World Chess Day is celebrated on July 20, every year. On this day in 1924, Fèdèration Internationale des Èches (World Chess Federation), the governing body of the game of chess, was founded at the Olympic Games in Paris, France. International Chess Day began to be celebrated on the same day since 1966 as the founding day of the FIDE, On December 12, 2019, the UN General Assembly designated July 20 as World Chess Day.
Chess is a board game for two players played on a square board, made of 64 smaller squares, with eight squares on each side. Each player starts with sixteen pieces: eight pawns, two knights, two bishops, two rooks, one queen, and one king. As the Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer has aptly said-“Chess is a war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.”
The game of chess being played around the world was invented in ancient India. It was then named “Chaturanga” (Sanskrit चतुरंग =caturaMga) which denotes the four (चतुः =catuH) divisions (अंग= aMga) of the military in ancient India, that is, infantry, cavalry, elephant, and chariots. The Vedas and the two great epics Ramayana and the Mahabharata bear out to the pre-historic tradition of Indian warfare in which a king’s army with all the four limbs is called चतुरंग. The X book of RgVeda contains the earliest use of Chaturanga to describe the army of sage-king Sharyat (शर्यात् =saryAt). The 92nd sukta is a hymn of eulogy (नराशंसी ऋचा) whereby, the deeds of royals are praised. The eleventh mantra reads-ते हि द्यावा पृथिवी भूरिरेतसा नराशंस: चतुरंग: यमोsदिति:। The Ramayana mentions how Guha, the tribal king assured Lord Rama about his capabilities to decimate the large and powerful four-limb army (चतुरंगं ह्यतिबलं सुमहत् संतरेमहि-Ram. II.51.7). The chaturang-bala (four-limbs of royal army) are clearly mentioned in the Kautilya’s Arthashastra (c. 4th century BCE). The game was probably played by four-players in the Mahabharata period and gradually evolved into its mature form in the fifth century during the Gupta period.
In the ancient era, chess was developed as a strategy game for the Warrior (the क्षत्रिय= kSatriya) class which helped them develop such skills as tactics, strategy, and visual memory. The game gained popularity with all classes. The Encyclopedia Britannica gives an interesting account of the history of chess. Buddhist pilgrims and traders took it to the East via the Silk Route. The diplomats and merchants from Persia and the Arabia, who had brisk cultural exchange with India during the ancient period, learnt Chaturanga here which they called as “ Shataranj” (शतरंज= satraMja). Muslims brought chess to North Africa and Europe. The appearance of pieces and the rules of playing Chaturanga moved forward in to the next millennium and by the15th century chess was known as the royal game in England and other European countries.
The reminiscence of an Indian past is apparent even today in the modern terminology and designing of chess. The ‘rook’, resembling a castle or a tower, is the first piece to be moved by each player on each of the corner squares on their own side of the board. Rook is etymologically related to the Persian rukh, and somewhat to the Sanskrit ratha, meaning a chariot. However, the tower shaped piece reminds one of the RgVedic word for a tall tree, रुक्ष rukSa (as illustrated in Rig Veda VI. 3.7 and referred to in the Sanskrit English dictionary by Monier-Williams). Incidentally, a tree-top is the habitat of a rook, the first among the birds to fly in the sky after sunrise to herald the beginning of a battle after a night-long halt. The ‘pawn’ is the foot warrior, whom the Persian called pyAdA and which descends from Sanskrit पयन payana, meaning locomotion being derived from the verb root पय which means to go. Elephant (पीलु) is typically a native of India and when the game of Shatranj was brought to Persia and Arabia, they acknowledged the piece as an elephant (फ़ील) which later on evolved in to the bishop in Europe.The ‘king’ is Shah in the Persian and it is the derivative of the Avestan kSAtra, denoting a Commanding position. The word क्षात्र has the same connotation in Sanskrit, the warrior class being called the Kshatriyas. The KShatra of Chaturang and the Shah of Shatranj led to the English pronunciation ‘Chess.’
