Chess: Sissa's game

Chess Sets     Material Rewards     Sissa's game     Deep Blue

Why do we have chess? We have chess because, in sixth century India, the Indian ruler Balhait was concerned that many of his subjects had developed a gambling problem. They were spending too much time, and risking too much money, at games of dice. And, because Balhait did not have a Vedic equivalent of Gamblers Anonymous, he did the next best thing. Balhait asked his most esteemed holy men, a Brahmin called Sissa, to devise a game so mentally challenging that it would distract his subjects from their games of chance, and require them to rely on their powers of analysis, judgment, foresight, and stamina. Sissa invented Chaturanga, the name of which alludes to the four divisions of the Indian army of the day--chariots, elephants, cavalry, and infantry. The board, measuring eight equal squares on all sides, was the same one as Indian architects used for planning cities. Chaturanga required its participants to express themselves in military terms, and some of them linger in the chess lexicon of today. The terms "rank" and "file", which pinpoint the positioning of chess pieces, are straight out of military formation terminology. The Chatruranga "ashwa" piece was an elephant, supposedly representative of the elephant with which Indian King Porus battled Alexander the Great. In modern Western chess, the elephant’s duties have been assigned to the bishop. The game spread through the Islamic world after the fall of Persia in 636 AD, and between the ninth and twelfth centuries the pieces were very simple, as Islam forbade them to resemble living creatures. The Persian version of Chatarunga was called Shtranj, and was brought to Europe with the Moorish invasion of Iberia of 711. Within two hundred years it was commonly played across Europe and Russia, where elaborately decorated chess pieces were popular. The intricacies of Shtranj attracted the rulers, literati, and philosophers of the day; some of them began to keep records of their play. By the fifteenth century, some of Shtranj’s rules were significantly altered. Pawns were allowed a two-square advance on the opening, and the "counselor" piece was re-fashioned as the chess Queen, giving more of a European flavor. The first chess instruction books also appeared, opening the game to a much wider audience. And by the early nineteenth century, chess as we know it had evolved; the Staunton chess set appeared in 1849, and the rest, as they say, is history. Why, then, do we have chess? We have chess because the Vedic-era Indians had a gambling problem.