In "The Story Of Chess", the Ensemble gives us a history lesson about the origins of chess:
Not much is known about the early days of Chess beyond a vague report that 1500 years ago, two princes fought each other, though brothers, for a Hindu throne. Their mother cried, for no one really likes their offspring fighting to the death. She begged them, "Stop the slaughter!" with her every breath, but sure enough, one brother died.
None of this rhymes, of course, so it's more like the Ensemble is singing recitative here. And it turns out this is probably not a literal story at all; Wikipedia refers to it as, "an apocryphal account of the origins of the game of Chess".
This story is found in the "Shahnameh", also known as the "Shahnama", literally translated as "The Book Of Kings", which is:
a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 distichs or couplets (two-line verses),[2] the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems, and the longest epic poem created by a single author.[3][4][5] It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century.
The story is about Talhand and Gav, two half-brothers who vie for the throne of Hind (modern day India). They met in battle three times. Gav won the first two battles decisively. At the end of the third battle, Talhand was completely surrounded and was in a position of no escape. Gav did not kill his brother, but Talhand died on his war elephant, exhausted by the battle.
The position of "no escape" was expressed by the Persian word "shah mat", which means "check mate".
Back to the musical:
Sad beyond belief, she told her winning son, "You have caused such grief, I can't forgive this evil thing you've done". He tried to explain how things had really been, but he tried in vain. No words of his could mollify the Queen. And so he asked the wisest men he knew to lessen her distress. They told him he'd be pretty certain to impress by using model soldiers on a checkered board to show it was his brother's fault. They thus invented Chess.
This part rhymes a little bit, and is less like a pure recitative than the first part. It's not exactly accurate to say that Talhand's death was his fault; Gav's army held superior positions and Talhand's army was wiped out. It's possible Talhand was to blame for them fighting a third battle at all; you'd think after losing two times, Talhand would have know that he was beaten.
Chess historians believe that the India game of "Chaturanga" is the common ancestor of games such as "Xiangqi" (China), "Janggi" (Korea), "Shogi" (Japan), "Sittuyin" (Burma), "Makruk" (Thailand), "Ouk Chatrang" (Cambodia), and "Shatranj" (Persia), which in turn was the form of Chess brought to medieval Europe. Chaturanga flourished in India by the 6th century, and is the earliest known game to have two essential features found in all later chess variations: 1) Different pieces have different powers (which differentiates it from Checkers and Go); 2) Victory depends on one piece: The King.
The pieces in Chaturanga looked like this:
  | Raja (King) |
  | Mantri (Minister) or Senāpati (General) (Ferz; early form of Queen) |
  | Ratha or Śakata (Chariot; Rook) |
  | Gaja or Hastin (Elephant; later called Alfil; early form of Bishop) |
  | Aśva (Horse; Knight) |
  | Padàti, Bhata or Sainika (foot-soldier or infantry; pawn) |
The most powerful piece was the Chariot; it moved the way a Chess Rook moves. All other pieces had limits on the number of squares they could move.
"Chataranga" is a word that means, "having four limbs or parts", and in epic poetry often means "army". The name originally refers to a battle formation that has four separate components: Elephantry, Chariotry, Cavalry, and Infantry. The "Mahabharata" describes a battle formation referred to as a "Akshauhini", which is a mixed formation of the four unit types, and is very much like the opening formation of a chess game.
Shatranj is the predecessor to Chess, and it differed from Chataranga in the following ways:
- In Chaturanga, the King could be captured and this ended the game. Shatranj introduced the idea of warning the King was under attack by announcing "check". This was done to avoid accidental endings to games.
- In Shatranj, a King could not be moved into check or left in check. As a result, the King could not be captured, and checkmate was the only decisive way to end a game.
- The appearance of the pieces changed from animals to abstract shapes due to a Muslim ban on lifelike pieces, as they were said to have been too like idols. (Islam forbids depiction of animals and humans in art.)
In the song is the phrase, "Soon spread to Persia", when the reality appears to be that Chess as we know it originated in Persia, but was heavily influenced by a game from India.
This is all fascinating stuff, and it's very interesting to see how a single board game invented in India could have that much influence across the world, thousands of years later ... and how this apocrophal story ended up in a musical.
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