Antique wooden Rajasthan chess pieces - India - size 6

Antique wooden Rajasthan chess pieces  pieces. The chess set is very nicely carved and still in a mint condition. The set probably dates from the sixties.

India is the birth place of chess. However only ancient text give certainty about it. It is unsure how a complete ancient chess set looked like. The oldest known figural Indian chess set is a painted Rajasthan chess set from 1610. Our set looks like that, however its age is unkown.

The Rajasthan chess sets are characterized that the rooks are replaced with camels. Chariots are the original rooks, but they could not drive into the desert, so they became camels. The knights are just look a modern chess set. The bishops are elephants, although sometimes it is said the camels are the bishops. The pawns are smaller knights, and so we see the composition of the Indian army.

Chess was named Chaturanga in India from Sanskrit meaning the "four limbs" of the Indian army. It refers to the chariots (camels), elephants, cavalry (knights) and infantry (here the small knights). The largest piece is the king and the queen is the commander of the army.