---
title: An early form of chess called chaturanga was played in India about 1… — Ancient India: Ashoka, zero and our numbers · tree and pragmatics
description: An early form of chess called chaturanga was played in India about 1,500 years ago, with pieces like elephants, chariots and foot soldiers. A sentence of the lesson «Ancient India: Ashoka, zero and our numbers» of the history course of Mova's primary school with its dependency tree and the pragmatic
---

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# Ancient India: Ashoka, zero and our numbers, sentence 14

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An early form of chess called chaturanga was played in India about 1,500 years ago, with pieces like elephants, chariots and foot soldiers.

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**What happens:** call, play, form · **To what, where:** chess, early form, India · **Speech:** someone speaks here

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This is a sentence of the lesson «Ancient India: Ashoka, zero and our numbers» of the history course of Mova's primary school. The page gives its syntax tree — a dependency tree in the style of Universal Dependencies — and its pragmatics clause by clause: what happens, when and where, as Mova's frames read it from the tree.

## The tree {#tree}

```conllu
# sent_id = school:history:008-ancient-india-ashoka-zero-and-our-numbers.lesson:14
# text = An early form of chess called chaturanga was played in India about 1,500 years ago, with pieces like elephants, chariots and foot soldiers.
# source = school lesson (ours)
# course = history
# lesson = 008-ancient-india-ashoka-zero-and-our-numbers.lesson
# annotation = Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change
1	An	a	DET	DT	Definite=Ind|PronType=Art	3	det	_	_
2	early	early	ADJ	JJ	Degree=Pos	3	amod	_	_
3	form	form	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	9	nsubj:pass	_	_
4	of	of	ADP	IN	_	5	case	_	_
5	chess	chess	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	3	nmod	_	_
6	called	call	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	5	acl	_	_
7	chaturanga	chaturanga	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	6	xcomp	_	_
8	was	be	AUX	VBD	Mood=Ind|Number=Sing|Person=3|Tense=Past|VerbForm=Fin	9	aux:pass	_	_
9	played	play	VERB	VBN	Tense=Past|VerbForm=Part|Voice=Pass	0	root	_	_
10	in	in	ADP	IN	_	11	case	_	_
11	India	India	PROPN	NNP	Number=Sing	9	obl	_	_
12	about	about	ADV	RB	_	13	advmod	_	_
13	1,500	1,500	NUM	CD	NumForm=Digit|NumType=Card	14	nummod	_	_
14	years	year	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	15	obl:unmarked	_	_
15	ago	ago	ADV	RB	_	9	advmod	_	_
16	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	18	punct	_	_
17	with	with	ADP	IN	_	18	case	_	_
18	pieces	piece	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	9	obl	_	_
19	like	like	ADP	IN	_	20	case	_	_
20	elephants	elephant	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	18	nmod	_	_
21	,	,	PUNCT	,	_	22	punct	_	_
22	chariots	chariot	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	conj	_	_
23	and	and	CCONJ	CC	_	25	cc	_	_
24	foot	foot	NOUN	NN	Number=Sing	25	compound	_	_
25	soldiers	soldier	NOUN	NNS	Number=Plur	20	conj	_	_
26	.	.	PUNCT	.	_	9	punct	_	_
```

## Pragmatics {#pragmatics}

<!-- .note -->
No stored speech act for this sentence.

<!-- .fr -->
| # | verb | tense, mood | who | what, whom | to whom | where | when | other | roles by |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | **call** | participle |  | chess *not said here* |  |  |  |  | vn initiate\_communication-37.4.2-1 «NP V»: agent=Agent |
| 2 | **play** | past · passive |  | a early form of chess |  | India |  | with pieces like elephants and chariots and foot soldiers; ago *property* | vn play-114.2-1 «NP V NP PP.co-agent»: subject=Theme with piece=Co-Agent |
| 3 | **form** |  |  | chess |  |  |  |  | nom form «communication transitive»: of=patient |

<!-- .note -->
One row per clause the reader finds. «not said here»: a role filled from the clause above. «roles by»: a VerbNet class and frame when one fits the verb, else the reader's rules on the tree.

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**Licence: [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/)**, as the whole of Mova corpus 0.4, of which this treebank (the agreed school, `mova-school-agreed-en.conllu`) is part. The lessons were written for Mova's primary school. Sentence `school:history:008-ancient-india-ashoka-zero-and-our-numbers.lesson:14`.

**The tree:** Mova annot: Rust (en) → Haiku 5.5 (medium, Batches API) patches; gates UD 2.18; agreed by treeagree rules (Stanza, Trankit, spaCy trf): no change. **The frames** are read from the tree by Mova's frames reader (`prag`) when this page is built, the lesson read in order, so a pronoun may be resolved from an earlier sentence.

See the [release 0.4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/releases/0.4/).

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