The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
maximum move. (5) Both throws are used, and the players may, if the dice both give intelligible moves, play two moves simultaneously. This also satisfies the Rook’s move. The solution appears to me to rest between (4) and (5), and the latter of these is the less complicated in working.
The analogy of Pachīsī may help to solve some points. In this game a player has considerable liberty with regard to his use of his throws. In the first place he continues to throw and play until he throws one of the three lowest throws of the eight possible. There is accordingly nothing un-Indian about the simultaneous play of two or more moves, and the orderly succession of alternate moves is not an absolute necessity. In the second place, a player may decline to take his throw when it is his turn, or even if he throw, he may decline to play the throw if he would spoil his position by so doing.
Of previous writers, only Forbes and Falkener have attempted to lay down rules for the game, though v.d. Linde experimented with the game, and published the results in the Schachzeitung (1874, 33). Forbes, who only contemplated the use of the single die, suggested that a player forfeited his move when the die gave an unintelligible throw, and cited the analogy of English backgammon. This receives some support from the rules of the Arabic dice oblong chess (see Ch. XVI). Falkener considered that the die was only used to determine the first move, and was discarded afterwards, because ‘the game is too ingenious to be subject to a chance which would render inoperative the most brilliant conceptions, and by which the worst player, having luck on his side, might defeat the most skilful’. And he surmounted the difficulty of an unintelligible throw occurring at the start, e.g. a 4, by supposing that there are only four openings, and that ‘the throws of the die on starting meant one of the principal pieces or its pawn, and this seems supported by the Rajah and its Pawn being mentioned together for the first throw, verse 5 (of the poem).’ But an examination of the ṣloka, upon which he relies, does not support his interpretation. The throw of 5 moves a King or a—not his—Pawn. There are also not four, but nine possible opening moves (one of each Pawn, one of the B, two of the Kt, and two of the K), and his argument about the ingenious nature of the game ignores the root-idea of dice-games. It is precisely the possibility that he deprecates that is the fascination in the use of the dice.
I have satisfied myself by trial that a playable game is possible, using two dice throughout, on the basis of allowing either both throws to be used, or only one, at choice. But these are not the only ways of constructing playable games from the material supplied by al-Bērūnī and the Bengali poem.
CHAPTER IV
CHESS IN INDIA. III
The modern games.—Three main varieties of chess played.—Summary of the nomenclatures.—The crosswise arrangement of the Kings.—Hindustani chess.—Parsi chess.—Standard of play.—Specimen games.—Native chessmen.—The problem.
Chess is played at the present time over the whole of India and the adjacent islands. There is, however, no absolute uniformity of rule as in Europe, and native writers tell of three main types of play as existing in the peninsula, to which they give the names of the Hindustani, the Parsi, and the Rūmī chess. Of these the first two appear to be the modern descendants of the original Indian chess, while the third may be traced back to the Muslim game which has been introduced by the Muslim conquerors of Northern India. The rules of this Rūmī chess have been fixed for the last hundred years, and the game seems able to resist the influence of the European moves and rules of play. Neither the Hindustani (North Indian) nor the Parsi (South Indian) game exhibits the same fixity of rule; it is not always easy to classify the type of game described by European observers; both games are very susceptible to the influence of the European chess, and there are also everywhere local peculiarities of rule. The characteristic feature of both games consists in the rules of Pawn promotion. Native observers say that these games are gradually losing ground, and there can be little doubt that in the long run both forms will be replaced by the European chess.
Although it is convenient to collect together in the present chapter the nomenclature of all types of Indian chess, I only propose to deal here with the Hindustani and Parsi games—those which I regard as the modern representatives of the older Indian chess. The Rūmī game will be described later in Ch. XVII, with the other modern forms of the Muslim chess with which it is intimately connected.
Naturally in a land that contains so many different languages as India, the names of the chessmen vary from place to place with language or dialect. The game itself is called shiṭranj (shaṭranj) in the Muhammadan regions: in the Deccan and Southern India the name, as already stated, is a compound of the word buddhi, intellect. The information that I have been able to collect as to the names of the chessmen is exhibited in the following table. For purposes of comparison I include the earlier nomenclature from the passages quoted in the two preceding chapters.
The initial arrangement of the men in the Hindustani and Parsi games is exhibited in the accompanying figure. The only difference between this arrangement and the European one consists in the relative positions of the Kings and Ministers (Counsellors, Viziers—our Queens). In the European game both Kings stand on the same file and the white Queen stands on her King’s left and the black Queen on her King’s right. In the Indian games each Minister stands on the King’s left, and as a result each Minister faces his opponent’s King.16 This method of arranging the pieces, conveniently termed crosswise, is now the rule in all games of chess upon the board of 64 squares that are played in Southern Asia, with the exceptions of Burmese and Rūmī chess. In Turkish chess, Egyptian chess, and these Indian games the Minister stands on the King’s left: in Persian chess and the Malay games, on the King’s right. This diversity of plan makes impossible the explanation favoured sometimes that the crosswise arrangement had its origin in considerations of court etiquette which forbad the Minister to stand on a particular side of his sovereign. The most probable explanation is that it is a result of the unchequered nature of the Oriental chessboard, which prevented the growth of conventions which could be defined by reference to the colour of particular squares, as is the case in modern European chess. In their fullest form granting the right of beginning the game to the player of a particular colour, these conventions are quite recent in origin, and are merely matters of convenience to secure uniformity and even conditions of play; they are not essential to chess, and have no real importance for the theory of the game. If the need were felt for similar conventions for the arrangement of the chessmen upon an unchequered board, it is obvious that the arrangement can only be defined in terms of the relative positions of King and Minister, and the crosswise arrangement gives no real or imagined advantage to either side. But the change seems to have been made without remark, and, so far as the evidence goes, it appears to be of quite recent introduction. It was not the rule in Nīlakaṇṭ·ha’s account of the Indian chess, and the Persian MS. Y,17 copied in Delhi in 1612, still shows the European opposite arrangement. The earliest reference that I know to the crosswise arrangement in any country is contained in the passage from Hamilton’s Egyptiaca (London, 1809) which is quoted later (p. 357).
The Modern Indian Chess. C = Camel; E = Elephant.
In Hindustani chess the ordinary moves of the pieces are identical with those of the European pieces occupying the equivalent initial positions. The Rook (elephant, chariot, boat) moves as our Rook, the Horse as our Knight, the Elephant (camel) as our Bishop, and the Vizier (minister) as our Queen. The King (raja, padshah) moves to any of the squares contiguous to the one he is occupying, and in addition he is permitted once in the game, whether he has already moved or not, to leap as a Knight, but this privilege is lost if he be checked before he has availed himself of it. The Pawns move straight forward one square at a time only, and capture in the same way that is the rule in the European game. Singha in his account (which in many ways describes a game that seems more like the Parsi chess) adds the information