Indian Sub-continental Chess

Indian Sub-Continent is the birthplace of chess. The upper basin of the Ganges, or thereabouts, was the locale where this game first appeared. In the ancient India, chess was called as “Chaturanga”. Chaturanga is derived from the Indian word for “four”. Chess was named as such because it is a kind of mental battle, and in the ancient times, Indian army was made up of four elements: war chariots, cavalry, elephants, and foot soldiers.

There is compelling circumstantial evidence linking the settlers of the Gangetic plain to earlier Harappan settlements. For instance, emerging geological evidence pointing to ancient river systems drying up and changing course, and the excavation of numerous settlements along the banks of these ancient river systems lends credence to the argument that the settlers of the Gangetic plain must have been predominantly domestic migrants. Finds of chess pieces, dice and terracotta animal and goddess figurines also point to connections between Harappan and later civilizations.

Since the upper basin of the Ganges was a Buddhist stronghold, it is not unreasonable to assume that their monks had a hand in its inception. Since Buddhists oppose the killing of any form of life, it can be hypothesized that the game was invented as a bloodless substitute for war (by allowing men to engage in a combat of a higher sort).

Though chess is originated in the Indian sub-continent, but the people of this place are not founder of the modern system of playing chess. The modern systems of playing chess were developed in the hands of Arabs and the Europeans. The people of the Indian sub-continent kept on playing chess in the old Indian system until the late nineteenth century, when modern systems became popular.

Though, there were many excellent chess players in this sub-continent, but they failed to do well in the international chess tournaments due to their ignorance of the modern systems of chess. When the modern systems of chess finally spread throughout the sub-continent, players like Mir Sultan Khan (first sub-continental player to do well in any European tournament), Niaz Murshed (first to became a Grandmaster), and Viswanathan Anand (first to became World Junior and World Champion from this sub-continent) came out.