Chess has long fascinated humankind as a game of strategy and skill. It was probably invented in India in the sixth century in the Gupta empire when it was known as chaturanga. A comprehensive account of its history was penned in 1913 by H.J.R. Murray (2015). The name refers to the four divisions an army may have. The infantry includes the pawns, the knights make up the cavalry, the rooks correspond to the chariotry, and the bishops the elephantry (though the Hindi word for the piece calls it a camel). In Persia the name was shortened to chatrang. This in turn transformed to shatranj as exemplified in the 1924 story by Munshi Premchand (2020) and the film of the same name by Satyajit Ray, Shatranj Ke Khiladi (The Chess Players). It became customary to warn the king by uttering shāh (the Persian word for king) which became check, and the word mate came from māt which means defeated. Checkmate is derived from shāh māt which says that the king has been vanquished.

Table 8.1 lists the names of the chess pieces in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, and English (Murray, 2015). In Hindi users often say oont (camel) for bishop and haathi (elephant) for rook.

From India the game spread to Persia, and then to Russia, Europe, and East Asia around the ninth century.