Question: I had heard from someone that Chess evolved from [Chaturanga](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga) then [Shatranj](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj). Are there any pointers towards this?

I would like to know counter arguments as well, if any.

Answer: 
Those two games are indeed early forms of chess. The pieces were similar, although their moves were different, and there were some chess rules that had not yet been invented; however, chess evolved from those early games.
Chaturanga is the ancient game that gave birth to board games chess, shogi, makruk, xiangqi and janggi. I believe Chaturanga is the same game as Shatranj or got only slightly varied while moved from India to Sassanid Persia. There is another variation of chess Chaturaji which used 2 dices and 4 players (Ludo style) around 11th century or slightly earlier. The game of chess evolved from Shatranj and got most of the current rules around 15th century in Spain. It was only at late 19th century that Chess as we know of has been formalized.