Chaturanga

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

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

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!

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

Comments

Date	Name	Rating	Comment
2006-03-24	Aniket Basu	Good	The version of the Indian game we play and call 'National' to distinguish it from 'International' (meaning FIDE) is as follows: 1. King moves as usual, except for any number of possible knight moves before it was checked once. No castling move, the knight move can be used to take the king to safety. 2. Queen (Mantri/Minister), Bishop (Gaj/Elephant), Knight (Ghora/Horse), and Rook (Nouka/Boat) - all move as usual in the FIDE rules, but there is no castling move. 3. Pawns move just one square. (Naturally then, no en passant.) 4. Each sides are allowed two moves to begin the game.
2006-01-19		Poor	There is almost no detalils about where chaturanga/chess came from, where it orginated.
2005-12-04	Tony Quintanilla	None	Celine Roos writes: Hello, I'm Celine Roos WIM. It was just luck that I found a page through Google search for Books which linked to a French translation of an 1805 report established by a Research Society on Bengalese studies. The book is free of copyright, here are the libraries where it is available. http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/07026195 Also here you can see the whole book: here or just the article (starting p 207): here I guess the English original must be available somewhere. If I had more time, I would propose a translation into English but I'm terribly busy these days, having left the world of chess for the world of National Education in France. Yours, Céline Roos Strasbourg - France
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