The legend of chess

The main goal of the game is to checkmate the opponent or force him to draw. When we are facing defeat then we fight for a draw.

Chess has spread all over the world and there is no part of the country where you would not know this game. Yet it took a long time to find where and when chess first appeared.

Based on different stories and myths, different assumptions have been made about the Egyptian, ancient Greek and Roman origins of chess.

Among all the stories about chess, the most famous is the one about the Greek hero Palamedes, who invented chess during the siege of Troy in order to shorten the time of soldiers with this game. Ancient tablets like chess were found in the archaeological excavations of ancient civilizations, but it was still not chess. The oldest monuments of the game of chess date back to mid-6th century India.

In the old Persian poem "The Book of Chatrangname", it is said: The Indian embassy brought to the Persian king Hosroa I Anorshovan (Righteous), to whom India paid tribute, a chessboard with figures. games or to give up the tribute.Hosroe found himself in awe but some Persian sage managed to decipher the meaning of the game.

India is, therefore, the cradle of chess.

However, who invented chess and when it originated remains a mystery. An old Indian story tells of this: that it was when India was ruled by the young King Balhib. He was raised by the sage Sissa Ben Dahir but the cunning nobility and clergy succeeded in kidnapping the young king under the influence of an honest sage. The king, who by nature loved fun and merriment, ceased to care for the troubles of the populace.

During this time, his corrupt advisers perpetrated various violence and injustices against the people. Then Ben Dahir, knowing the inclinations of the young king, invented a new game in which he wanted to use statues and strokes to show the sufferings of the people. Balhib finally realized the truth and out of gratitude richly rewarded the sage.

Ben Dahir wished wheat as a reward and that one grain be placed on the first field of the chessboard, two grains on the next, then four on the third and always twice as much. At first Balhib marveled at the modesty of the sages but so much grain he still could not gather when he calculated the final number of grains. The exact number was 18,446,744,073,709,551,625 grains or about a trillion tons! The Indian writer Halaiudha (10th century) mentions in one of his commentaries that the name kocthazara (kochazara) is taken for 64 chessboards, which means barn. It is not known whether this name derives from that story with wheat or whether the story originated from that name.

The Shah in India was called chaturanga (four-part) and it is also the poetic name for the then Indian army which had four genera. They were soldiers with elephants - today they are hunters in chess, then borna kola - today's cannons, and cavalry and infantry. There was also the raja-king, as well as the mandarin (advisor) - in today's chess it is a lady or a queen. The figures on the board moved much slower than they do today. The mandarin (lady) only went to the adjacent field in the oblique direction, the elephant (hunter) jumped one field in the oblique direction and the cart (cannon) one field in the straight direction. The horse moved like today's jumper and that is exactly the middle ground between the movement of the elephant and the cart: one field obliquely and one field straight in the same direction.