish had impressed him even more than the invention of ‘shatranj.’
In the sixth century A.D., Chinese literature first introduced the game of chess; however, it did not acknowledge its Indian origin. Instead, they appropriated the game and claimed it was their own invention. According to Chinese literature, the game was invented by a Chinese king, and ostensibly from China, the game travelled to other parts of Asia, including Japan, Korea, Tibet, Burma, Sri Lanka, Java, etc.
The Arabs introduced the game of chess to Europe in the 1200s. The earliest account of chess in Europe comes from a Spanish manuscript which talks about Arabic chessmen and mentions the king, horse, pawn, alferza (Vazir), alfil (elephant), and roque (chariot). The game spread from Spain to Italy, into the Byzantine Empire, and soon to France, Germany, and England. Thereafter, the game of chess continued to develop, and in 1834, modern competitive chess became visible.
While the world’s attention on the art of chess may have recently sparked with a Netflix hit, it surely is one of the oldest games enjoyed by the world. The game that presented the four-part army on the board centuries ago has been used for training the art of war in history, and today is the benchmark of a genius. From India to Persia, to China, to Europe, and then to the rest of the world, the evolution of chess has contributed significantly to Mankind as the most intellectual game in the world.
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