caturanga

Chaturanga

The Sanskrit name Chaturanga means 'quadripartite' (divided into four parts) and was also used to describe the Indian army of Vedic times in which a platoon had four parts: one elephant, one chariot, three soldiers on horseback, and five foot-soldiers. The board was known as the 'ashtapada' (eight-square) and is believed to have been adopted from an older race game related to parcheesi.

The date of the game's origin is uncertain, but documentary evidence exists from c. AD 620 in the form of a Sanskrit document, Vasavadatta from Subhandu which describes what could be chess pieces. Another document, dated from between 750 AD and 850 AD is Chatrang-namak by Pahlavi which describes the arrival of Chatranga to the court of Persia with an Indian embassy. The authenticity of the latter account is doubted by some.

The pieces were raja (king), mantri (counsellor, ancestor of the ferz), gaja (elephant, later called fil), asva (horse), ratha (chariot, later called rook), and pedati (infantry or pawns).

(
Sources:

The Oxford Companion to Chess (second edition), David Hooper, Kenneth Whyld

The Oxford History of Board Games, David Parlett

The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, D. B. Pritchard)


Scientists [=? ed. note: surely not] generally assume that Chaturanga, played in India, in or before the 7th century after Christ, is the oldest known form of chess. Resemblances, both with the current chess, and with Chinese chess are remarkable. The rules below are after Murray and Gollon.
Opening setup

The game is played on an uncheckered board of eight by eight squares.



White
King e1; Counsellor d1; Rook a1, h1; Knight b1, g1; Elephant c1, f1; Pawns a2, b2, c2, d2, e2, f2, g2, h2.

Black
King d8; Counsellor e8; Rook a8, h8; Knight b8, g8; Elephant c8, f8; Pawns a7, b7, c7, d7, e7, f7, g7, h7.
Moves of pieces

The king moves as usual king, but additionally has the right to make one knight-move during the game, provided that he hasn't been checked before he makes his knight-move. Castling doesn't exist.

The counsellor moves one square diagonally.

The elephant moves two squares diagonally, but may jump the intervening square.

The knight moves as a usual knight.

The rook or chariot moves as usual rook.

The pawn or soldier moves and takes as a usual pawn, but may not make a double step on its first move.
Promotion

Pawns can promote when they arrive at the last rank of the board, but only to the type of piece that was on the promotion-square in the opening setup, e.g., a white pawn that moves to b8 can only promote to a knight. Additionally, promotion is only possible when the player already lost a piece of the type, so the pawn moving to b8 will only promote to a knight, when the white player already lost a knight during the game. A consequence is that pawns never promote on e1 or d8.
Mate and stalemate

Object of the game is to mate the opponents king. The player that stalemates its opponent loses the game.

(Additional notes:

An early reference to a chess-like game is sometimes attributed to Subandhu in his Vasavadatta (c. 600):

The time of the rains played its game with frogs for chessmen which yellow and green in color, as if mottled by lac, leapt up on the black field squares.

The word translated as chessmen, nayadyutair, is not specific to the Chess and can indicate the pieces of any boardgames. The colors are not those of the two camps, but mean that the frogs have a two-tone dress, yellow and green. Note that the chess-boards used by the Indians were unicoloured.

Banabhatta's Harsha Charitha (c. 625) contains the earliest reference to Chaturanga:

Under this monarch, only the bees quarreled to collect the dew; the only feet cut off were those of measurements, and only from Ashtâpada one could learn how to draw up a Chaturanga, there were no cutting off the four limbs of condemned criminals....

If there is little doubt that Ashtâpada is the gaming-board of 8x8 squares, the double meaning of Chaturanga, as the four folded army, may be controversial. There is a probability that the ancestor of Chess was mentioned there.)

c. 1030 - Al-Biruni's India describes the game of Chaturaji.

1148 - Kalhana's Rajatarangini (translated by MA Stein, 1900)

The King, though he had taken two kings (Lothana and Vigraharaja) was helpless and perplexed about the attack on the remaining one, just as a player of chess (who has taken two Kings and is perplexed about taking a third).
(Note: This refers to the game of Chaturaji.)

kahwa

So riddle me this. Our word 'coffee', as everyone seems to know, derives from:

>>1598, from It. caffe, from Turk. kahveh, from Arabic qahwah "coffee," said originally to have meant "wine," but perhaps rather from Kaffa region of Ethiopia, a home of the plant (Coffee in Kaffa is called buno). Much initial diversity of spelling, including chaoua.<<

So Arabic Qahwah, from Turkik Kahveh. But why, oh why, is a Kashmiri tea named kahwa?
And it is not, I think, out of some broad semantic change, where the word is used as something like "invigorating liquid" and so can slide from coffee to tea. For the dictionary seems to record:

kahwa

kahwa कह््व । चव्यरसः m. coffee (roasted, or roasted and ground, or the decoction); in Kāshmīrī, sweetened tea (the liquid) (L. 254, 464).[Grierson, A Dictionary of the Kashmiri Language].

