The whole tenor of such reasoning as can be found in Linde's
stupendous work, seems to rest on subtle distinctions as to the
precise accuracy of the word chess, rather than to valid
argument to the effect that no game resembling it ever existed
before the time he fixes, yet his diagrams of the Tschaturanga
which comes Vol. 1 following page 423, is exactly in accordance
with the game as explained to us by Sir William Jones and
Professor Duncan Forbes, though Linde seems to call it by the
name of Indischer Wurfelvierschach or Indische Kriegsspiel, and
there is not a single diagram of what the German writer
conceives it to be other than the real Tschaturanga (Chaturanga).
NOTE. From such an assumptive writer, one would like to ask
whether he had looked through the pages of Livy Polybius and
Tacitus, or explored the treasures in the Fihrist, or the
Eastern Works referred to by Lambe, Bland, and Forbes, as well
as Dr. Hyde and Sir William Jones.
Forbes in the body of his work roughly estimates the Chaturanga
at 3000 B.C., but at page xiii of appendix, he says: "The first
period (of chess) is altogether of fabulous antiquity, that is,
of three to five thousand years old," in fact, he seems to have
been rather loose in his estimation, and not to have
sufficiently distinguished between the supposed antiquity of the
four sacred Vedas, the Epic poems, the Ramayana and the
Mahabarata, and the Puranas. Professor Weber and Dr. Van der
Linde assume a much more recent date for the Bhavishya Purana,
from which the account of the Chaturanga is mainly taken, than
that assigned to it by Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan
Forbes.
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The 4,098 name index already referred to includes Adam ten
times and even Jesus three times, used, as it appears to me,
rather for the purpose of irony, rather than valid or useful
argument.
When Forbes gives the earliest chess position, known from
British Museum M.S.S. Linde says Adam was the first chess
player (??) to Sir F. Madden about 1,150, for the time when
Gaimur wrote quoting the incident of the Earl of Devonshire and
his daughter being found playing chess together, (Edgar's reign
958 to 975). Linde says Madden about it "Keinen Pfifferling
werth." In another place he says, "Forbes natte der Freicheut,"
"Insolence, Impudence, Audaciousness, Boldness."
It is not pleasing to English ears to be told that George Walker
is a humbug and a snob. Professor Duncan Forbes the same, and
William Lewis something worse, and to find notes of exclamation
and of queries (! !! ?), instead of argument opposed to the
statements of such writers as Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones, the
Rev. R. Lambe, Sir Frederic Madden, and Mr. Bland.
Linde's dealing with Forbes' statement concerning his
examination of the copies of the Shahnama in the British
Museum, puts a crowning touch on his arbitrary and insulting
style and furnishes an example of his notions of courtesy and
argument.
Forbes in a reply to Alpha having pledged his truth and
honour that the account of the moves and pieces in the copies of
the Shahnama were precisely as he had given them, Linde after
honour has (!!)
Forbes' statement runs as follows:
9th November, 1855, (1860, p. 56,) Zu Antworten. "My
answer to Alpha is that the M.S.S. from which I made (not
derived) my translations describing the moves of the pieces are
precisely those I mentioned, viz., No. 18188 and No. 7724
preserved in the British Museum. At the same time I briefly
consulted some nine or ten other M.S.S. of the Shahnama in the
British Museum as well as Macan's printed edition, yea more, I
consulted the so called copy of great antiquity alluded to by
Alpha before it came to the Museum. Well, in all of these, with,
I believe, only one exception, the account of the moves does
occur exactly (!) as I have given them, always excepting or
rather excluding a couplet about two camels (die namliche nicht
in die Bude des Tachenspielers passten es weiter unten) Und nun
geht es echt fesuitisch weiter, Alpha denies the existence (!)
(A hat in Gegentheil Hyde I, p. 63 Citirt) of the account of
the moves in every copy of the Shahnama. I, on the other hand
pledge my truth and honour (!!) Linde), that the account of the
moves does occur in every one of the manuscripts as well as in
Macan's printed edition (Vgl. App. p. x. lin. 6 unt.). The
misconception on the part of Alpha arose from a very simple (:)
circumstance. In Firdausi's account of the game the story
happens to be interrupted (:) in the middle of the insertion of
two other long stories, as we often see in the Arabian nights.
"In matters of this sort it is only the truth that offends.
"(Man vergleiche hierzu noch seine Schnapserklurung der
Weisheit des Buzurdschmir, p. 54.)"
Forbes also adds p. 56. And I am quite ready to point out the
passage in all of them to any gentleman and scholar who may have
the least doubt on the matter.
Historians of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries who lived before
Masudi, deemed the game worthy of notice and recommendation,
Razi and Firdausi thought so too, and Hippocrates and Galen
before them refer very favourably to its advantages, describing
it as beneficial in many ailments, and we may reasonably assume
that they at least, as well as the poets and philosophers before
them, back to the fifth century B.C. deemed the game passing in
their minds, and the invention of which they were wont to
speculate on, as one of some interest, beauty and significance
and worthy of appreciation then as it has been in succeeding
ages.
Once more, no example is given of his Kriegsspiel, Nerdspiel,
Wulfervierschach, Trictrac, or any Spiel or game implied under
the word Bretspiel, the last named being moreover a general
term for games played on a chess board, rather than a
distinctive appellation for a particular species of game or
indication of the pieces or value of forces employed in it.
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