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Chaturanga. The first known variant of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]Since I don't presently have access to the books by Murray or Gollon, I can't check on the accuracy of what this page says, but I am suspicious of some details. Other accounts I've found of Chaturanga say that it is essentially the same game we know as Shatranj. For example, Pritchard says this, and so does Cazaux. Yet the rules given here differ in some respects. In Shatranj, Kings face Kings and Councellors face Councellors in the opening position, Pawns promote only to Councellors, and the player who stalemates his opponent wins. Since I'm planning to write a rule enforcing Game Courier preset for use in the tournament soon, I'm hoping someone with access to Gollon or Murray would check up on these details and report back whether this page accurately states the initial position, the Pawn promotion rules, and the rule that delivering stalemate is a loss.
I have a copy of Gollon's book. I can check this out later today. EDIT: Checked it. The book I'm using is Gollon's Chess Variants Ancient, Regional, and Modern, first edition. According to this book, the starting position and stalemate rules are correct. However, the promotion rule listed here is inaccurate. First of all, pawns do not promote to the piece which started on the promotion space, but to the 'master piece' of that file. In other words, the piece of yours that started in that file is the one that determines promotion, not the one of the opposing army. This only has ramifications in the central two files. Gollon's rules also require the actual piece that started in the file to which the pawn will be moving to have been lost, not just a piece of the type. (The example given is that a pawn cannot promote in the C file until his elephant which started in the C file has been lost.) Additionally, according to Gollon, a pawn may not even move to the last rank unless it is able to promote, which is not stated here.
I've thought of one more question concerning the rules stated on this page. Assuming that the Pawn promotion rules here stated are correct, they aren't fully specified. Can a Pawn move to the last rank even when there is nothing for it to promote to? If so, does it wait around until there is a piece for it to promote to? If not, can it still check a King when it can't move to the last rank? This gives four possibilities. 1) The Pawn can advance even when it can't promote, and it just remains on the last rank unable to ever do anything more. 2) The Pawn can advance even when it can't promote, and when an available piece is captured, it promotes to it. 3) The Pawn can neither advance nor check when there is nothing for it to promote to. 4) The Pawn can't advance when there is nothing to promote to, but it can still check. Does anyone know if Murray or Gollon addresses this issue? Or does this rule only come from a more recent Indian variant, making the matter moot concerning Chaturanga? In The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, Pritchard mentions this rule in connection with more recent Indian variants under his INDIAN C entry, but he does not mention it under his CHATURANGA and SHATRANJ entries. Could Gollon have confused what Murray wrote about Chaturanga with what he wrote about more recent Indian variants and so have misreported its rules?
Thanks for reporting what Gollon says, Jared. My last comment got posted before I saw the update to your post. Your comments partially answered the questions I raised, namely by narrowing down the possibilities to #3 and #4. Would you know if Gollon has specified which is correct? Also, I still have concerns about whether Gollon has accurately reported on what Murray wrote. Murray wrote a large scholarly text whose focus is more on history than on clearly laying out the rules to specific games, and I expect Gollon used Murray as his primary source. So if anyone has access to what Murray wrote, reporting on it will still be very helpful.
I wish you all good luck in tracking down references. Sad to say, we have no record of the reasoning behind the rules of historical chess variants. For example, I read that in Chaturanga the player who stalemates his opponent loses the game. This might have resulted from a combination of the following two rules:
'A move that gives stalemate to the opponent is not allowed.' - Sittuyin (Burmese Chess)
'The game is finished if one player makes an illegal move; This player loses the game.' - my 2005-03-09 comment on Shogi (Japanese Chess)
According to Murray on page 57, al-'Adli, in the ninth Christian century, reported that in India a stalemated player won, which he contrasted with the rule with which he and his readers were familiar. According to that same account, the elephants stood in the corner squares, and had the move of the dabbabah rather than the alfil; the rooks stood on the c and f files. A player who bared his opponent's king won, even if the opponent could return the compliment on the next move--a rule that was also current in the Hejaz, although the rest of the Moslem world held that if the opponent could even the score on the next move, the game was tied.