I don't know quite if this means that in Kashmiri the only use for "kahwa" is the tea drink. But perhaps it is. If so, why? For one assumes that if the word could travel, so could the beans and the drink via the trade routes. Why did coffee not arrive, but the word for it did?

There is, however, something to be said for traditional lexicography. If it is true that Arab lexicographers took the root meaning of qahwah to be not simply "wine", and so spiritous liqours of some kind, but also dark brews that have the right properties, perhaps the invigorating Kashmiri drink is aptly so named. Kahwa is, after all, dark, almost wine-dark (as the impossible description goes).

(See: The Etymology of "Coffee": The Dark Brew, Alan S. Kaye, Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 106, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1986), pp. 557-558)


Now, the other think I should like to know why "kahwa" is not used with "chai" when speaking of the drink. It is recognized that this drink is something distinct from just chai, hence the phrase mogali-chai in Kashmiri.

. mŏgȧli: (page 552)

(= ) adj. c.g. of or relating to a Mogul. -- cāhy -- चाह्य् or -- cāhi -- चाहि&below; or -- cāy -- चाय् । पानविशेषः f. a kind of tea (the drink). According to El. (s.v. chái) it is prepared as follows:-- For every tōlā (half-ounce) of tea five cups of water are poured upon it in the bahugun or teapot. It is then boiled for half an hour, when more cold water is added, along with condiments and sugar, after which it is boiled for half an hour

I wonder if it has to do with the fact that though the method of preparation looks like chai, the lack of milk makes it more like drinks called qahwah. Except that "cha", as we all know, lies behind the chai, and "cha" does not require milk.

>>1655, earlier chaa (1598, from Port. cha), from Malay teh and directly from Chinese (Amoy dialect) t'e, in Mandarin ch'a. The distribution of the different forms of the word reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern Eng. form, along with Fr. the, Sp. te, Ger. Tee, etc., derive via Du. thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). First known in Paris 1635, the practice of drinking tea was first introduced to England 1644. The Port. word (attested from 1559) came via Macao; and Rus. chai, Pers. cha, Gk. tsai, Arabic shay and Turk. çay all came overland from the Mandarin form<<

Grey Hound

So this might seem to have nothing to do with India, but for the uncanny sense I had all the way from Atlanta to Chicago that contrary to popular belief, the US has pockets very much part of the 3rd world continuum that stretches from Houstan Texas, via pockets of London, all the way to Patna. Take one look at the folks bundling ill-packaged air-conditioners, vcr-s, hi-fi systems, waiting in ridiculously long lines, 40 minutes after the scheduled departure time, when the power goes out, and it rains outside in 110F, with 102.3% humidity, and no one wearing a uniform seems to speak your language, and you will know what I mean.

There was also the occassional bus which played movies at such high decibels (at 1:00 in the morning) that you could not comprehend a single line. After the movie, the dvd menu played for an hour and fifteen minutes. As loud. And a young man beside me must have texted at least a novel to someone with as little chance of getting laid as this young man seemed to have. He did not stop texting for 4 hours and some minutes. Four hours. And his phone beeped every minute.

Every fucking minute.

There was also the bus driver who begged the passengers not to remove their shoes, because, he said, he might not want to offend any customs, but he knew how his feet smelled, and his feet being feet, the same as ours, he expected that multi-culturalism aside, there were some things to which one simply had to say no, so he begged us to recall our socks, and not mind the AC being so cold, becuase you know, where there are people, there are germs, and germs being what they are, they like feet, but not the cold, hence the ac on full blast, so despite the fact that the ac seemed to make one's feet cold, and the fact that the socks were wet, because we had been kept waiting in the rain for so many minutes, (and so sorry about the wait, you know), but still, feet being feet, and germs being germs, please don't take your socks or shoes off.

And please turn the phones down. And the headphones. Yes the man in the back listening to techno. Please turn it down. But feel free to text.

AAAAAAA!

I don't hold much truck with nostalgia, but I recommend the Greyhound for a taste of India. (excepting the multi-culti, that is).