4 players
Four-Player Chaturanga (al-Biruni)
- Game family
- all
- Origin
- India
Overview
Al-Biruni, a tenth century Persian scholar, wrote about this four-player version of Chaturanga as played in India during the tenth century.
Source rules (English)
Four players. Played with two six-sided dice. A throw of 5 is counted as 1, a throw of 6 is counted as 4.Throws move the pieces as follows: 1: Pawn or King, which move the same as in Shatranj; 2: Rook, which jumps to the second diagonal space; 3: Horse, which moves orthogonally one space and then diagonally another space, jumping over any intervening pieces; 4: Elephant, which moves orthogonally any distance. Kings may be captured. Pieces are assigned values, which award the players stakes at the end of the game: King=5, Elephant=4, Horse=3, Rook=2, Pawn=1. If a player captures all of the other Kings and is still in possession of their own King, the score awarded is 54. The player with the most points wins.