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Here is something I found posted in a Gnostic interpretation of chess and its history. The web source is http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/calvognosis2.html . I have, as usual, corrected punctuation, spelling, capitalization, spacing, and such superficial matters: <p>The German historian Johannes Kohtz (1843-1918) supposed that in the protochess the Rook was also a jumping figure, with a mobility limited to a third square. So the squares accessible to a Rook in h1 would be f1 and h3, and later in the game f3, d3, d1, b1, b3, b5, d5, f5, h5, h7, f7, d7 and b7. His theory makes a lot of sense (in spite of Murray's rejection after long arguments by post), because the three jumping pieces (Alfil, Knight, and Rook) represent a diagonal, hook-curved and rectilinear movement of the same range. It also expresses a perfect ranking order: The King and the Knight are the only pieces which can move to any of the 64 squares. The Firzan has half of the board, 32. The Rook half of that, 16 squares. And the Alfil, half of that, 8. <p>The striking fact, unnoticed by Kohtz in his last work of 1917, is that a jumping Rook produces also the same magic sum of 260 in the Safadi or in the Mercury board. For instance: 57-6-43-24-40-27-54-9=260. The same happens in the previous and more widely known magic square of Mercury. The four corners of each quadrant of 4x4 in the magic board sum half of the constant, 130. This reinforcement of Kohtz's theory seems to me decisive. <p>The marvellous Safadi board has, in all probability, predetermined the different movements and classes of pieces in protochess. However, once the Arabs acquired the game from the Persians, the Rook evolved into a long range piece, becoming the most powerful element of the chess army. This evolution can be explained logically as a necessity once the idea of checkmate has appeared, again according to Kohtz. In the first legend of Firdawsi, the game re-discovered by Buzurdjmir was as follows: 'The sage has invented a battlefield, in the midst (of which) the king takes up his station. To left and right of him the army is disposed, the foot-soldiers occupying the rank in front. At the king's side stands his sagacious counsellor advising him on the strategy to be carried out during the battle. In two directions the elephants are posted with their faces turned towards where the conflict is. Beyond them are stationed the war horses, on which are mounted two resourceful riders, and fighting alongside them on either hand to left and right are the turrets ready for the fray.' <p> Note from John Ayer: 'turrets' is a definite mistranslation and anachronism. <p> By the number of pieces it is easy to know that in this game the board was of 8x8 squares, though nothing is said about the rules of movement or the aim of the game. This gap is filled in the second Firdawsian chess legend about two half brothers Gau and Talhend (two typical Persian names), the latter being killed by the former during a civil war. To explain to the queen of 'Hend' who was the mother of both how her son came to die, the game of chess, which represented a battle, was invented. But it is a different game. The board is 10x10 and had perhaps a dividing line in the middle, as in today's Chinese chess, because the text says: 'This (the game) represents a trench and a battle field onto which armies had been marched. A hundred squares were marked out on the board for the manoeuvring of the troops and the kings' which is also a board of 10x10 cases, where is impossible to build a 'perfect Caissan magic square' like Safadi's. This time the movement of the pieces is described. There are three pieces jumping to a third square in diagonal, rectilinear or hook-curved direction. But there is a fourth piece which was the most powerful of all: 'None could oppose it, but it attacked everywhere in the field'. <p>This piece must be the long-ranging Rook, the most powerful figure of the set. Again according to Kohtz's theory, instead of the previous jumping Rook, the long-ranging Rook was adopted as well in the 8x8 board as a necessity once a checkmate becomes the main goal of the game. Check and check-mate have already appeared, as the beautiful text explains: <p>'If a player saw the king during the struggle he called out aloud, 'King, beware!' and the king then left his square, continuing to move until he was hemmed in. This occurred when every path was closed to the king by castle, horse, counsellor or the rest of the army. The king, gazing about in all directions, saw the army encircling him, water and trenches blocking his path and troops to left and right, before and behind. Exhausted by toil and thirst, the king is rendered helpless; that is the decree whch he receives from the revolving sky.' <p>Where did the new idea came from? Since the moment when the fate of the king decides the victory in the game, the value of this piece increases enormously because of its 'divinization' and inviolability. In a way, chess has become a monotheistic game. The cultural atmosphere in ancient Persia fits well with the implicit idea. In contrast to Greece, were a king was only 'primus inter pares', basically equal in his human nature to his subordinates, a Persian 'Shahanshah' was worshiped almost as a God. 'The ruler possessed a special quality in the eyes of his subjects, which was called 'farn' or 'farr' in New Persian, 'farrah' in Middle Persian, 'xvarana' in Avestan. Originally meaning 'life force', 'activity' or 'splendour', it came to mean 'victory', 'fortune' and specially the royal fortune' (R. Frye.op.cit. p.8) <p>There is a well known story in the biographies of Alexander the Great. At his beginning, he was a 'normal' Greek leader, but after conquering the Persian throne he warmed to the way Persian courtiers treated him as a God. He intended to receive the same 'proskinesis' from his countrymen, but Callisthenes refused to genuflect and was murdered in revenge by Alexander's hand. The 'agon' in chess and its voluntaristic message points basically to a Hellenistic background. But 'Shah-mat' in chess, an expression which has kept its Persian root in all languages during the chess evolution, may have its origin in the influences irradiating from Persian cultural ground. <p> End of quotation. The description of the king perishing of exhaustion and thirst seems to me to be strongly influenced by the miserable fate of the Imam Husayn at Karbila. Note that, while 'Shah mat' does indeed mean 'The king is dead,' the king cannot actually be killed, and the Persian phrase is a corruption of 'Shah-i-mandaz,' 'The king is helpless.' <p>Now, assuming this conjecture, we have a pre-chess on an eight-square board with king and ferz in the central files, flanked by alfil, knight, and dabbabah, with single-step pawns on the second rank. The conjecture assumes that check and checkmate had not appeared, so perhaps the battle was to the annihilation of one side. Does anyone consider this a reasonable conjecture? I will welcome any actual discussion, whether favorable or otherwise to the hypothesis. <p>According to Murray's _History of Chess_, one early attempt to improve chaturanga, while still in India, was to change the alfil to a dabbabah.