Origins of how the Knight moves

Does anyone know the history of how the Knight aquired it's L-Shape movement? Been looking around the internet, but haven't found anything as to why it got this strage way of moving.

 Thanks!

Its chinese chess counterpart (Xianqi).  The 'horse' moves like an L shape along the grid, beginning with the long line first (meaning 2 spaces 1 direction and then 1 space perpendicular to it).  The difference is that if there's a piece occupying the first space in the initial direction, the horse cannot move.  When converted to western chess, the increase of pawns allowed for more closed games to emerge... thus requiring a more versatile piece movement.  Since Xianqi's cannons proved to be too destructive, they decided to allow the 'knight' more jumping prowess.

PS.  This isn't for certain, but as a player of both western and chinese, this is my best guess. 

An interesting theory; but I believe the sense of the historians is that Xiangqi (and Shogi, for that matter) is a variant of the Indian game Chaturanga. In Chaturanga, the "Ashva" or horse moves exactly as it does in modern chess; and in the initial setup sits behind a row of "Padàti" or pawns, just as in modern chess.

Also, keep in mind that, during the period when Chaturanga was probably developed, Buddhism was beginning to make inroads into China from its place of origin in India. Thus, for this key period ideas were flowing from India to China...perhaps some Chinese monk on a pilgrimage to India brought a concept of chess back with him?

 It could very well be as you said.  I am aware of the origins of western chess in Chaturanga, although I've never actually tried it.  I could probably peruse it through wikipedia or something, but as for bringing it back to China... may...be...  I like to consider the Chinese an inventor of many things that exist today... even though I'm not one myself.  My reason?  Well... they built the Great Wall and attempted to perfect themselves internally... as opposed to global conquest.  Had they decided the latter... I'm sure the world would be a heck of a lot different than it is today ^_^.

Whoo! Certainly, that is a fairly common view in the West, that China is all about "sweetness and light" (to borrow a phrase that was used, equally without foundation, to refer to the ancient Greeks). But I'm afraid a quick glance at history will show you that it just ain't so.

Hey, I'm a big fan of the East. I play Go and can peel a daikon like nobody's business. But if there's one lesson I've learned in life, it's that people are people, everywhere. Do a quick search for "Warring States" and you'll see how that Great Wall came to be built in the first place. Another good Wikipedia search would be "Burning of books and burying of scholars." And while I know the words "Tibetan Empire" somehow don't seem to go together, there was just such a thing for several hundred years.

Seems to me, the knight is given this movement for being an inverse-queen. Imagine a 5x5 grid, with the queen at the center--the queen is attacking all squares except those that would be under attack were a knight in the center. This also means the knight may attack the queen within that 5x5 grid without reciprocity.

 Since the queen's movement didn't come about until the 15th century, it still seems that the knight would be a natural counterpart as a piece that can attack either a rook or a bishop without reciprocity.

It just seems.... natural.

Another interesting hypothesis I've heard for how the Knight moves is that since it sits in between the Bishop and Rook, it moves a little like each.  The Knight's distinctive "L" shape can instead be thought of as moving a square like a Rook (horizontally or vertically), then moving a square diagonally like a Bishop in the same general direction.

I haven't really read the previous posts, but I'm pretty sure the knight is one of the few pieces (along with the rook) that maintains it's original movement style. When chess was invented in india, the pawns, the bishop (then "elephant"), king, and queen (minister) had less powerful movement. The reason that the chinese chess piece has the same movement as the western knight is that they both maintain the characteristic from their common ancestor in Indian chess.

 I figure that it's so cool no one ever wanted to change it. The elephant, minister, and king, however, had such limited range of movement that western players were eager to make changes.

The Bishop represents the church (diagonal), while the rook represents the state (horizontal)  The Knight is sworn to both, and therefore moves one square diagonal and one square horizontal.

The Queen and King are also both sworn to both, so they can move either way, but always leaning towards one at a particular time. While the Queen do much of either, the King can only do a little for each without destroying the balance.

maybe...

The queen could move any direction

the bishop moves diagnal

The rook move up and down

What else was there for the knight? So they made up it lol  

Interesting metaphor, but obviously completely incorrect. Read the other posts for details (I'm too lazy to explicitly describe any).

There are tons of cool books on chess history. The one I've been reading recently is The Immortal Game, by David Shenk. The first few chapters cover the original game of chess and how it evolved into what we play today. The knight has always been a "horse," and the rook (from "ruhk", Persian for "chariot") has always moved the way it still does.

If there was any "church/state" implication of the knight's movement, it happened when we westerners changed the movement of what is now the bishop (it used to be an elephant, moving exactly the same as the elephant in modern Chinese chess). Also, the queen didn't gain "her" power until the mid-to-late 15th century, so "she" wouldn't have affected any of the other pieces.

You can tell I'm kind of a history buff. 

The emperor of a long lost empire asked one of his monks to teach him the game. Turns out the monk had one long session at his local pub and started using the horse piece to jump all around the board. The monk, while able to demonstrate the knight move, was executed for knocking out and for making the emperor figure out the moves himself. Since then, by royal decree, the knight moves from one corner to the opposite of a two by three rectangle.

 So it was Bob Seager's idea

"Workin on mysteries without any clues

workin on our (knight) moves"

As Seger sang, there aren't any clues to how our knight moves. Strange, how the knight moves...