Where Chess Came From?

Chess is commonly believed to have originated in North-West India during the Gupta empire, where its early form in the 6th century was known as caturaṅga (Sanskrit: four divisions [of the military] – infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively). The earliest evidence of Chess is found in the neighboring Sassanid Persia around 600 where the game came to be known under the name chatrang. Chatrang is evoked inside three epic romances written in Pahlavi (Medium Persian). Chatrang was taken up by the Muslim world after the Islamic conquest of Persia (633–644) where it was then named shatranj, with the pieces largely retaining their Persian names. In Spanish "shatranj" was rendered as ajedrez, in Portuguese as xadrez, and in Greek as zatrikion (which directly comes from Persian chatrang), but in the rest of Europe it was replaced by versions of the Persian shāh ("king"), which was familiar as an exclamation and became the English words "check" and "chess". Murray theorized that this change happened from Muslim traders coming to European seaports with ornamental chess kings as curios before they brought the game of chess.