The world's favourite strategy game began in India as 'chaturaṅga.'
Chaturaṅga (c. 6th century CE) modelled the four divisions of an army — infantry, cavalry, elephants, chariots — on a 64-square board; it spread to Persia (shatranj) and the world.
— Chaturaṅga (c. 6th century CE, Gupta India)
Modern chess — and a testbed for AI and game theory.
A genuine, defensible parallel.
Chess's lineage is well traced: chaturaṅga in Gupta-era India, carried to Sasanian Persia as shatranj, then into the Arab world and Europe, where the moves evolved into modern chess. The Indian origin of the game (and the army-division theme behind the pieces) is the scholarly consensus.
The small honest notes: exact origins are murky and some details are legendary (the famous 'wheat on a chessboard' doubling tale is a later story illustrating exponential growth), and the game changed a lot en route. But 'chess began in India' is solid — and rather wonderful, given chess later became a central arena for artificial intelligence.