In which country did chess originate?
It descends from chaturanga, played by about the 6th century CE.
The ancestor of chess is a game called chaturanga, played in India by around the sixth century CE under the Gupta empire. The Sanskrit name means the four limbs of an army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. These became the pawns, knights, bishops and rooks, and the king and his adviser completed the set. Players moved pieces on an 8 by 8 board and won by capturing the king.
From India the game moved west. Persian sources adapted it as chatrang, and after the Arab conquests of the seventh century it became shatranj, with the Persian phrase shah mat, roughly meaning the king is helpless or defeated, giving us the word checkmate. Merchants and travelers carried it through Central Asia, and it entered Europe by way of Spain and southern Italy around the tenth century.
The modern game took shape in Europe in the late fifteenth century, when the queen and bishop gained their long-range powers, producing a faster game than shatranj. Other theories place the beginnings in China, where the related game xiangqi is played, but the Indian origin is the one supported by most surviving texts and by the shape of the pieces. Exact dates and details of the earliest stages remain uncertain, since the earliest written and archaeological evidence is sparse.