Chess History and Reminiscences | Page 3

Review of December
1886, entitled "The Chess Masters of the Day," rank as the other most
noteworthy productions of the last seven years' period in chess.
I regret that it is not in my power to produce the more extended work,
for to bring that now submitted within assigned compass and cost, I
have had to omit much that would be needful to render such a work
complete, and to give but a Bird's eye view of chapters which would
well merit undiminished space. Thus the complete scores and analyses
of the matches, tournaments and great personal tests of skill and
statistics of the game would be acceptable to a few, whilst the full
accounts of individual players such as Philidor, Staunton, Anderssen,
Morphy, Lowenthal, Steinitz, Zukertort, Blackburne and perhaps even
Bird, (Bailey's and Ruskin's opinions) would be regarded and read with
interest by many chess players.
Respecting the supposed first source of chess the traditional and

conjectural theories which have grown up throughout so many ages,
regarding the origin of chess, have not become abandoned even in our
own days, and we generally hear of one or other of them at the
conclusion of a great tournament. It has been no uncommon thing
during the past few years to find Xerxes, Palamedes, and even Moses
and certain Kings of Babylon credited with the invention of chess.
The conclusions arrived at by the most able and trustworthy authorities
however, are, that chess originated in India, was utterly unknown to the
Greeks and Romans, and was first introduced into Europe from Persia
shortly after the sixth century of our era. In its earliest Asiatic form
styled the Chaturanga, It was adapted for four persons, having four
small armies of eight each. King, three pieces answering to our Rook,
Bishop, and Knight, Elephant (Chariot or Ship,) and Horse, with four
Pawns. The players decided what piece to move by the throw of an
oblong die.
About 1,350 years ago the game under the name Chatrang, adapted for
two persons with sixteen piece on each side, and the same square board
of 64 squares, became regularly practiced, but when the dice became
dispensed with is quite unknown.
It may not be possible to trace the game of chess with absolute
certainty, back to its precise source amidst the dark periods of antiquity,
but it is easy to shew that the claim of the Hindus as the inventors, is
supported by better evidence both inferential and positive than that of
any other people, and unless we are to assume the Sanskrit accounts of
it to be unreliable or spurious, or the translations of Dr. Hyde, Sir
William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes to be disingenuous and
untrustworthy concoctions (as Linde the German writer seems to
insinuate) we are justified in dismissing from our minds all reasonable
doubts as to the validity of the claims of the Hindu Chaturanga as the
foundation of the Persian, Arabian, Medieval and Modern Chess, which
it so essentially resembled in its main principles, in fact the ancient
Hindu Chaturanga is the oldest game not only of chess but of anything
ever shown to be at all like it, and we have the frank admissions of the
Persians as well as the Chinese that they both received the game from

India.
The Saracens put the origin of chess at 226, says the "Westminster
Papers," (although the Indians claim we think with justice to have
invented it about 108 B.C. Artaxerxes a Persian King is said to have
been the inventor of a game which the Germans call Bret-spiel and
chess was invented as a rival game.
The connecting links of chess evidence and confirmation when
gathered together and placed in order form, combined so harmonious a
chain, that the progress of chess from Persia to Arabia and into Spain
has been considered as quite satisfactorily proved and established by
authorities deemed trustworthy, both native and foreign, and are quite
consistent with a fair summary up of the more recent views expressed
by the German writers themselves, and with the reasonable conclusions
to be deduced even from the very voluminous but not always best
selected evidence of Van der Linde.
So much has a very lively interest in chess depended in modern times
upon the enthusiasm of individuals, that the loss of a single prominent
supporter or player, has always seemed to sensibly affect it. This was
notably felt on the death of Sir Abram Janssens and Philidor towards
the end of the last century, and of Count Bruhl, Mr. G. Atwood and
General Conway in this. During the last 15 years the loss of Staunton,
Buckle, Cap. Kennedy, Barnes, Cochrane and Boden, and yet more
recently of such friends of British chess as F. H. Lewis, I. C. H. Taylor
and Captain