Check out Symmetric Chess, our featured variant for March, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
Pallav Nawani wrote on Wed, Jul 13, 2005 08:48 PM UTC:
There is insufficient information to determine with _complete certainty_
where chess originated. But it is sufficiently clear that chaturanga is
the most likely predcessor of chess. If the first description of chess is
what you are looking for then you need not go further than the game of
chaturanga (with dice) played between Duryodhana and Yudhishthira which
is
detailed in the Indian religious epic, Mahabharata. That description (and
Mahabharata)  is (conservatively) dated approx 1000 BC!

One crucial thing is that Chaturang has many variants. Obviously,
variants
develop over a period of time, and of popular games only. Chess peices
still bear a striking resemblance to the Chaturanga played in India, etc.
Chaturanga must have had _some_ relation to the original chess, and may
well be the original itself, Murray notwithstanding.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Chaturanga for four players.

Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.