The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
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In addition to the ordinary chess, and the games upon larger boards, or with other than the usual pieces, which I shall discuss in a later chapter, there appears to be a variety played in parts of Western India in which the usual arrangement of the men and the ordinary rules are observed with the single exception that no piece can be taken so long as it is supported by some other man.32
When we compare the rules of these two modern India games with the little information that we possess with reference to the older game of India, or even with the transitional forms described by Nīlakaṇṭ·ha and Vaidyanātha, it becomes clear that contact with European players has already made profound changes in the native chess. Thus, the European modifications in the rules of certain pieces, introduced in Europe just before 1500, have been adopted in Indian chess since Nīlakaṇṭ·ha’s day, and the older moves of Elephant or Camel (our Bishop) and Minister or Vizier have completely disappeared. The existing move of the King in India is based upon the rule current in Europe in the later Middle Ages. The Pawn’s move in Parsi chess exhibits a limitation to the general use of the double step which for long was in existence in German chess. Even the rules of Pawn promotion—to-day the most typical feature in the Indian games—would seem to have their origin in a peculiarity of English chess about 1600. In the older Indian chess, just as in the Muslim chess and the older European chess, the only promotion possible was to the rank of the Vizier (Firzān, Queen). In English chess c. 1600 a player was allowed to promote to the rank of any piece which had been already lost. Indian players have developed this in characteristic fashion, making the tactics of the End-game very different from those in our chess. The same European inspiration can be seen in other aspects of Indian chess of which I have still to speak. All the native text-books which I have seen betray very considerable signs of the use of European books, and must be used with much caution. Most of them teach the European rules as well as the native ones: one book, that of Lala Raja Babu, has incorporated an English work on the End-game33 making the necessary changes in it to make it applicable to the Hindustani chess.
INDIAN CHESSMEN
Hyde, ii. 123
From the evidence of European chessplayers the general standard of play in India is not high. This is not surprising, since all the conditions that make for the development of great skill are wanting. The science of chess has never been developed, and the literature of the game is still elementary in character. Chess clubs are few in number, and for the most part exist for the practice of the European game. Only a few names have stood out as of importance in the history of chess. I may mention Tiruveṇgaḍāchārya Shastrī of Tirputty near Madras, who made a reputation in Bombay among the small European chess circle, to whom he was familiarly known as the Brahmin. He was the author of a Sanskrit poem,34 which he afterwards translated into English under the title of Essays on Chess, Bombay, 1814, in which he attempted to adapt the native chess to the European and gives the earliest collection of Indian problems of non-Muslim workmanship that we possess. The compromise which he attempted between the two games naturally reduces the value of his work from the historical point of view. Ghulam Kassim, a Madras player, made his mark in the European game. He took part in the correspondence match between Madras and Hyderabad in 1829, and in collaboration with James Cochrane published an Analysis of the Muzio Gambit, Madras, 1829.
Indian chessmen, like those of all countries except China and Japan, may be grouped into two classes. We find sets in which the pieces are actual carvings, reproducing in miniature the animals and men whose names they bear, and other sets in which the pieces have conventional shapes which are easier and cheaper to produce and must therefore have always been the material employed by the ordinary chessplayer. Of the more elaborate type there are many examples in European museums and in private collections. To these al-Maṣ‘ūdī undoubtedly referred in the passage on the uses of ivory which I have already quoted, though I know of no pieces approaching the bulk of which he speaks, unless the so-called Charlemagne King in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, is of Indian workmanship. Indian it undoubtedly is in treatment, but it bears an Arabic inscription on its base which purports to give the carver’s name.35
Bambra-ka-thūl (Brāhmānābād) Chessmen.
INDIAN CHESSMEN, EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
From Mr. Platt’s Collection
Hyde (1767, ii. 123) gives some illustrations of a fine set of this character which Sir D. Sheldon had brought back from Bombay, which I reproduce. He says that both Persians (by whom he means Parsis) and Moghuls used men of this type.
More modern pieces of this type are often treated on freer lines. It would seem to have been a favourite device of workers in ivory at the end of the 18th century to make the chessmen symbolize the struggle between the East India Company and the native states. Thus a set in the Gotha Museum has on one side two elephants with palanquins (K and Q), two rhinoceroses (B), two horsemen (Kt), two towers bearing small figures with flags (R), and eight soldiers in European uniform. The other side replaces the rhinoceroses by buffaloes, the horsemen by men on camels, and the infantry by eight native soldiers carrying what appear to be folded umbrellas. The presence of the castle for the Rooks is a plain proof of European influences at work. I reproduce a similar set from Mr. Platt’s collection of chessmen.
Scachi Indici plani Lignei.
Scachi Indici plani Eburnei solidi.
Scachi Indici plani Eburnei cavi.
Indian Chessmen from Surat (Hyde).
The references to chess in the earlier Indian literature seem to me from their want of fixity of nomenclature to suggest that carved pieces of this first type were in the writers’ minds; but at the present time the conventional type of chessman is by far the more usual. The conventional Indian chessmen are very similar to the ordinary Muslim pieces, and it is quite possible that the Indian type has been developed from, or influenced by, the Muslim pattern. The chief difference is to be found in connexion with the Rook. In the Sunnite Muslim sets this is a tall piece with a very distinct type of head; in Indian sets the Rook is now often a low piece with a flat top which at times is almost like the modern European draughtsman. It is thus of a shape very similar to the Siamese and Malayan Rooks. The change in shape would appear to be of recent date, since the Indian conventional chessmen which Hyde obtained from Surat have much taller and bolder heads.
The only ancient chessmen of conventional shape which have been discovered in India were found in 1855 or 1856 by Mr. A. F. Bellasis in the course of some excavations upon the site of a ruined city at Bambra-ka-thūl, 47 miles N.E. of Haidārābād, the present capital of the lower Sind. The city, which had unmistakably been destroyed by an earthquake, was at first identified with the Hindu city Brāhmānābād, which was already in ruins in the time of al-Balādhūrī (D. 279/892–3). It is now recognized to be the Muslim town of Manṣūra, which replaced Brāhmānābād in the latter half of the 8th c. and was still in existence in the time of al-Bērūnī (1030), although there is reason to believe that the earthquake had happened a little before his time.36 The chessmen accordingly belong to the early 11th c., and are Muslim rather than native Indian. They are now in the British Museum along with a long die (2 + 5, 1 + 6), a cubic die (1 + 6, 2 + 5, 3 + 4), the fragments of a small box or coffer which