Chaturaji

Chaturaji is a historical Indian game for four players on an eight-by-eight board. Each participant controls a small army placed along one side, including a king, pawns, and pieces associated with elephants, horses, and boats.

What the evidence supports

• Sources describe four competing sides and scoring based on captured pieces.
• Several reconstructions use a die to determine which type of piece may move on a turn.
• The surviving accounts do not form one complete and universally standardized rulebook.

Because of that uncertainty, a modern version should not automatically be presented as the original game. Adaptations may remove dice, alter piece movement, or introduce their own elimination and victory conditions.

Chaturaji must also be distinguished from chaturanga, a mainly two-sided game and a more direct ancestor of chess. The older claim that chaturaji was necessarily the earlier form is not generally accepted by historians.