<p> As for the crosswise arrangement of the kings, the arrangement shown in Hans Bodlaender's diagram is that given by Murray on page 80 as used in recent times in India in the varieties of chess that were apparently of native descent (distinguished from shatranj, introduced by the Persian conquerors, and European chess, introduced by the British, French, and Portuguese conquerors). In ancient times there may not have been a fixed rule. As for pawn promotion, the rule given in a work 'written about 1600 or 1700,' as Murray says, seems to me to say that a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the a, d, e, or h file is promoted to counsellor, and a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the b, c, f, or g file is returned to its square of origin with the rank of counsellor (ferz). This is on page 64, and the text is as vague as the date. As for stalemate, 'When a king is imprisoned without standing in check, and no other of his pieces can move, he may slay the piece of the enemy in his vicinity which imprisons him.' So the stalemated player does not win. Just before this we read: 'It is not proper to protect another piece rather than the King. The slaying of the King is yet considered proper. Imprisonment is counted as a defeat of the King. If the King is left entirely alone it is reckoned a half-victory, if he is checked 64 times in succession he is also held to be defeated.' I think we might fairly understand that as perpetual check. The game begins with each player moving his counsellor and counsellor's pawn two squares forward, 'Also another piece which goes one square distant is advanced at the same time...' apparently another pawn.
<p> On page 81 Murray describes Hindustani chess, one of the three native varieties current in the nineteenth century, when all the pieces had the moves current in Europe. In this game a pawn reaching the last rank is promoted to the master piece of that rank, except that on either central file promotion is to vizier (Q). Further, a pawn can only be promoted if the appropriate piece has already been lost; a player can never have more of any sort of piece than he started with. Murray specifies that the color restrictions of the elephant, now moving as a bishop, must be observed. This means that a pawn cannot be promoted to elephant on the c file until that player has lost his elephant that started on the f file. A pawn that cannot be promoted cannot be advanced to the eighth rank; it must remain where it is, an immobile target. Whether it can offer a threat that cannot be executed is a subtlety that seems not to be addressed. Logic suggests to me that it cannot. On page 82 Murray describes various conclusions to the game. Checkmate is a win. Stalemate is not allowed; a move that inflicts stalemate must be retracted, and another move played. Capture of all of a player's pieces (pawns are ignored) is a half-win. When both players are reduced to a king and a single companion, the game is drawn. Perpetual check is a draw. It is in this game, not the earlier ones described above, that the king has the privilege of making one knight-leap, provided he has not been checked. According to one questionable source, the king cannot capture on that leap.
Conclusion: John Gollon, sitting in the Cleveland Public Library, reading its copy of Murray's _History of Chess_ and taking handwritten notes, confused three sets of rules. Fergus, I hope you're not too disappointed. This page, with its seventy comments, should probably be scrapped.
'... a move that inflicts stalemate must be retracted, and another move played.' - Sounds reasonable. Apparently only SHOGI has a forfeit rule for illegal moves.
'The game begins with each player moving his counsellor and counsellor's pawn two squares forward...' Compare the mandatory opening moves in Courier Chess.
As for the 'the color restrictions of the elephant, now moving as a bishop' - that must be a modern rule. Alfils can be regarded as moving on an 8-color board, forever limited to either the odd-numbered ranks or the even-numbered ranks. See Leaping/Missing Bat Chess for some diagrams.
Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 10:17 AM EST:If the counsellor and counsellor's pawns both move forward two, I assume that the Kings did face each other; otherwise White's councellor's pawn would promptly be taken. Oh, boy ... I see the ChessV implementation of this game will require several changes. Bleh.
Thanks, John. I gather from your comments that Gollon based his description of Chaturanga on descriptions of three other Indian variants, none of which were Chaturanga. Would it be fair to say that Murray identified Chaturanga with Shatranj and didn't make any distinctions between their rules? This is what Pritchard does. He gives only a short entry on Chaturanga, saying that it is 'essentially the same as SHATRANJ', and then he gives detailed rules only under his entry for Shatranj. Also, back when I lived in Rochester and had access to Murray's books, I wrote in my Alfil article, 'Chaturanga was an Indian Contempory of Shatranj, and it is Shatranj, the Muslim form of Chess, that we actually have the earliest documentation for.' Some sites I've found on the web are claiming that there is no physical evidence for the existence of Chaturanga. It would seem that Shatranj is the earliest Chess variant for which we actually have historic documentation of its rules, and Chaturanga is a hypothetical construct that is presumed to be the ancestor of Shatranj, but for which we have no clear historical record. In the absence of a legitimate historical record, it may be fair to assume that the rules of Shatranj are the closest thing we have to any account of the rules for Chaturanga, and for all practical purposes, it would make sense to play Chaturanga by the same rules as Shatranj, or to just play Shatranj and consign the rules of Chaturanga to the unknown.
There are literary references to chaturanga in India apparently of about the same age as the Persian references to chatrang, but there is no description of the rules, so chaturanga, chatrang, and shatranj must all be treated as the same game. Anything before this is conjecture (and conjecture is active). There is no physical (by which I understand 'archeological') evidence of chess in India at that time, nor for centuries afterward, and I think the same is true of Iran; the earliest definite chessmen are from Uzbekistan, and the eighth Christian century.
