Elaborate and learned works have appeared treating on the
supposed origin of chess. Oriental manuscripts, Eastern fables,
and the early poets have been quoted to prove its antiquity, and
it would not be easy to name any subject upon which so much
valuable labour and antiquarian research has been bestowed, with
so little harmonious or agreed result as to opinions concerning
the first source of this wonderful game.
That chess reached Persia from India in the first half of the
Sixth century, during the reign of Chosroes, is well attested, and
concurred in by all historians from the Arabian and Persian
writers, the beautiful and accomplished Greek Princess Anna
Comnena, and the Asiatic Society's famous manuscript to Dr. Hyde
and Sir William Jones, and Sir Frederick Madden and Professor
Duncan Forbes, China, also, admits the receipt of chess from
India in the year 537, and got it about the same time as Persia.
Whatever difference of opinion may exist as to the exact spot
from whence chess first sprung, its Asiatic origin is undoubted.
The elephant, ship, or boat in the game was illustrative of its
mode of warfare. The identity of the pieces in the ancient game
with ours of the present day affords striking confirmation of it,
whilst the most competent and esteemed authorities who have
devoted the greatest attention and research to the subject deem
the evidence of language conclusive proof that the Persian
Chatrang, which we first hear of under date of about 540 A.D.,
was derived from the ancient Hindu Chaturanga, found described
in original Sanskrit records.
It is generally assumed on very fair inferences that the
Arabians were expert chess players, and also excelled in
blindfold play. The game was known among them in the days of the
prophet, 590 to 632, who finding some engaged at chess asked
them, "What images are these which you are so intent upon?"
For they seemed to have been new to him, the game having been
very lately introduced into Arabia from Persia. Nice gradations
of skill were observed among them, and thirteen degrees of odds
are enumerated among them down to the rook. To give any odds
beyond the rook, says one of the manuscripts, can apply only to
women, children, and tyros. For instance, a man to whom even
a first-class player can afford to give the odds of a rook and a
knight has no claim to be ranked among chess players. In fact
the two rooks in chess are like the two hands in the human body,
and the two knights are, as it were, the feet. Now that man has
very little to boast of on the score of manhood and valour who
tells you that he has given a sound thrashing to another man who
had only one hand and one foot. It may be observed, however,
that proportionately to the value of all the pieces in the old game,
as compared with the present, the rook and knight would be
equivalent to queen and rook with us.
The earliest Greek reference brought to notice is in a laconic
correspondence between the Emperor Nicephorus of Constantinople,
successor to the Princess Irene, and the famous Harun Ar
Rashid of Bagdad, the fifth of the Abbasside dynasty, in 802, which
mentions Pawn and Rook, implying that his predecessor in
paying tribute resembled rather the former for weakness than the
latter for strength; but it had probably been known among the
Greeks before the death of Justinian, in 565, as he was
contemporary with Chosroes, and these rulers were at peace and in
friendly terms of communication, allowing interpretations of their
respective records, which seem to have been of mutual interest.
All the writers who assert that the ancient Greeks and Romans
were unacquainted with chess have overlooked the Roman edict
of 115 B.C., in which both chess and Draughts were specially
exempted from prohibition.
Such consideration as can be found devoted to the game or
games of the Egyptians mainly relates to hypothesis and conjectures
in regard to the inscriptions recorded to have been discovered on
tombs and the temples generally, and especially on the wall of
the great palace of Medinet Abu at Egyptian Thebes, which,
according to the most approved authorities, derived from the
scrolls, relates to the time of Ramesses Meiammun the 16th, out
of the 17 monarchs of the 18th dynasty, who as is supposed,
reigned from 1559 to 1493 B.C., and constructed Medinet Abu,
and is pronounced most likely to be the monarch represented on
its walls. His title is Ramses, and he is considered to have been
the grandfather of Sesostris 1st of the 19th dynasty, whose reign is
stated as from 1473 to 1418 B.C.
Some discussion arose in chess circles in 1872 in reference to
Mr. Disraeli's mention of chess in one of his books. Chapter 16 of
"Alroy" begins--"Two stout soldiers were playing chess in a
coffee-house," and Mr. Disraeli inserts on this the following note
(80). On the walls of the palace of Amenoph II, called Medinet
Abuh, at Egyptian Thebes, the King is represented playing chess
with the Queen. This monarch reigned long before the Trojan
war.
A writer, who styled himself the author of Fossil Chess, in
criticising the above, refers to Sir Gardiner Wilkinson's work,
"A popular account of the ancient Egyptians, which declares the
game to resemble draughts, the pieces being uniform in pattern."
The same critic further remarks, "In the same work may be
found some account of the paintings in the tomb of Beni Hassan,
presumably the oldest in Egypt, dating back from the time of
Osirtasen I, twenty centuries before the Christian era, and eight
hundred years anterior to the reign of Rameses III, by whom the
temple of Medinet Abuh was commenced, and who is the Rameses
portrayed on its walls. An unaccountable error on Mr. Disraeli's
part in the same note assigns its erection to Amenoph II, who
lived 1414 B.C.
The eminent and revered writer and statesman may not have
selected the supposed best authorities for his dates, but the
sapient critic indulges in a strange admixture of misconception.
However, Egyptian chronology is not fully agreed upon, even
Manetho and Herodotus differ some 120 years as to the time of
Sesostris, and Bishop Warburton, we read, was highly indignant
with a scholar, one Nicholas Man, who argued for the identity of
Osiris and Sesostris after he (the bishop) had said they were to be
distinguished. Respecting English origin, all authorities down to
the end of the Eighteenth century agreed in ascribing the first
knowledge of chess to the time of William the Conqueror, or to
that of the return of the first Crusaders.
Perhaps, however, it reached us in the days of Charlemagne,
and may well have done so through Alcuin of York, his friend
and tutor in the reigns of Offa and of Egbert.
Al Walid, 705-715; Harun, 786-809; the great Al Mamun,
813 to 833; and Tamerlane, 1375 to 1400, are monarchs who
honoured their chess opponents when beaten. Charlemagne,
768-814, seems also to have taken defeat good-humouredly, and
Queen Elizabeth, who liked chess, philosophised upon it. Canute,
William the Conqueror, and Henry the Eighth, like the famous
Ras, of Abyssinia, whom Salt and Buckle inform us of, preferred
to win.
Chess, as it is now played, came down to us from the Fifteenth
century, when the queen of present powers was introduced, and
the extensions and improvements in the moves of the bishops and
the pawns and in castling effected, and which made the game
exactly what it now is. It has been so practised for four hundred
years without the slightest deviation or alteration, and with so
much continued satisfaction and advanced appreciation that any
change or modification suggested, however trifling, has been at
once discouraged and rejected, and additions proposed in the 17th
century (Carrera), 18th (Duke of Rutland), and 19th (Bird) were
regarded with no favour, and the objection that the game was
difficult enough already.
During the present century (especially in the second half) chess
has become vastly popular. The game is innocent and intellectual,
and affords the utmost scope for art and strategy, and for its
practice we have about five hundred clubs and institutions,
compared with the one club in St. James' Street, and Slaughter's,
in St. Martin's Lane, which existed in the last century, during the
height of Philidor's career, and two of the first half dozen. Chess
clubs started found rest on Irish soil, the first so early as the
year 1819.
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