The History of Chess. H. J. R. Murray
Qst., 16) has expressed dissatisfaction with the ordinary texts of the Shāhnāma for this story. He points out that there is much variety of text in accessible MSS., and suggests that a scribal error first led to the appearance of the camel in one line which gives the names of the pieces, and that then later scribes restored the self-consistency of Firdawsī’s description by altering the dimensions of the board from 8 by 8 to 10 by 10, and introducing the lines relating to the camel’s position and move. It is much to be desired that a critical examination of the known MSS. could be made, but the immensity of the task of doing this for the Shāhnāma has probably deterred scholars from attempting it. The gain would not be worth the toil, except for points like the present, which do not touch the literary or historical value of the epic.
There is, however, at least one other work which makes the same substitution of the 10 by 10 board for the 8 by 8. This is the short history of ar-Ristāmī (840/1436–7), contained in MS. Gotha Arab. 1738 (old 1419). It mentions the introduction of chess into Persia thus (f. 3 a)—
After the sage Barzūya had brought the K. Kalīla wa Dimna from India with the Complete chess (ash-shaṭranj at-tamma), which has 10 by 10 squares, he translated it from Indian into Persian.
To this, however, I attach no importance. I do not know what authorities this late writer followed.
Various attempts have been made to identify the characters whose names recur most frequently in these legends, on the assumption that the names are really Indian in origin. The task is, however, one of great, if not insuperable, difficulty. The history of India, as it appears in the pages of early Muslim writers, is as unreal as their knowledge of the condition of India in their own days. Foreign names were peculiarly liable to misrepresentation when they were put into an Arabic dress. Moreover we are not certain of the forms of the proper names in the legends.17 The reader will have already noticed how I have used different vowels with different MSS. In the older Arabic MSS. the short vowels are unmarked, and when MSS. began to contain instructions as to the vocalization of the names, it was too late for them to have any historical authority behind, and the directions are based upon the analogy of native Arabic words. How unsafe a guide this analogy could be, we have already seen in the substitution of shiṭranj for shaṭranj. But there are other elements of uncertainty and error that are more serious still. The accuracy of the consonants in Arabic depends upon the close and accurate copying of the diacritical marks which distinguish many of the letters. Errors were always possible, but they are most dangerous in the case of foreign words, where detection is most difficult. If, again, the word has been derived from Pahlawī MSS., as is not impossible in the case of some of these legends, there is the additional possibility of error due to the deficiencies of the Pahlawī script. Nöldeke18 sees nothing impossible in tracing Shihrām or Shahrām, al-Ya‘qūbī’s Hashrān, the Dabshalīm of the Kalīla wa Dimna, and the Dewasarm of the Chatrang-nāmak all back to one Pahlawī original. If this be so, how can we feel certain of anything?
Among other suggestions as to the identity of Shahrām are Hyde’s (ii. 60), that the name is a scribal error for Baharam or Bahram, a name which occurs frequently among the Sāsānian kings, and also was used in India; and Pertsch’s, that Shahrām = Shāh Rāma (v. d. Linde, ii. 441). Sir H. M. Elliott in his History of India by its own historians (i. 409–10) suggests that Shahrām was Shahr Irān or Shahriyār (i.e. Kobād Shīrūyah), one of the last of the Sāsānian kings of Persia, who ruled for a few months (A.D. 628–9) during the disturbed period that followed the death of Khusraw II Parwīz. He, however, assumed that b. Khallikān described Shihrām as a Persian king, which is not the case. In any case it is difficult to see why the least important of all the Sāsānians should have been selected to adorn the legend. I return to Elliott’s argument below.
