Origins of Chess
Protochess, 400 B.C. to 400 A.D.
G. Ferlito and A. Sanvito(1990), Origins of Chess - Protochess, 400 B.C. to 400 A.D., The pergamon Chess Monthly Sep., 55(6).에서 발췌
From Chatrang Namak, the most important of Pahlavic texts, we learn that chess in ancient India was a war game and its name was ‘chaturanga’. In Sanskrit texts... The Indian romance Vasavadatta by Subandhu (late 6th or early 7th century A.D.) may have the first reference though it is not clear. Better then Indian poem Harsharcharita by Bana (early 7th century A.D.). In this poem, the words of "chaturanga" and "ashtapada" are mentioned together.
*팔라비어(Pahlavi 또는 Pehlevi)는 중세 페르시아어의 일종이다. 팔레비어라고 적기도 한다. 3세기부터 7세기에 걸쳐 사산조 페르시아의 공용어로서 조로아스트교 혹은 마니교의 문헌이나 비문 등에 사용되었다.(위키백과)
The name of "chaturanga" has a double meaning: the game of chess and a term referring to the four parts which formed the typical Indian army (infantry, chariots, cavalry, elephants). The name "ashtapada" is used for a board of 64 squares.
Professor R. Eales writes in his book: "Before the year 600 A.D., there is only archaeology and conjecture...."
At this point, we may quote H.J.R. Murray that "the date when it occurred to some Indian to represent the chaturanga and its evolutions in a game cannot be fixed, though naturally, it cannot be earlier than the organization of the army on which it is based." We like to add here, that probably the game cannot have been devised in a period in which at least one of the four military parts of the army symbolized in the game was already discarded as obsolete in war terms.
Each epoch has its typical armaments. The chess game has military symbols which are peculiar to a certain period in the history of warfare.
We shall give a brief outline of military symbols used in chess in order to establish the temporal limits in which the invention of the game may have taken place. The symbols were: infantry, chariots, cavalry, elephants.
Military history, as we know it today, actually starts in the third millennium B.C. in
Mesopotamia with the Sumerians.
Interesting, from a point of view of military history, are two Sumerian testimonies brought to life by archaeologists in the first half of this century: a rectangular object originally of wood, decorated with stone and shell mosaic, ‘The standard of Ur’ (Babylonia c. 2500 B.C.) and today at the British Museum, and an engraved column called "Stele of the Vultures(독수리의 석비)" of the same epoch and today at the Louvre.
The first shows the Sumerian army going into battle: chariots and infantry are realistically pictured. The infantry is heavily armed (copper helmets and axes) and lightly armed (without cloak, wielding axes or short spears). The chariots are drawn by two wild asses (onagers) and carrying two men of whom one is the driver and the other a warrior who flings light javelins(투창). The second evidence shows the infantry arranged in phalanx formation anticipating by 2000 years the Greek phalanx which won Alexander the Great his victories.
For 18 centuries, the armies will be fundamentally based on infantry and chariotry. The chariots underwent technological innovations of remarkable nature when the horse eventually replaced the onager. It seems probably that people living in the Steppes southeast of Europe around 2500/2000 B.C. imported domesticated onagers from Mesopotamia. They then started to domesticate horses which roamed in great number as wild animals in their territories. It is only around 1700 B.C. that horses were used in war as the ‘engine’ of the chariot. The Hittites, people of Indo-European language and based in Anatolia where they flourished for 500 years (1700/1200 B.C.) improved the Sumerian chariot and brought this section of the army to a high degree of efficiency by an elaborate system of horse training and by the introduction of a third member of the chariot’s crew.
The Egyptian made improvements of the chariot maneuverability: each car contained two warriors, comrades of equal rank. Many centuries passed before new ideas developed for a different use of the horse in war. It is only with the Assyrian King Ashurnasirpal II (883/859 B.C.) that a new type of warfare is experimented: the mounted troops. It is not yet the mounted cavalry which will be developed and used by another Assyrian King Sargon II (721/705 B.C.).
It is in that period that three military parts (infantry, chariotry, cavalry) are used in an army together for the first time.
The use of elephants in war originated in India. There are mentioned in the Buddhists texts of the VI century B.C.. It could be that elephants were used even before in war. There is a reference in Rig Vida (a magnificent collection of 1028 Sanskrit liturgical hymns composed in India around 1500/1200 B.C.) to two elephants bending their heads and rushing together against the enemy. In India, chariots and infantry together with cavalry and elephants, are mentioned in the epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana which cover a period of 600 years (300 B.C. to 300 A.D.). According to Greek historians, the Indian King Porus, who met the army of Alexander in 326 B.C. at Hydaspes, was at the head of 50,000 men (infantry), 1,000 chariots, 130 elephants and 3,000 horses (cavalry). This testimony proves that at the time the four divisions of an Indian army were already in use. This type of Indian army was called "chaturanga" from "chatur" = four and "anga" = member.
The Indian sculptures of Sanchi, Stupa I, made by artists of the first century A.D. for celebrating the achievements of the King Asoka Maurya (269/227 B.C.) well represent this type of army. It can be assumed that, at the time, the artists were taking contemporary chariots as models.
These chariots were drawn by four horses and carried six men. They could not move fast. In India, the chariot, as a vehicle of war, began to be disused, to a certain extent, soon after the commencement of the Christian era. However, it survived as a part of the Indian armies down to 300/400 A.D. By Gupta Times (320/500 A.D.) the chariot was little more than a means of transport. Its disappearance as a fighting force is gradual. It seems, however, that the chariots were completely discarded by 700 A.D. from any Indian army.
It is comforting to note, that if around 600/700 A.D. a game, chess, arrives to inspire the creation of fanciful poems and the birth of numerous legends, this signifies that the game was already popular and so widespread that it leads one to believe that the game of chess could have been played a long time before.
