games made to teach war battle strategies like chess

Shatranj looked a lot like chaturanga, but with changes in the way the game could be won! A player could win a game of Shatranj by either capturing the king or by eliminating all the pieces on the board except the king. This was a two-player board game played extensively in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Central Asia. However, most historians believe that the game changed gradually over the years and transformed into chatrang or shatranj. The chess origin journey from chaturanga to modern-day sets is still quite unclear. One of the key features that determined its authenticity was that victory was based on a single piece – the king! While the four-player game, played on a square board with 64 squares and dice, may now seem distant from modern-day chess, it had several pre-figured aspects that deemed it as the true precursor. Somewhere around the 6th Century, chess originated in the form of chaturanga – a four-player war and strategy game. Mahabharata, one of the two major Sanskrit epics of India, mentions the term chaturanga to denote a battle formation. Evidence suggests that modern-day chess has its roots in the war game chaturanga that did not exist before the 6th Century AD.

However, most of these chess original pieces have been determined to be part of older, distant board games with dice and over 100 squares. This is because chess pieces have been found in India, China, Pakistan, Central Asia, and Russia. It is also one of the most extensively played games in the world! Chess origin has been a topic of controversy for centuries.

Games made to teach war battle strategies like chess