Indian openings

As an amateur just beginning to learn chess I am always interested in the history of anything I am trying to learn about. It helps me remember it better.

In that light, I always try this when I hear about some chess opening name. Also as an Indian I was intrigued by quite a few openings/strategies with the word "Indian" in it. What I found about it helped me a bit so am sharing with you people too.

When Chess was first invented in India, the pawn always went ahead by 1 step. Due to this when the d or e pawns were moved, the bishops would get blocked. So the bishops were mostly made active by fianchettoing after moving the knight pawns (b or h file). Hence most strategies which have the word "Indian" in it have a similar characteristic. 

Hope this helps someone to remember and do correct me in case of any error in my observations.

Noice.

I would be quite interested to see if there are any games recorded in India prior to 1925. My database doesn't show any, but that doesn't mean much. Richard Reti describes the Indian game as having virtually no theory before '25 where he credits Tartakower with naming some of the major systems (QID, KID, Old Indian, and "all Indian" which I'd never heard prior).

However, my database does turn up a number of games from early European tournaments, and something surprisingly modern pops up:

What this really shows is how murky the history of chess openings ends up being. The Modern Benoni seems to be one of the more common tries from 1.d4 Nf6.......until the exact time period Reti discusses (mid 20s - mid 30s) where the various "Indians" were named, published, and popularized. It vanishes from the database but re-emerges in the 40s and 50s, called "Benoni" rather than "Indian"

What all of this means, I do not know, but it is interesting.

Chess in India didn't really receive much attention in Europe until Sir Umar Hayat Khan arrived in England with his servant Mir Sultan Khan around 1929.

This is what I read somewhere:

In Indian chess, there was no castling. But, there was a special move for king available only once. That move was, King could make a make a horse move once. So, king could jump from e1 to g2. so, in Indian chess, they would create a castle by playing g3, Bh3, Nf3, Kg2, Rf1, Kg1, Bg2. This king side fianchetto setup was the common Indian castling setup. When Indians started playing against Europeans with the modern castling rule, they still used the kingside fianchetto setup as they were comfortable with it. so, it was known as Indian systems to Europeans. 

That rule changes a lot of ideas with early checkmates. You can even allow scholar's mate setups and jump out safely!

The OP clearly never did his homework.  Before 1475, which was the year that the pawn got its new rules where it could move 2 squares the first time, people did not fianchetto their Bishop because the move was not legal!  The Bishop also had a different functionality, as did the Queen!

The strongest piece was the Rook followed by the Knight, both of which did what they do today.

While the pawns moved one square only:

The Queen, the weakest piece on the board, could only move one square diagonally at a time.  Her only function was to shield the King.  So the White Queen could only go to c2 or e2 the first time she moved.

The Bishop was also weak.  The Bishop could jump back then, but it has to move exactly 2 squares diagonally, and so each bishop could only reach 8 squares on the entire board.  For example, on move 1, Ba3 was legal for White, but 1.b3 (also legal) could not be followed up by 2.Bb2 (illegal).  It still had to go to a3 or e3 the first time it moved.  The only squares it could reach were c1, g1, a3, e3, c5, g5, a7, and e7.  Each of the other 3 bishops also had only 8 reachable squares, but they were different squares.

So by the time Indian Defenses were known, the pawn could move 2 squares.

The earliest openings known to man under the modern rules of chess were all invented in the late 1400s and early 1500s.  These would be openings like the Latvian Gambit (1495, though Greco made it popular in 1620), Philidor, and Ruy Lopez.

The various so called Indian Defenses did not exist until later.

@ThrillerFan Thanks for the info

I guess then that the fianchetto is a good way of making your Bishop active if you move the pawn one step first time like the old Indian style, hence the name? I am open to correction.