Made in India: How Chaturanga became Chess
Words by Rosa Kumar
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Made in India: How Chaturanga became Chess
Chess is one of the richest examples of globalization we can find; its modern form is a consequence of centuries of trade, travel, cross-culture interaction, and a universal love of competition and strategy. The Queen’s Gambit (and Covid-era loneliness) may have thrust chess into the spotlight, but since its inception chess has consumed passionate players worldwide. What does India have to do with it? To discover that, we will have to travel to India’s golden age of the 6th century CE, during the reign of the Gupta Empire.
If you’ve been personally victimized by Chess.com’s iconic green and yellow squares, have watched in real time as your requests and reminders fell onto deaf ears as your partner, gripping his phone with deep concentration, no longer existed on the same plane of existence as you, know that I am with you.
Jokes aside, there can be worse hobbies to have. Chess helps improve your memory, your focus, and exercises your brain. For years I tried to ‘get into’ chess, especially after my Papa bought me a mini hand-made traveller’s chess set from a street vendor in India. To this day, I know only how to play enough to lose efficiently. But, being a supportive girlfriend, on a rainy April day I drove my partner to a cul-de-sac in Richmond Hill, Ontario. We pulled in front of a suburban house where a tall man was standing on his covered porch, beautifully hand-crafted boards and pieces displayed on a fold-out table in front of him. For my partner’s birthday, he would finally own his first chessboard, to show his level 1100 prowess in person to a fellowship of other chess-addicted friends.
Zoning out while they talked about scores, tournaments, and YouTube chess commentators, I held pieces from different sets, admiring the craftsmanship. One specific set caught my eyes. The queen was pleasantly heavy in my hands, she had substance, and the carving was incredibly detailed, but not in a way that was delicate and breakable. They looked at home on the Spanish mahogany and maple board he had chosen.
“These were carved in Rajasthan,” the chess purveyor said, digging around a box to show my partner that the set did indeed come with two queens, “Once ivory trading became globally banned in 1989, ivory artisans in Rajasthan pivoted to wood and carving chess pieces, which required a similar amount of detail and precision. This is North Indian sheesham wood.”
Rajasthan. India. I was immediately intrigued. Like any modern woman, I went on an internet odyssey to find out why, exactly, the most beautiful chess pieces in an international chess master’s collection were coming out of my ancestral lands. What connection did India possibly have with chess?