<p>Greg Strong's remark about the required opening leaps implying that the counsellors faced each other in one file is valid for the seventeenth-century(?) rules. The cross-wise arrangement is specified for Hindustani chess in the nineteenth century. Cross-wise arrangements were formerly quite widespread.
<p>After scrapping this page (sorry, Hans and all), we will probably want to put up others for these other historical variants.
Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Mar 23, 2005 03:06 PM EST:So, any opinions on what I should do with Chaturanga support for ChessV? John Ayer has posted that Murray said that the elephants were in the corners, with Dababbah move, and pawns promote to firzan ... That's easy enough. Should I implement it in this way, leave it as-is, or erase the whole thing? Any opinions are welcome!
I think the one with the Elephants in the corners, etc., was another game, not Chaturanga. We don't have the rules for Chaturanga. So whatever game you chose to call Chaturanga might well not be Chaturanga, and you might not be able to do any better than to have Chaturanga support in name only. I plan to get rid of the Chaturanga Game Courier preset, because I have no guarantee that is is authentic Chaturanga, and for all I know, Chaturanga was the same as Shatranj, which I already have available. But if you wanted to keep this game, you could call it something like Gollon's Chaturanga to distinguish it from the real thing.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Mar 25, 2005 04:28 PM EST:Say, should Chaturanga still be a Recognized Variant?
I'm thinking it shouldn't be. Given that we don't know what its actual rules were, it's a bit hard, if not impossible, for us to recognize it. And if it is the same as Shatranj, which is the most likely candidate we have for the rules of Chaturanga, then recognition of Shatranj will suffice.
Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Mar 25, 2005 08:27 PM EST:Yes, I also think recognition of Shatranj should suffice. Also, based on feedback received here and in e-mail, Chaturanga support will be removed from ChessV, since not only are the rules unclear, but the present implementation is really just Shatranj with rotational symmetry and lousy pawn-promotion rules. But, I will probably add support for the other historical games described in Murray's text if they are described here, or if I can find a copy in a local library.
even if the rules are unclear, so what, how can you make chaturanga unrecognized!!.. taking it off game courier is ok, but making it not recognized?!
This decision is based on the fundamental meaning of recognized. It is impossible to recognize the unrecognizable. And that's what Chaturanga is. No one has adequate information on Chaturanga to be able to recognize it. Furthermore, the best candidate for Chaturanga is Shatranj, and Shatranj remains recognized. If, as I think is likely, Chaturanga and Shatranj are the same, then Chaturanga remains recognized, though under the name Shatranj rather than Chaturanga, and it would be redundant to recognize as two separate games what are just the same game under different names.
yes, i can see what you mean, but, the 'unrecognizable' is at the moment being played on game courier, and also has this page, and others pages also yes?, if you make it 'unrecognized' but keep this page and others .. that just doesn't look professional to me, this great site, having info about chaturanga but deeming it 'unrecognized'.. a game which i see as the 'mother' of chess. i can't see how it hurts keeping it 'recognized', i think 'recognized' means more than just being able to see all the rules etc
See Jean-Louis Cazaux's excellent page on this topic, http://history.chess.free.fr/enigma.htm Shatranj and Chaturanga would seem to be the same game, although, generally speaking, one thinks of Shatranj as the Persian game and of Chaturanga as the Indian game. The two can't be differenciated, it seems. There are also possible influences from China. As far as 'recognized' goes, I would tend to think that both 'Chaturanga' and 'Shatranj' should be recognized, if for no other reason that the CVP articles on these games suggest that the Indian game migrated to Persia. Not 'recognizing' Chaturanga would seem to ignore this root. Perhaps the uncertainty in the history should be reflected in the 'Recognized' variants list.
<P>Christine Bagley-Jones wrote:</P>
<BLOCKQUOTE>
that just doesn't look professional to me
</BLOCKQUOTE>
<P>That comment amounts to saying that it doesn't look like what it is not, which is fine. This is not a professional site. If it were professional, we would be getting paid to focus on it full time. But instead it is run by unpaid volunteers who too often have other things to do.</P>
you guys have made this site better than professionals ever could, because you do it out of love for chess, not love for money. surely this is the best chess/chessvariants site in the world.
Christine, your kind comments go to all that contribute to this great site.
On 2005-04-04 Fergus Duniho wrote: 'I've removed Chaturanga from the list of recognized variants, because it has recently come to light that we don't know enough about Chaturanga to actually recognize it. The best candidate for the rules of Chaturanga is Shatranj, which remains on this list.'
<p>I agree with Christine Bagley-Jones and Tony Quintanilla that Chaturanga should stay on the list of recognized variants (FAMOUS section). After all, both Dragonchess (E. Gary Gygax) and Tridimensional Chess (Star Trek) were famous before complete and consistent rules were published.
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