Yeah, but one without bloodshed!

The Brahmin Sissa inventing Chaturanga

Once upon a time in the East, a wise Brahmin named Sissa invented a wonderful game called Chaturanga. The Sanskrit word refers to the four arms or divisions which formed the typical Indian army in Vedic times: elephants, cavalry, chariots, and infantry. It was played on an ancient board named "vastu purusha mandala", which was the mythical board of 8 x 8 squares used by antic architects to design the plan of the cities. The board representing the universe was redefined by Indian players as a board game under the secular name of "ashtapada".

At this time of its invention there was concern about the prevalance of gambling games using dice. A great number of his people were playing for high stakes and becoming addicted to these games of pure luck.

One day the Indian King (Rajah) Balhait summoned Sissa and requested of the wise man to create a game which would require pure mental skill and oppose the teaching of games in which chance (luck) decides the outcome by the throw of dice. Moreover, the king requested that this new game should also have the ability to enhance the mental qualities of prudence, foresight, valor, judgment, endurance, circumspection, and analytical and reasoning ability.

Sissa produced Chaturanga. One of the popular myths of chess tells of him being asked by his king what reward he wanted for such a fine game. Sissa replied that he wanted one grain of wheat for the first square of the board, two for the second, four for the third, eight for the fourth, and so on to the 64th square. The king was astonished and annoyed by the excessive modesty of his counsellor, but it turned out that the number of grains he owed him was 18,445,744,073,709,551,515. That is more than the current production of the entire world for hundreds of years!

Chaturanga was a wargame, the first to borrow explicitly and extensively from the vocabulary of military conflict. Today the battle metaphors and the warfare symbolism are not so apparent, but they continue to be imprinted in what is a highly aggressive intellectual activity.

A representation of the mythical Elephant of war used by king Porus against Alexander the Great. The "ashwa" turned into a "bishop" in the English version of the game, but remains an elephant (slon) in for instance Russian.

A3
The chariot or "ra-tha" was considered a powerful weapon. It turned into our rook and was the most powerful piece, until the reform of the queen moves appears during the 15th century in Spain.

Typical Persian chessmen, as given by the English scholar Thomas Hyde in his work Mandragorias seu Historia shahiludii (Oxonii e Theatro Sheldoniano, 1694). In this the English orientalist first demonstrates that chess was an Indian game, not a Greek one.

After the conquest of Persia (632) Muslim fighters adopted the game of chess and introduced it to southern Europe one century later. And after the Crusades the Game of Kings became in Europe the King of Games.

A typical representation of the knight during the Middle Age, as seen in the famous Moralities written by Jacopo da Cessolis around 1300.

A picture series showing how the simple loss of a game can lead to a war between two countries! It is taken from the medieval novel of "The four threads Aymon" (France, 15th century).

Even the glorious and so generous Greek hero Ulysses was anachronistically depicted as a warrior playing chess during the siege of Troy.

At the height of the Renaissance the French writer François Rabelais illustrated his great novel "Gargantua" with a human chess battle.

After the Renaissance fighters enjoyed the purely strategic game of chess, usually played in the taverns as in the castles.

A chess set designed for Napoleon the First had two cannons! From the treatise "Nuovo Giuoco di Scacchi ossia il Giuoco della Guerra" (Genova, 1801) by Francesco Giacometti.

The 19th is a bloody century…

...led to an even bloodier one, with the use of new strategic weapons and technological concepts

Russia joins the military game

Here is the critical position on the European chessboard

And here are the fighters…

In 1913, people want to make love, not war!

In 1914 even the children have to prepare to engage in battle

Just taking a break on a warship – with a game of chess!

Or preparing a battle on chess boards, like the soldiers of the Queen Royal W. Surrey Regiment.

The illustrious "Praeceptor Germaniae" Siegbert Tarrasch represented as a knight fighting for his critical concepts.

Even the United States entered this tragic game of war…

War became ideological after World War II

In 1991 it was a complicated game of chess in the desert sands

And twelve years later a cartoon by Larry Wright in the Detroit News (April 8, 2003)

One more by Clay Bennett of the Christian Science Monitor, Boston (April 9, 2003). This one actually has proper chess content!

This virtual trip over 15 centuries of chess and war is over!, but not the great chess history. From Sissa to Baghdad once again, the city along the river Tiger, first known under the name of "Medinat al-Salam" (the "City of Peace"), also known as the theatre of the enchanting "Arabian Nights", under the reign of the munificent Caliph Harûn ar-Rachid, at the beginning of the 9th century. Most precisely, the city where the first grandmasters of chess history like al-Adli, and after him as-Suli, explored the early concepts of modern theory.

From prosperity and tolerance to fundamentalism, poverty, darkness and death. Time are changing…

© For all the photographs (except the last two): Europe Echecs 2003.

By Jean-Michel Péchiné
LES ÉCHECS . Roi des jeux, jeu des rois [1997] ,
128 pages, ill., sous couv. ill., 125 x 178 mm.
Collection Découvertes Gallimard (No 335),
Gallimard -doc. ISBN 2070533964. 11,60 €