Balhait, Balhīt or Balhīth is the other Indian king who is frequently mentioned in the stories. Hyde (ii. 62) says that the form Balhīb also occurs. He suggested that these forms, which in the Arabic only differ in the diacritical dots to the last consonant, are intended to represent the Indian dynasty of the Balabhi or Balhara, who ruled in Guzerat from A.D. 319 to 613. This would make the name a title and not a personal name, and in this way he explains the apparent contradiction in the legend as given by b. Khallikān. This is ingenious, but not convincing, since other Arabic writers frequently use the correct form Balhara. It is, however, the only close resemblance that I can discover. Al-Maṣūdī’s succession of Indian kings—Barahman, 366 years; al-Bāhbūd, 100 years; Ramāh, 150 years; Fūr, 140 years (the Pauras or Porus of Alexander’s time, B.C. 326); Dabshalim, 120 years; Balhīth, 80 or 300 years; Kūrush, 120 years (who was followed by many Princes down to al-Ballahra, who was al-Maṣ‘ūdī’s contemporary in A.D. 943)—is of no assistance whatever to the solution of the difficulty.
Although no light has been thrown on the name Qaflān, the more ordinary name given to the inventor himself, viz. Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir,19 appears to be satisfactorily explained. These two names occur in connexion with a Brahman dynasty which ruled in the lower Scinde towards the close of the Umayyad caliphate, when the Muhammadans conquered this part of India. The kings of this family were Khakha, 632–72; Khandar, 672–79; Dāhir, 679–712. Khakha, the founder of the dynasty, appears in Persian histories as Chach the son of Silāīj, and in Arabic histories (aṭ-Ṭabarī, and al-Balādhūrī) as Ṣaṣṣa, while his son Dāhir retains his Indian name. Al-Balādhūrī gives the latter a son Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, but only mentions him incidentally as having fled from the Muslims to a certain fortress. Elliott,20 who develops the identification, is inclined to see more in it than a coincidence or a conscious appropriation of names. He thinks that the king Khakha or Ṣaṣṣa was the cause of the introduction of chess to the Western world, and associates in the story the nearly contemporary Sāsānian Shahriyār (Shīrūyah). I do not think that this view can be made to harmonize with the history of the game as now known. It puts the introduction into Persia too late for the facts, it ignores the difficulties that Shahrām in the stories is an Indian, not a Persian king, that Ṣaṣṣa is the son, not the father, of Dāhir, that Ṣaṣṣa is a philosopher, not a usurping monarch. I think the truth is to be found in the view that the earliest teller of the legend chose the Indian names that were most familiar to his generation, in order to give verisimilitude to his story. This leaves to Khakha the more modest share in the history of chess of lending his name to the hero of chess-romance.
Bland (62) suggested that Ṣaṣṣa is a corruption of the name Xerxes, and identified him with the philosopher who in European fable is associated with the discovery of chess.21 I am inclined to agree with his identification, only I think the perversion of name has been in the other direction, and that the European Xerxes is an attempt to explain the Arabic Ṣaṣṣa.
All the MSS., al-Ya‘qūbī, and b. Khallikān add to one or other of their legends a conclusion which tells how the philosopher was rewarded for his invention of chess. When the king invited him to choose his own reward, he is said to have asked for a quantity of corn which was to be placed upon the chessboard in a particular way. The first square was to hold one grain,22 the second two, the third four, the fourth eight, and so on, each square containing double the number of grains that were placed upon the preceding square. The quantity of corn asked is, of course, enormous, the number of grains being the sum of a geometrical progression of sixty-four terms, with 1 for the first term and 2 for the common ratio. The total is 264 –1, or
18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains,
a quantity which would cover England to a uniform depth of 38·4 feet.23 It is added that the king did not know which to admire the most, the invention of chess or the ingenuity of the request.
This calculation is undoubtedly of Indian origin, the early Indian mathematicians being notoriously given to long-winded problems of this character. In its earliest form it may be older than chess, and be based upon the ashṭāpada board.24 I have already quoted a passage from al-Maṣ‘ūdī in which he speaks of the importance which the Indians attached to the sum of the Progression. It would appear to have also been a favourite calculation among the Muslims, though they generally shirked the complete solution by reducing to larger units whenever the figures grew inconveniently large. This also made the immensity of the sum