Who started the game of chess

Many countries claim to have invented the chess game in some incipient form. The most commonly held view is that chess originated in India. As a matter of fact, the Arabic, Persian, Greek and Spanish words for chess, are all derived from the Sanskrit Chaturanga. The present version of chess played throughout the world is ultimately based on a version of Chaturanga that was played in India around the 6th century CE. It is also believed that the Persians created a more modern version of the game after the Indians, called Shatranj. Another theory exists that chess arose from the similar game of Xiangqi (Chinese chess), or at least a predecessor, thereof, existing in China since the 2nd century BC. Scholars who have favored this theory include Joseph Needham and David H. Li. Chess eventually spread westward to Europe and eastward as far as Japan, spawning variants as it went. One theory suggests that it migrated from India to Persia, where its terminology was translated into Persian and it name changed to chatrang. The entrance of chess into Europe, notably, is marked by a massive improvement in the powers of the queen. The oldest known texts describing chess seem to indicate a bi-directional spread from the Persian empire. From Persia it entered the Islamic world, where the names of its pieces largely remained in their Persian forms in early Islamic times. Its name became shatranj, which continued in Spanish as ajedrez and in Greek as zatrikion, but in most of Europe was replaced by versions of the Persian word shāh = "king". There is a theory that this name replacement happened because, before the game of chess came to Europe, merchants coming to Europe brought ornamental chess kings as curiosities and with them their name shāh, which Europeans mispronounced in various ways. * Checkmate: This is the English rendition of shāh māt, which is Persian for "the king is finished". * Rook: From the Persian rukh, which means "chariot", but also means "cheek" (part of the face). The piece resembles a siege tower. It is also believed that it was named after the mythical Persian bird of great power called the roc. In India, the piece is more popularly called haathi, which means "elephant". * Bishop. From the Persian pīl means "the elephant", but in Europe and the western part of the Islamic world people knew little or nothing about elephants, and the name of the chessman entered Western Europe as Latin alfinus and similar, a word with no other meaning (in Spanish, for example, it evolved to the name "alfil"). This word "alfil" is actually the Arabic for "elephant", where "al" means "the" and fil means "elephant". The Spanish word would most certainly have been taken from the Islamic provinces of Spain. The English name "bishop" is a rename inspired by the conventional shape of the piece which resembles the tusk of an elephant and the mitre of a bishop. * Queen. Persian farzīn = "vizier" became Arabic firzān, which entered western European languages as forms such as alfferza, fers, etc but was later replaced by "queen". The game spread throughout the Islamic world after the Muslim conquest of Persia. Chess eventually reached Russia via Mongolia, where it was played at the beginning of the 7th century. It was introduced into Spain by the Moors in the 10th century, and described in a famous 13th century manuscript covering chess, backgammon, and dice named the Libro de los juegos. Chess also found its way across Siberia into Alaska.