Who invented chess?

What historians know

Nobody knows where the game began or who first played it. The oldest texts that mention chess date from the start of the 7th century and come from northwest India, Persia, and the Arab world. The oldest one that can be dated with certainty is the Indian writer Bana's account of King Harsha, from around 625–645.

The old Persian and Arab writers already agreed that the game came from India. But the names of the inventors in their stories are made up, the English chess historian H. J. R. Murray wrote in 1913. How the game spread from there is under How old is chess? and in the history of chess.

The sage and the grains of wheat

The best-known legend is about an Indian sage who invented chess for his king. Offered any reward, he asked for wheat: one grain on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling on every square. The king thought it sounded modest, until he worked out how much it came to.

It comes to 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains, or two to the power of 64, minus one. That's more than 18 quintillion. Murray passed on a calculation from 1905: the grains would cover all of England 38.4 feet deep.

The legend appears in several Arabic texts. In the one Ibn Khallikan wrote down in the 13th century, the sage is called Sissa. Murray gives older versions, the oldest from the late 9th century, with other names.

More legends

The Persian national epic, the Shahnameh, has two stories about chess. In one, an Indian king sends the game to Persia as a riddle: nobody knows how the pieces move, and the wise Buzurjmihr has to work it out. In the other, the game is made to show a queen how her son died in a war against his half-brother without a single wound. He died of exhaustion, surrounded by his enemies. The poem puts it with the Persian word māt, roughly "helpless" or "beaten", and that word lives on in checkmate.

In Europe the game later acquired other inventors, among them Greek heroes such as Palamedes and Odysseus. None of it has any support in the sources.

An army in four parts

The word chaturanga means roughly "four parts" and refers to an Indian army: elephants, chariots, horsemen, and foot soldiers. They're still on the board today, as bishops, rooks, knights, and pawns. How they got their names is under Why are the chess pieces called what they are?