Starting this study the author proceeded from the following thesis:
The history of chess cannot be studied without a proper knowledge of the history of other board games. First it it necessary to observe the games which had come into existence before chess appeared. Only after that we are able to understand the sources and reasons which guided to the origin of chess.
The history of games in Old India shows that much simpler games were in existence before a complicated war game came into being. In particular, the direct predecessor was asthapada - a fourhanded race game on an 8x8 board where the movement of the game pieces was determined by the throw of dice.
H.J.R. Murray (1913) asserted flatly the following:
"The theory that chess is a development of an earlier race game involves the hypothesis that some reformer changed the whole nomenclature in order to make it self-assistent as a war game and secured the agreement of all his contemporaries. I find this hypothesis incredible".
Nevertheless, it is not too hard to prove the possibility of such a transition though it should have taken rather a long time and consisted of several intermediate stages.
A very important fact helped this transition. For one of the highest castes of the Indian society the representatives of the military aristocracy - Ksatriyas - the challenge to a gambling match was equal to the challenge to a duel. This testifies to the fact that a game of dice was put on the same footing as a battle. The Ksatriyan used to have battles on chariot races were their favourite pastime (side by side with gambling) in time of peace.
My hypothesis is that the new race game was built up on the races of chariots.
In the course of the game two chariots could be placed on the same square. This then led to a conflict. In the race game this problem was solved easily. The first chariot was taken off the board and it had to start the race from the very beginning. From here, there is only one step to another idea - the chariots start fighting one another. The first chariot perishes and it is removed from the board and cannot return. In this way the Ksatriya`s war game could appear as the battle of chariots.
The reform considered above could take place on the same board and it may be quite possible that the name of the game did not change. It preserved the same name ashtapada. This explains the silence of the literary sources.
Another natural step was the appearance of all types of the Indian military forces on the board - chariots, elephants, cavalry and infantry. Chaturanga completely was built up on ashtapada. This war game was (like ashtapada) a fourhanded game.
We also have to take the political situation into consideration. The fourhanded game, which appeared in the country divided into separate kingdoms could easily become a game for two players in the Empire. In short: there were reasons to turn a fourhanded game into a twohanded and so it happened.
Especially interesting is the question how the concept of checkmate appeared in the war game when the fall of the ruler meant the loss of the game.
Much ink has been wasted on this problem but nobody has yet given a satisfactory explanation. I believe it was hidden in the well-known text of al-Biruni`s India. Speaking about a fourhanded game with dice he saw in India al-Biruni informs us of the following.
"The pieces have certain values according to which the player gets his share of the stakes; for the pieces are taken and passed into the hands of the player. The value of the King is 5, that of the Elephant 4, of the Horse 3, of the Rook 2, of the Pawn 1. He who takes a King gets 5, for two kings he gets 10, for three kings 15, if the winner is no longer in the possession of his own king. And if he still has his own King and takes all three kings, he gets 54 - number which represents a progression based on the general consent and not on an algebraic principle".
It is not difficult to calculate that 54 is a maximum of the points which a player can take if he is in the possession of all three opponent`s forces including the kings. The algebraic principle here is strictly observed: 5+4+3+2+4=18; 18x3=54. With the general consent a rule was adopted - the capture of the three kings with one`s own king on the board gave a maximum number of points. That meant victory and the end of the game.
And now let us suppose that we have passed from the fourhanded game to a twohanded preserving certainly the same rule. Then to gain a victory will be sufficient to capture the opponent`s king. But this is a checkmate!
Here is a very new and an extraordinary conclusion - the idea of checkmate was n o t invented - it arose automatically with the change from the fourhanded game to the twohanded, preserving the same rules, of course.
To change the Indian war game 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 game 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.
Departing from the stable cultural contacts between Greece and India both before our era and especially in the first centuries of our era the author comes to a conclusion that it were the Greek who helped the Indians to make final step for chess to appear. People from Greece brought to North-West India (the area influenced by the Greeks most of all) their war game petteia. In comparision with chess it was a simpler game. All the game pieces in it were equal but they could "kill" one another. And the most important thing was that there were no dice at all! It was the player himself who decided where and which pieces should move. He had a complete freedom of choice.
