Chaturanga

The Sanskrit name Chaturanga means 'quadripartite' (divided into four parts) and was also used to describe the Indian army of Vedic times in which a platoon had four parts: one elephant, one chariot, three soldiers on horseback, and five foot-soldiers. The board was known as the 'ashtapada' (eight-square) and is believed to have been adopted from an older race game related to parcheesi.

The date of the game's origin is uncertain, but documentary evidence exists from c. AD 620 in the form of a Sanskrit document, Vasavadatta from Subhandu which describes what could be chess pieces. Another document, dated from between 750 AD and 850 AD is Chatrang-namak by Pahlavi which describes the arrival of Chatranga to the court of Persia with an Indian embassy. The authenticity of the latter account is doubted by some.

The pieces were raja (king), mantri (counsellor, ancestor of the ferz), gaja (elephant, later called fil), asva (horse), ratha (chariot, later called rook), and pedati (infantry or pawns).

Sources:

The Oxford Companion to Chess (second edition), David Hooper, Kenneth Whyld

The Oxford History of Board Games, David Parlett

The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, D. B. Pritchard

Old Texts, Jean-Louis Cazaux

Scientists generally assume that Chaturanga, played in India, in or before the 7th century after Christ, is the oldest known form of chess. Resemblances, both with the current chess, and with Chinese chess are remarkable. The rules below are after Murray and Gollon.

Opening setup

The game is played on an uncheckered board of eight by eight squares.

White
King e1; Counsellor d1; Rook a1, h1; Knight b1, g1; Elephant c1, f1; Pawns a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2.

Black
King d8; Counsellor e8; Rook a8, h8; Knight b8, g8; Elephant c8, f8; Pawns a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7.

Moves of pieces

The king moves as usual king, but additionally has the right to make one knight-move during the game, provided that he hasn't been checked before he makes his knight-move. Castling doesn't exist.

The counsellor moves one square diagonally.

The elephant moves two squares diagonally, but may jump the intervening square.

The knight moves as a usual knight.

The rook or chariot moves as usual rook.

The pawn or soldier moves and takes as a usual pawn, but may not make a double step on its first move.

Promotion

Pawns can promote when they arrive at the last rank of the board, but only to the type of piece that was on the promotion-square in the opening setup, e.g., a white pawn that moves to b8 can only promote to a knight. Additionally, promotion is only possible when the player already lost a piece of the type, so the pawn moving to b8 will only promote to a knight, when the white player already lost a knight during the game. A consequence is that pawns never promote on e1 or d8.

Mate and stalemate

Object of the game is to mate the opponents king. The player that stalemates its opponent loses the game.

Play It!

Use Zillions of Games to play this game! If you have Zillions of Games installed, you can download this game and play it.

Version with ASCII board.

WWW page created: 1995. Last modified: June 23, 2000.

The above was authored by: Hans L. Bodlaender. .
Created on: 1995. Last modified on: January 04, 2001.

Comments

Date	Name	Rating	Comment
2005-11-07		Excellent	great game to play with a regular chess borad use bishops for elephants and the queen for the chanssler(ferz)
2005-10-16		Excellent
2005-08-09	Christine Bagley-Jones	None	oh that is pretty sad, i didn't know it was removed. was there a vote taken to remove it? may the chess gods have mercy on this site lol :) i don't understand the comment .. 'we don't know enough about chaturanga to actually recognize it' .. isn't it the game that is generally accepted as the mother of chess, isn't it the game that inspired 'shatranj' .. the game where the king starts on e1, and the game where the king can move like a knight 1 time during the game etc etc .. we can recognize it, we just don't fully know the rules (maybe) reading in your section 'what is a recognized variant', chaturanga looks like one to me, i don't see anything saying that all the rules must be known. and it is not the fault of the game that all the rules are not known. anyway, with obviously such a huge historic ancient game, who cares if it is unclear. Tony Quintanilla makes a good point here with his comment, and i quote .. '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.' anyway, i have had my say on axeing chaturanga, i will make sure i wear all black every 4th of the 4th from now on :)
2005-08-07	David Paulowich	None	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.
2005-07-19	Tony Quintanilla	None	Christine, your kind comments go to all that contribute to this great site.