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Chess - Its Origins And Development
By Rick Hendershot -
Chess is one of the world's great board games. For centuries chess players around the world have been mesmerized by its challenges, and its great masters have been revered as superstars of a different order -- superstars with brains.

** Origins and background of chess

Like many of our popular board games, such as checkers (draughts) and backgammon, chess originated sometime in the first millenium AD, somewhere along the Silk Road that ran between Europe, Egypt, India and the Orient. Most historians trace its origins back to northern India or Afganistan sometime around 600 AD.

As one might expect, there is a good deal of controversy among chess historians about both the date and place of the origin of chess. While some place its origins in China, the most common theory is that the version of chess we are familiar with evolved from a played in northern India called ashtapada. This used an 8x8 board (like ours), but had 4 players, and moves were determined by the throw of dice.

As some historians point out, the unique features of ashtapada, and its successor called chataranga, were deeply embedded in Indian culture of the time. The fact that it was a "four-handed" war was consistent with the division of the country into many kingdoms. And the use of dice to determine moves was a reflection of the importance of Karma in Indian religious thought.

** Evolution into modern chess

The gradual appearance of different types of Indian military forces in the Indian board known as chataranga -- elephants, chariots, cavalry and infantry -- was consistent with the transition of the from a relatively simple "race" to that of a war game.

In a race players do not capture or extinguish their opponents. If a player lands on the same square as an opponent, the opponent would simply have to go back to the beginning and start over.

But when the principle of capture or extinction was accepted -- where the captured opponent's piece is taken off the board -- this involves a different concept -- a different "mind set". And it was then just a matter of time before different types of military forces, with different powers and values would be introduced.

This transition from race to war is important. But perhaps the most significant evolutionary step -- and the one most difficult to explain -- was the elimination of the dice as the means of determining moves. As Yuri Averbakh, a Russian chess historian, points out, this was not something that would happen "naturally" within a pure Indian context.

As he says, "To change the Indian war into chess it was necessary to throw away the dice. Unlike the previous stages which were typical for the evolutional way of the game`s development and were not contrary to the customs of the Indians and their religious beliefs, giving up dice was a radical, a revolutionary step forward that not only changed the itself but also its philosophy. In fact, that step meant the withdrawal from the principle of Karma - the basic principle of the Indian philosophy. Now the result depended entirely on the players' will, on their choice. They became complete masters of their destiny."

According to Averbakh this would not have happened without the influence of Greece upon northern India. This influence stretched back to Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and developed even further within what historians call the Indo-Greek Kingdom. This was a large area including much of Afganistan and northern India which was conquered by the Greco-Bactrian kind Demetrius in 180 BC.

This kingdom lasted for about 200 years in which time the region underwent a profound synthesis of Greek and Indian religion, culture, languages and symbols. As Wikipedia says, "The Indo-Greek kings

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