Some of the History of Chess

Historically chess started out, in all likelihood, to be a game for 4 people. The earliest precursor of modern chess is a game called chaturanga. It was hypothesized that the four-handed game chaturaji was the original form of chaturanga. In Sanskrit, “chaturanga” (चतुरङ्ग) literally means “having four limbs (or parts)”. In  epic poetry the word means “army” (the four parts are elephants, chariots, horsemen, foot soldiers). The name came from a battle formation mentioned in the Indian epic Mahabharata. The game chaturanga was a battle-simulation game which rendered Indian military strategy of the time.