In a race game players do not capture or extinguish their opponents. If a player lands on the same square as an opponent, the opponent would simply have to go back to the beginning and start over.

But when the principle of capture or extinction was accepted -- where the captured opponent's piece is taken off the board -- this involves a different game concept -- a different "mind set". And it was then just a matter of time before different types of military forces, with different powers and values would be introduced.

This transition from race game to war game is important. But perhaps the most significant evolutionary step -- and the one most difficult to explain -- was the elimination of the dice as the means of determining moves. As Yuri Averbakh, a Russian chess historian, points out, this was not something that would happen "naturally" within a pure Indian context.

As he says, "To change the Indian war game into chess it was necessary to throw away the dice. Unlike the previous stages which were typical for the evolutional way of the game`s development and were not contrary to the customs of the Indians and their religious beliefs, giving up dice was a radical, a revolutionary step forward that not only changed the game itself but also its philosophy. In fact, that step meant the withdrawal from the principle of Karma - the basic principle of the Indian philosophy. Now the result depended entirely on the players' will, on their choice. They became complete masters of their destiny."

According to Averbakh this would not have happened without the influence of Greece upon northern India. This influence stretched back to Alexander the Great in the 4th century BC and developed even further within what historians call the Indo-Greek Kingdom. This was a large area including much of Afganistan and northern India which was conquered by the Greco-Bactrian kind Demetrius in 180 BC.