Différence between Chaturanga and Shatranj

Hello,

I'm interrested in the history of chess and I was looking for the oldest known variants. Apparently the oldest one is Chaturanga which became Shatranj when it was adopted by the arabs and later Chess. But I have a hard time figuring out the difference between Chaturanga and Shatranj. It seems that the rules are the same (same moves but different names for the pieces). Does someone has an answer ?

The games were the same. Even the name remained unchanged. The word shatranj has no independet meaning in Arabic, it's just a phonetic adaption of the Sanskrit chaturanga (the fourpartite).

Back then, there was no official body to codify the rules and there were certainly variants at various places and at various times. We also don't know how the game was played in India; it's only reasonable to assume that the rules were the same.

As an example, some Arab manuscripts seem to indicate a double move of the rook and centre pawns to allow a quicker development of the elephants. But we don't know how widespread such variants were.

Well, I wasn't around at the time, but on chessvariants.org it says that Chaturanga had different promotion rules: In Shatranj promotion is always to Ferz, but in Chaturanga you promote to the piece type that started on the promotion square. (So you could never promote on e1/d8, where the King started.)

In addition the King is said to also have a Knight jump in Chaturanga. (This right is lost when he gets checked or makes the Knight move.)

Ok thank you guys for your answers.Well of course it seems obvious that it's difficult to know the exact rules due to the period at which these games were played.

HGMuller. Ok I see. Well I briefly take a look at chessvariants.org but some sites have different interpretations. So I wanted to have the opinions of people here. I'm sure that I'm not the only one who like old dusty antiques ^^

Are you guys aware of the existence of a/some great book(s) dedicated to the history of chess and the development of the different variants that also includes rules ?

I know such books exist, but I never read one myself. I am pretty heavily into Japanese Chess variants, and was surprised to find that pieces like Bishop and Queen were already common there in the early 14th century, in Chu Shogi. (The Bishop was already known in the 12th century in Heian Dai Shogi).

Well that's very interesting. Are you sure bishop and queen are really the name of the piece and not a "western interpretation/translation" of a specific japanese term.

It's has nothing to do with it but reminds me of the story of the lost legion of Crassus. The roman legionnaires that were captures by the parthes and handed up in China.

Oh, sure, they are only the western names used to describe how the pieces moved. The literal translation of the kanji written on the pieces would be 'angle mover' and 'free king'. The name 'angle mover' is still used in modern Shogi, on the piece that English Shogi books refer to as 'Bishop'.

I received my copy of Murray's "A History of Chess" the other day from amazon. The text itself is 900 pages. My interest is in shatranj and he has a huge section on it. Modern chess isn't given a treatment until about page 750. 

Thanks for the info. This seems to be an old book (I'm not saying that's a bad thing ^^)

Do those exist anymore?

Unfortunately, no one actually wants to explore more on real chess.. Shatranj as usual was of 100 blocks. Many yrs back i sent email to chess.com from liquidpaisa.com domain and then yahoo.com... They just did not bother to dig further..

found some Shatranj puzzles in a book. .Solved all. Same rule as chess except: 

- Pawn moves one square at a time ( captures same as in chess)

-Firz (queen in chess) moves one square diagonally (d1-e2)

-Al-phil ( Bishop in chess) moves 2 squares diagonally and it can jumps over pieces like a knight 

- There is no castling

Everything else is same as in chess.