Chess, shampoo, and the number zero are all widely traced to ancient India, though each has a nuanced history of development and diffusion across regions and centuries.
Chess
- Most historians trace chess to northern India around the 6th century CE, where its precursor chaturanga was played on an 8×8 board and later spread to Persia and beyond.
- Chaturanga featured pieces representing infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariots, and is considered the direct ancestor of later Persian shatranj and modern chess rules in Europe.
Shampoo
- Hair-cleansing practices now called “shampoo” originated in the Indian subcontinent, with early shampoos made from plant-based surfactants like soapnut (Sapindus) used since the Indus Valley era.
- The English word “shampoo” derives from Hindi “chā̃po,” tied to massage and hair-washing customs carried to Europe by traders in the 18th century before commercial shampoos evolved later.
The number zero
- The concept and use of zero as both a placeholder and a number with arithmetic properties were developed in ancient India; Brahmagupta formalized rules involving zero in the 7th century CE, building on earlier place-value notation.
- While other cultures used placeholder symbols, India’s formalization of zero as a number enabled advances in arithmetic and algebra that later spread through the Islamic world to Europe.
