'Libro de los Juegos', or the ‘Book of Games’, commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile in 1283, is one of the most important documents for researching the history of board games. What makes it more interesting to us is its reference to a story from India, which I have paraphrased from the translation.
As it is told in the ancient histories of India, there was a king who greatly loved his wise men and had them always with him, and he often made them reason over the nature of things. The three of them had different opinions. One said that brains were worth more than luck because he who lived by his brain did things in an orderly fashion, and even if he lost, he was not to blame in this because he did what suited him. The other said that luck was worth more than brains because if his fortune was to lose or to win, no matter how much brains he might have, he could not avoid it. The third one said that best was he who could live drawing upon the one and the other because this was prudence. The more brains he had, the more care he could take to do things as completely as he could. The more he depended upon luck, the greater would be his risk because it was not a certain thing. The truest prudence was to take from the brain that which man understood was most to his advantage and protect himself from luck as much as he could.
After they had spoken their reasons very zealously, the king ordered that each one bring an example to prove what they had said. They went away and consulted their books, each according to their opinion. When the time arrived, they came before the king with their examples. The one whose opinion was brains brought chess with its pieces. The second, whose opinion was fortune, brought dice showing that brains mattered nothing without luck, because it seemed through luck that men came to their advantage or their harm. The third who said that it was best to draw from both, brought the table board with its pieces counted and placed orderly in their spaces, and with its dice which move them to play (Tables is the name for backgammon, a dice game not unlike our Chaupad or Dhayakattam). He believed that he who knew how to play well, because of his prudence, would be able to play his pieces in such a manner as to avoid the harm that may come to him through the roll of the dice.
The book then goes on to describe many popular games of the time, many of which are similar to games played in India. While Spain wasn’t directly involved in Indian Ocean trade at the time, goods and ideas from India — like spices, textiles, and astronomical knowledge — filtered into Europe through Arab, Persian, and Central Asian intermediaries. Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain) was a hub of learning where scholars translated Arabic texts into Latin. Many of these Arabic works were themselves believed to be translations of Indian scientific, mathematical, and philosophical texts. For example, Indian numerals and the concept of zero travelled from India to the Arab world and then to Europe via Spain, revolutionising mathematics.
Alfonso was likely influenced by his contact with scholars in the Arab world, and perhaps, that explains the connection. Different cultures. Similar games.