Chess (chaturanga)

Chess grew out of chaturanga, a board game that appears in India by around 600 CE. The name means 'four limbs' or 'four divisions' and refers to the four parts of an Indian army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots, which became the pawn, knight, bishop and rook. It was played on an 8 by 8 board with a king at the center of the action, and the goal was to trap the enemy king. The exact date and place of its invention are uncertain, and earlier racing and war games probably influenced it.

India under the Gupta Empire had a rich culture of mathematics and strategy, which may have helped nurture the game, and kingdoms of the time valued military training. The game passed to Sasanian Persia, where a Middle Persian text, the Chatrang Namag, tells of its arrival from India during the reign of Khosrow I. In Persian it became shatranj, and the cry shah mat, 'the king is helpless', gave the English word checkmate. After the Arab conquests, shatranj spread across the Muslim world and into Spain and Italy by around 1000. In the late 1400s the queen and bishop were given their modern long-range moves, making the game faster and creating the chess we play now.