Chess originated in India

Article by M.P. Bhattathiri, Retired Chief Technical Examiner, to The Govt. Of Kerala. Humble request that it may be published in your website and Magazine after editing if necessary.

The great VISWANATHAN ANAND brought glory to India by winning the world championship and he can be said to be greatest sportsman of India. It is found out by a research team that chess originated in India nearly 5000 years back in the name Chaturanga.

The terracotta paintings found in the palaces, temples, and stone tables carved with chess pieces as long assumed by Indian experts, but pieces used in a strategic board game called Chaturanga.

Chaturanga is generally considered to be the predecessor of chess, which evolved into its current form when transferred to other countries in the 5th century, but its precise origins can be assured to be from India. The great Mahabharata war is the result of Chaturnaga game. Renate Syed, an Ideologist from Munich University, who was on the team, has already claimed to have found textual proof that an Indian king transferred Chaturanga to Persia in the 6th century.

But Dr Syed hopes that the terracotta warriors, horses, chariots and elephants found around Kanauj, in modern-day Uttar Pradesh, will constitute the first physical evidence to back up her theory.. She and her colleagues visited Kanauj this month and examined and photographed about 40 of the thousands of figures lying in museum vaults.

The other members of the team were Manfred Eder, a chess historian; Leander Feiler, a chess enthusiast and Robert Dinsmore, a chess collector from California agree to this. It was funded by a charitable trust, headed by Mr Eder, which was set up ten years ago to explore the origins of chess.

King Sharvavarman, who ruled there from 560 to 585, then gave the game to his contemporary Persian ruler, Khusrau Anushirvan, in lieu of saltpeter, a type of gunpowder.

The Indian poet Bana mentions in one of his works that Chaturanga was played in Kanauj around 630, using a board of 64 squares called the Ashtapada. The exact rules are still unclear, but its name means "having four parts" and is thought to reflect the divisions of ancient Indian armies: infantry (pawns), elephants (rooks), cavalry (knights) and chariots (bishops). In all India wars the warriors are arrange as in the chess team.