A new narrative reaching back to the origins of chess

Praful Zaveri, founder of the Indian Chess School and a lifelong chess educator who has trained more than 5,000 students, is now turning his attention to much deeper layers of the game. Begun in 2023, Zaveri’s Shat Shat Vande Chess is not merely a work recounting the history of chess; it is also a large-scale project tracing the game’s cultural, historical, and philosophical journey. The author approaches chess not simply as an intellectual battle played on 64 squares, but as a system of symbols that has left its mark on humanity’s collective memory.

The approach highlighted in the ChessBase report seeks to move beyond academic debates about the origin of chess and instead understand the game’s journey across civilizations. According to Zaveri, as history is traced further back, documents grow faint, empires collapse, and written records become scarce; yet one thing continues to survive: memory. In particular, within the ancient Bharat tradition, that memory is carried less through archives than through epics, myths, and symbols. Rather than fixing the beginning of chess to a single chronological point of origin, this perspective aims to evaluate it as the product of a civilizational way of thinking.

Mythology, strategy, and the symbolic language of chess

One of the most striking parts of the text is the symbolic framework built around the Lanka narrative and the figure of Mandodari. Here, the emphasis falls not on the definitive claims of modern historiography, but on the representation of strategic thought in the ancient world. The portrayal of Mandodari as a character embodying prudence, foresight, and restraint in the shadow of war recalls core elements we also see in chess: positional evaluation, long-term planning, and the balance between power and reason. For this reason, Zaveri’s approach goes beyond the movement of the pieces and offers a narrative that examines the mode of thought behind the game.

Today, repertoire work, opening preparation, memorization of variations, and engine-assisted analysis dominate the chess world, yet projects like this bring the game’s cultural roots back into focus. No matter how far opening theory develops, one of the elements that gives chess its lasting power is its creation of a universal language of strategy. Its historical spread from the Indian subcontinent to the Persian world, and from there to the Arab world and Europe, shows that chess is not merely a game, but a shared form of thought circulating among civilizations. Shat Shat Vande Chess aims to make precisely that larger picture visible.

The promotional film and anthem accompanying Zaveri’s project also carry the work beyond the bounds of a conventional book project. Crafted in a cinematic language, this narrative depicts chess’s long journey from its ancient roots in Bharat, through mythology, history, and different civilizations, into the modern world. From the perspective of chess journalism, the initiative is a reminder that the game should be examined not only in tournament halls, rating lists, and grandmaster performances, but also in the realms of memory, identity, and cultural heritage. In short, while retelling chess’s past, this work also seems poised to shape how it will be remembered in the future.