One of the most common ways for chess historians to trace when the board game

Board game

A board game is a game which involves counters or pieces being moved on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games may be based on pure strategy, chance or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve...

 chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 entered a country is to look at the literature of that country. Although due to the names associated with chess sometimes being used for more than one game (for instance Xiang-qi in China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

 and Tables in England), the only certain reference to chess is often several hundred years later than uncertain earlier references. The following list contains the earliest references to chess or chess-like games.

Byzantium

a. 923 - at-Tabari

Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari

Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...

's Kitab akhbar ar-rusul wal-muluk
(note the work is an Arabic work, no early Greek works are known)

China

79 BC - 8 BC - lifetime of Liu Xiang 劉 向, who wrote Shuo yuan, a compilation of early Confucian anecdotes: "Do you still feel like playing Xiangqi and dancing?" However, "Xiangqi

Xiangqi

Xiangqi is a two-player Chinese board game in the same family as Western chess, chaturanga, shogi, Indian chess and janggi. The present-day form of Xiangqi originated in China and is therefore commonly called Chinese chess in English. Xiangqi is one of the most popular board games in China...

", apart from being the name of the chess variant

Chess variant

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from or inspired by chess. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following:...

 played in China, has also been the name of two other unrelated games. (Sources: Meng Changjun Played Xiangqi and Danced with Lady Zheng, The History of Xiangqi and 7. Reference Guide to Classical Book Titles: (3) Sinological Indexes: Other Indices: Shuo yuan.)

c. 900 AD - Huan Kwai Lu ('Book of Marvels')
Describes the rules of Xiangqi.

England

c. 1180 - Alexander Neckam

Alexander Neckam

Alexander Neckam was an English scholar and teacher.-Biography:Born at St Albans, Hertfordshire, England, Neckam's mother, Hodierna, nursed the prince with her own son, who thus became Richard's foster-brother...

's De Natura Rerum
(note that it is thought that Neckam may have learnt of chess in Italy, not in England)

Germany

c. 1070 - Ruodlieb

Ruodlieb

Ruodlieb is a fragmentary romance in Latin verse written by an unknown southern German poet who flourished about 1030. He was almost certainly a monk of the Bavarian abbey of Tegernsee....

 (IV 184-188) thought to be written by a monk near Tegernsee

Tegernsee

Tegernsee is a town in the Miesbach district of Bavaria, Germany. It is located on the shore of Tegernsee lake, at an elevation of 747 m above sea level....

.

India

c. 500 AD - Subandhu's Vasavadatta

The time of the rains played its game with frogs for chessmen which yellow and green in color, as if mottled by lac, leapt up on the black field squares.

c. 625 - Banabhatta

Banabhatta

Bāṇabhaṭṭa , also known as Bāṇa, was a Sanskrit scholar and poet of India. He was the Asthana Kavi in the court of King Harshavardhana, who reigned in the years c. 606–647 CE in north India...

's Harsha Charitha

Harsha Charitha

The Harshacharita , is the biography of Indian Emperor Harsha by Banabhatta, also known as Bana, who was a Sanskrit writer of 7th century in India. He was the 'Asthana Kavi', meaning 'Court Poet', of King Harsha...

Under this king only bees quarrel in collecting dews, the only feet cut off are those in meter, only chess boards teach the positions of the Chaturanga

Chaturanga

Chaturanga is an ancient Indian game that is presumed to be the common ancestor of the games of chess, shogi, and makruk, and related to xiangqi and janggi.Chaturanga developed in Gupta India around the 6th century...

.

c. 1030 - Al-Biruni

Al-Biruni

Abū al-Rayḥān Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-BīrūnīArabic spelling. . The intermediate form Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī is often used in academic literature...

's India describes the game of Chaturaji

Chaturaji

Chaturaji is a four player chess-like game. It was first described in detail circa 1030 by Biruni in his India book. Originally, this was a game of chance: the pieces to be moved were decided by rolling two dice...

.

1148 - Kalhana's Rajatarangini (translated by MA Stein, 1900)

The King, though he had taken two kings (Lothana and Vigraharaja) was helpless and perplexed about the attack on the remaining one, just as a player of chess (who has taken two Kings and is perplexed about taking a third).

Italy

c. 1061 or 1062 - Letter from Petrus Damiani (Cardinal Bishop of Ostia) to the Pope-elect Alexander II

Pope Alexander II

Pope Alexander II , born Anselmo da Baggio, was Pope from 1061 to 1073.He was born in Milan. As bishop of Lucca he had been an energetic coadjutor with Hildebrand of Sovana in endeavouring to suppress simony, and to enforce the celibacy of the clergy...

 and the Archdeacon Hildebrand

Pope Gregory VII

Pope St. Gregory VII , born Hildebrand of Sovana , was Pope from April 22, 1073, until his death. One of the great reforming popes, he is perhaps best known for the part he played in the Investiture Controversy, his dispute with Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor affirming the primacy of the papal...

. This letter is dated by the reference to Alexander as "Pope-elect".

Persia

c. 600 - Karnamak-i-Artakhshatr-i-Papakan

Artakhshir did this, and by God's help he became doughtier and more skilled than them all in ball-play, in horsemanship, in chess, in hunting and in all other accomplishments.

(It is fairly certain chess is meant due to the word Chatrang

Shatranj

Shatranj is an old form of chess, which came to the Western world from India. Modern chess has gradually developed from this game.-Etymology and origins:...

 being used).

Spain

c. 1009 - castrensian will of Ermengaud I (Count of Urgel)

I order you, my executors, to give . . . these my chessmen to the convent of St. Giles, for the work of the church.

Sumatra

c. 1620 - Sejarah Malayu

Now this Tan Bahra was a very skillful chessplayer, and one that was unequalled at the game in that age, and he played at chess with the men of Malacca.

Switzerland

c. 997 - Versus de scachis

Versus de scachis

Versus de scachis is a Medieval Latin poem about chess. It is found on two manuscripts from Einsiedeln: MS Einsidlensis 365 and MS Einsidlensis 309. A copy of the poem in manuscript 319 at Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln has been given the estimated date of 997 CE...

 in manuscript 319 at Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln

Einsiedeln Abbey

Einsiedeln Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in the town of Einsiedeln in the Canton of Schwyz, Switzerland. The abbey is dedicated to Our Lady of the Hermits, the title being derived from the circumstances of its foundation, from which the name Einsiedeln is also said to have originated...

.