‘Checkmate’ in modern chess denotes a situation when the player cannot protect his king and hence, loses the game. In Persian it is called Shah-Maat, which literally means the king is dumbfounded. It is erroneously confused with the Arabic word Maut (death) which suggests the king has died. The word Maat in Persian is derived from the Sanskrit मत्त matta, which conveys the sense of being careless, inattentive, wanton, etc which. qualify for the defeat of a king in a war! The meaning of matta is beautifully brought out in a slokam from Srimad Bhagavatam I.7.36:
मत्तं प्रमत्तं उन्मत्तं सुप्तं बालं स्त्रियं जड़ं । प्रपन्नं विरथं भीतं न रिपुं हन्ति धर्मवित्।।
(mattaṁ pramattam unmattaṁ suptaṁ bālaṁ striyaṁ jaḍam;prapannaṁ virathaṁ bhītaṁ na ripuṁ hanti dharma-vit). It has been translated by Srila Prabhupada as “A person who knows the principles of religion does not kill an enemy who is careless, intoxicated, insane, asleep, afraid or devoid of his chariot. Nor does he kill a boy, a woman, a foolish creature or a surrendered soul.”Here the respective words mean as मत्त (matta) being careless, प्रमत्त (pramatta) being intoxicated and उन्मत्त (unmatta) being insane.
In a scholarly article Dr.Natarajan Rajamani has demonstrated how the problem of the moves of a knight on a chessboard such that he visits every square only once was solved by two ancient scholars of Sanskrit many centuries before Euler could find an answer to this problem in the 17th century. One of the early mathematicians to investigate the knight’s tour problem was Leonhard Euler. The procedure for completing the knight’s tour was Warnsdorf’s rule, first described in 1823 by H. C. von Warnsdorf.
But the Indian scholars must have been aware of this problem as well the solution much earlier: The earliest known reference to the knight’s tour problem dates back to the 9th century AD. In Rudraka’s Kavyalankara, a Sanskrit work on Poetics, the pattern of a knight’s tour on a half-board has been presented as an elaborate poetic figure (citra-alaṅkāra) called the turagapadabandha or ‘arrangement in the steps of a horse’. The same verse in four lines of eight syllables each can be read from left to right or by following the path of the knight on tour. Each syllable can be thought of as representing a square on a chessboard. Rudrata’s example is as follows:
से ना ली ली ली ना ना ली
ली ना ना ना ना ली ली ली
न ली ना ली ले ना ली ना
ली ली ली ना ना ना ना ली
For example, the first line can be read from left to right or by moving from the first square to the second line, third syllable (2.3) and then to 1.5 to 2.7 to 4.8 to 3.6 to 4.4 to 3.2. This sequence can be completed in the bottom half of the chess board, marking the completion of a successful open tour of the knight of a 8*8 chess board.
Another great Vaishnava philosopher presented the solution in an altogether different format: Sri Vedanta Desika, in his epic work “Padhuka sahasram’ gives the solution in two of his thousand verses.
When the syllables of the first verse are written in order on the squares of the chessboard, the second verse is formed by the syllables that follow the movement of the knight, to complete half the ‘knights tour’! Given below are the two verses:
स्थिरागसां सदाराध्या विहताकततामता।
सत्पादुके सरासा मा रङ्गराजपदं नय ।।21
O sacred sandals of the Brahman, you are always adorned by those who have committed unpardonable sins; you remove all that is sorrowful and unwanted; you create a musical sound; (be pleased) and lead me to the feet of Lord Rangaraja.
स्थिता समयराजत्पागतरा मादके गवि ।
दुरंहसां सत्रतादा साध्यातापकरासरा ।।
The sandals which protect those who shine by their right attitude, whose place is the center of the blissful rays, which destroy the melancholy of the distressed, whose radiance brings peace to those who take refuge in them, which move everywhere, -may those golden and radiating sandals of the Brahman lead me to the feet of Lord Rangaraja.
These two slokas are to be read together as one set. This chithra bhandham is known as ” Chaturanga-Turanga padha bhandham “. Chathurangam means chess and Turangam means a horse.
