From: Sam Sloan BEST COM> Date: 21 dec 1996 Subject: No Subject The Origin of Chess By Sam Sloan [excerpt] H.J.R. Murray's work, "A History of Chess", was published in 1913. His other volume, "A Short History of Chess", was first published in 1963, but had been written in 1917 and was found in his papers after his death. Thus, his most recent work on chess history was written in 1917. In almost every other field of academic endeavor, a work of such age is, by now, obsolete. However, surprisingly enough, serious academic researchers have apparently not been much interested in the history of chess and thus have not bothered to or even thought of going back to reexamine the underlying basis to Murray's conclusion. Also surprisingly, in Murray's otherwise seemingly well documented work, he seems to have only one concrete source for his claim that chess was invented in India. That source is H.J. Raverty. Raverty, in fact, was a nineteenth century British army officer. His main qualification was in having served in the perpetual wars against Afghanistan during that period. Apparently a believer in the adage "know thy enemy", Raverty studied the language, culture and literature of the people he was fighting. Murray, on the other hand, undoubtedly could not read a word of Hindi, Urdu or Pashtu, much less Sanskrit, so he had to rely on those such as Raverty who did. In 1902, in the last years of his life, Raverty published an article in an obscure publication called the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal. The article was entitled the "History of Chess and Backgammon". Raverty, H.J., "History of Chess and Backgammon", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal, Vol. 71, Part I, p. 47, Calcutta 1902 . This article for the first time provided the story which every chess player now knows. The story, in sum, goes: There once was a sage named Shashi in Sind, in the reign of King Rai Bhalit in North West India. One night Shashi invented a wonderful new game. The next morning he took it to the king, who marveled at it and asked what reward he wanted. The king said that any reasonable request would be granted. Shashi said that he merely requested that one grain of wheat be placed on the first square of the chess board, two on the second, four on the third, eight on-the fourth, and so on, until all 64 squares had been filled. The king readily agreed to this request. We all know the end of that story. In any event, according to Raverty, Shashi had a son named Shah, and from that came the name "Shak" or chess. In the same article, Raverty also recounts how backgammon was supposedly invented, according to him, just a short time before chess. It has now been proven that at least that part of the story is pure nonsense. Although Murray passes the story about the invention of chess off as a fable, without properly crediting Raverty (it is Davidson who clarifies the point that Raverty was the original source for this story), he nevertheless sticks to it. He says that chess was invented in a single night by a philosopher who lived in North West India. In Murray's time, before the partition of India in 1947, which broke India up into parts, North West India meant what is now the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan and, arguably, parts of Afghanistan. This geographical region happened to be Raverty's area of expertise. Sind, however, is now the South Eastern most province of Pakistan, and includes Karachi. Perhaps Murray did not know exactly where Sind was. In any event, all of present day Pakistan, including Sind, could arguably have then been called North West India. The Indians themselves are perplexed by the claim that chess was invented by them. Here is what was said in the Indian Historical Quarterly, a serious scholarly journal: Chakravarti, Chintaharan, "Sanskrit Works on the Game of Chess", Indian Historical Quarterly, Calcutta, June, 1938, Vol. 14, No. 2, Part I, p. 275. "Though the game of chess is generally supposed by scholars to be of Indian origin and reference to the game is said to be found in various Indian works from a very early period, Sanskrit works dealing with it and describing its complexity are comparatively rare. As a matter of fact, no early Indian work on the subject is known and until recently the work of scholarship had very few descriptions of the game." This journal also cites certain claims that chess was referred to in various writings by ancient Indian authors. However, it states that this was a common trick in those times. When one wanted to gain an audience for one's ideas, one claimed that such-and-such famous long deceased person said or wrote it. The journal then proceeds to list a number of famous authors who supposedly wrote about chess, and dismisses all of these claims. In conclusion, it is unable to find even one source in Indian literature regarding chess dated earlier than Sulipani in the fifteenth century, A.D. (more than 900 years after Murray says that chess was invented there)!! In short, each and every source cited by Murray, Davidson, Forbes, Golombek, Eales and others, which supposedly establishes that chess was written about in India during the first millennium A.D., is discredited. The conclusion is: "This may appear to be rather curious and apparently raises a point of doubt with respect to the genuineness of the work." It seems unlikely that there could be any mistake on this point. H. J. R. Murray cites two works from seventh century India and two more from the ninth century, which he claims contain references to chess. Murray says that references to chess are contained in Harshacharita by Bana and in Vasavatta by Subhandu. These citations are followed uncritically by Golombek, Eales and others. However, these are the famous classical works in Indian literature. If they really contained references to chess, then every Indian school boy would know about it. Murray also states that chess is discussed in pre-Persian (Pahlavi) in the Karnamak and in the "Shatranj Namak". The Karnamak is a lost work which Murray could not possibly have read and which is not certain ever to have existed. The "Shatranj Namak" seems to be a work purely invented by Murray of which nobody else has ever seen or even heard. More recent works cited by Murray, Haravijaya of Ratnakara and Kavyalankara of Rudrata, do not, according to scholars, contain any references to chess. Murray states that the famous traveler Al-Beruni observed chess being played in India in the year 1030. However, Arab scholars who have studied the works of Al-Beruni in their original language state that these works contain no references to chess. It appears that Murray, a mere school teacher without any scholarly credentials, never read these works himself, but relied instead on material published in Germany in the late nineteenth century. (Murray never seems to cite his actual source). In short, the claim that chess was referred to in classical Indian literature has hardly any sounder basis than the claim that chess was played by the Pharaohs of Egypt and that Alexander the Great was a strong chess player.