The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
the chess that he played at home.9 The arrangement which Cox gave shows an intermediate position of the Pawns between the Siamese and the modern Burmese.
Burmese arrangement of the Chessmen. From Bastian.
Any Nè (P) that is played to a marked square can be promoted to the rank of Sit-kè (Q), provided that the player has no other Sit-kè on the board at the moment. In promoting the Nè the player is at liberty to place the Sit-kè (which replaces the Nè) upon the square occupied by the promoted Nè, or upon any adjacent square which is not commanded by an opponent’s piece. If a player whose turn it is to play has a Nè standing on a marked square, and no Sit-kè on the board, he can, if he likes, simply promote the Nè without moving at all. In certain positions, when a player cannot make a move without disadvantage, this may become a valuable privilege. Obviously the Nès most favourably situated for promotion are those on the player’s right wing. It is in consequence of this, and the difficulty of promoting a Pawn on the other wing, that Cox and Shway Yoe would limit promotion to the Pawns on the right wing, which alone could advance to the sinister diagonal (a1 to h8) on which promotion is most easily secured.10
The most useful piece with which to give mate is the Sin (B); Burmese players accordingly do not like to exchange their Sins. For ‘check’ they say kwě (Cox, kwai), and for check-rook, a move forking King and Rook, kwadot. There is no term for mate; the winner generally says Neinbe, ‘I have won’; the loser, Shonbe, ‘I have lost’.
Stalemate is not known in Burmese chess; a player is not allowed to place his opponent in a stalemate position. He must give the Mín-gyi room to play.
At the conclusion of a game it is usual for the winner to give the loser a dab on the cheek with the soft powdered lime that Burmans always carry with them in order to prepare the betel for chewing. In this way the score of a succession of games at a sitting may be kept. Some players give a dab for every check in the game. Chess is mainly played by elderly Burmans, and, according to Mr. Colston, is of all Burmese games the freest from betting. Shway Yoe, on the other hand, says that there is always heavy betting on the games, and that during matches between the more famous players the excitement becomes so intense that it is not uncommon for the spectators (who advise the players freely) to come to actual blows.11
The Burmans have paid no attention to the composition or study of chess problems.
II. SIAM.
La Loubère, the envoy-extraordinary of Louis XIV of France to the court of Siam in 1687–8, tells, in the account of Siam which he published on his return to Europe,12 that the Siamese ‘jouent aux échecs à nôtre manière, et à la manière chinoise’. This information agrees with that given by travellers in the present century, and explains the apparent discrepancies that exist between other descriptions of Siamese chess. An admirable account of the games of Siam (first written in 1829) was contributed in 1836 to Asiatic Researches (XX, part ii, pp. 374 seq.) by Capt. James Low, M.R.A.S.C., and Falkener supplements this by giving reliable native information which he obtained from Prince Dewawongse, the Siamese Minister of Foreign Affairs, through the assistance of Mr. E. B. Gould, our consul at Bangkok in 1889.13 As the Chinese chess of Siam does not appear to differ materially in move or rale from that of China itself, I propose in the present chapter to confine my attention to the native variety alone.
It is not possible to discover any trace of Indian ancestry in the nomenclature of Siamese chess. This is the more remarkable, for the word chaturanga has actually been adopted in Siamese in the sense of army.14 The game bears the name of mak-rūk, a word of which both origin and signification have been forgotten. It cannot be explained by reference to any existing Siamese root, and is therefore in all probability a loan-word adopted from some neighbouring language.15 Loan-words in Siamese often undergo such radical changes that the original word is completely disguised; the language, being originally monosyllabic, although it now shows a large admixture of Burmese and Burmese Pali, has a tendency to reduce all foreign words to a monosyllabic form.
Siamese Chessmen. From the Schachzeitung.
The Siamese chessboard is unchequered, and, so far as information goes, exhibits none of the additional lines that are to be found on the Indian and other boards of the far East.
The Siamese chessmen are fashioned after a conventional pattern, approximating somewhat to European and somewhat to Indian models. For the Pawns it is usual to use cowrie shells, placing them with the aperture downwards. On promotion the player merely turns the shell over so that now the aperture is uppermost. Instead of shells the glass counters used in the Chinese game of wei-k‘i are often used.
The names and power of move of the Siamese pieces are exhibited in the following table:
The meanings of the Siamese names are not altogether certain. Khūn is the ordinary word for nobleman, but the King’s name may be a contraction for Khūn luang, meaning king. Met in Siamese means a small seed or trifle, but the name is not very appropriate, and it has been suggested that met may be really Skr. mantri. The chief objection to this conjecture is the absence of any other trace of Skr. nomenclature. According to Mr. Gould khōn has no meaning at all. Falkener’s conjecture that khōn = Burmese chein (Cox), sin (Shway Yoe), is too far-fetched. Mā is Chinese for horse. Bia means a cowrie shell and is due to the common use of these as Pawns.
The Siamese arrangement of the Chessmen.
The Boat also appears among the chessmen in the Annamese game, and we have already met with it in the modern chess of Bengal, and in the Javan game. I have already expressed the opinion that these coincidences are accidental. Siam and Annam are both countries in which the principal means of communication is by water, and the presence of the Boat in chess may reflect this fact.
The initial arrangement of the game is invariable and yet not that of Indian chess. The Kings are placed crosswise, each met (Q) being on the King’s right. The eight Pawns on each side are all advanced to the third rank. We have already seen that there is some evidence for the existence of this or a similar arrangement in Burmese chess.
The same arrangement of the Pawns upon the third line is found in the Japanese game. The resemblance is probably accidental, although there are other features of Siamese chess which approximate curiously to features of the Japanese game. The fivefold move of the Khōn (B) appears in Japanese chess as the move of the Gin, which also is posted on the third square from the corner (c1, &c.). Still more curious is the fact that in both games the row upon which promotion takes place is the third from the opponent’s edge of the board—in Siamese chess the player’s sixth row, upon which the opponent’s Pawns were originally posted. But the resemblance is probably accidental and extends no further, for, while in Japanese chess pieces and Pawns alike obtain promotion, in the Siamese game promotion is confined to the Pawns. A Pawn reaching the sixth row becomes at once a Met (Q), whether the player’s original Met be on the board or not. There is no limit to the number of Mets that a player may have at any one time.16
Capt. Low gives the following rules in connexion with the ending (op. cit., 378):
The following are established rules. If a King is left alone to contend, his aim is to get so placed as to prevent being checkmated within a certain number of moves. In the first place, however, the number of pieces actually on the board is deducted from the prescribed number of moves in each case. Thus, if the King has opposed to him a King and two Castles, the number of pieces on the board (4) is deducted from the prescribed number 8. If the adversary has only a Castle, the prescribed number is 16. If he has two Bishops, it is 22. If with one, 44. If with three Knights, 33. If with one Knight, 66. If with a mét,