Chess History And Reminiscences
Under this head Italienisch is 1512, Latienisch 1525,
Franzofitch 1560, Englisch 1562, Deutsch 1606, Danisch
1752-1757, Schwedisch 1784, Ungarish 1861.
Dr. Van der Linde has nothing about the Roman edict of 115
B.C., or the other three points, which first caused our desire
to invite a little more attention to the subject of the probable
origin of chess, viz.: (1) Alcuin and Egbert's contemporary
records, with Pepin, Charlemagne, Harun, the Princess Irene, and
Emperor Nicephorus, the humane enlightened and glorious Al Mamum,
with his treasures of learning, Arabic, Persian, and Sanskrit
translations (2 & 3). Fortunately for the encyclopaedia writer
of 1727, and the poet Pope, their articles have escaped his
notice. We naturally try to discover what Bretspiel and
Nerdspiel was, according to Linde's own notions, and when they
ceased and chess began, both chess and Nerdspiel had been heard
of and were terms used before Al Masudi and Ibn Khallekun wrote.
Why does not Linde attempt to explain why Harun, Walid, Razi,
Al Suli, the Khalifs, and others up to the Shahnama poem,
Anna Comnena and Aben Ezra call it chess, and nothing else,
and again we ask how can he reconcile his own author,
Masudi's statement that Al Suli's chess was declared more
beautiful than all in the Caliph's garden (he died in 946), with
his own statement that chess was first known in Arabia, in 954.
------
Dr. A. VAN DER LINDE
The whole tenor of such reasoning as can be found in Linde's
stupendous work, seems to rest on subtle distinctions as to the
precise accuracy of the word chess, rather than to valid
argument to the effect that no game resembling it ever existed
before the time he fixes, yet his diagrams of the Tschaturanga
which comes Vol. 1 following page 423, is exactly in accordance
with the game as explained to us by Sir William Jones and
Professor Duncan Forbes, though Linde seems to call it by the
name of Indischer Wurfelvierschach or Indische Kriegsspiel, and
there is not a single diagram of what the German writer
conceives it to be other than the real Tschaturanga (Chaturanga).
NOTE. From such an assumptive writer, one would like to ask
whether he had looked through the pages of Livy Polybius and
Tacitus, or explored the treasures in the Fihrist, or the
Eastern Works referred to by Lambe, Bland, and Forbes, as well
as Dr. Hyde and Sir William Jones.
Forbes in the body of his work roughly estimates the Chaturanga
at 3000 B.C., but at page xiii of appendix, he says: "The first
period (of chess) is altogether of fabulous antiquity, that is,
of three to five thousand years old," in fact, he seems to have
been rather loose in his estimation, and not to have
sufficiently distinguished between the supposed antiquity of the
four sacred Vedas, the Epic poems, the Ramayana and the
Mahabarata, and the Puranas. Professor Weber and Dr. Van der
Linde assume a much more recent date for the Bhavishya Purana,
from which the account of the Chaturanga is mainly taken, than
that assigned to it by Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan
Forbes.
------
The 4,098 name index already referred to includes Adam ten
times and even Jesus three times, used, as it appears to me,
rather for the purpose of irony, rather than valid or useful
argument.
When Forbes gives the earliest chess position, known from
British Museum M.S.S. Linde says Adam was the first chess
player (??) to Sir F. Madden about 1,150, for the time when
Gaimur wrote quoting the incident of the Earl of Devonshire and
his daughter being found playing chess together, (Edgar's reign
958 to 975). Linde says Madden about it "Keinen Pfifferling
werth." In another place he says, "Forbes natte der Freicheut,"
"Insolence, Impudence, Audaciousness, Boldness."
It is not pleasing to English ears to be told that George Walker
is a humbug and a snob. Professor Duncan Forbes the same, and
William Lewis something worse, and to find notes of exclamation
and of queries (! !! ?), instead of argument opposed to the
statements of such writers as Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones, the
Rev. R. Lambe, Sir Frederic Madden, and Mr. Bland.
Linde's dealing with Forbes' statement concerning his
examination of the copies of the Shahnama in the British
Museum, puts a crowning touch on his arbitrary and insulting
style and furnishes an example of his notions of courtesy and
argument.
Forbes in a reply to Alpha having pledged his truth and
honour that the account of the moves and pieces in the copies of
the Shahnama were precisely as he had given them, Linde after
honour has (!!)
Forbes' statement runs as follows:
9th November, 1855, (1860, p. 56,) Zu Antworten. "My
answer to Alpha is that the M.S.S. from which I made (not
derived) my translations describing the moves of the pieces are
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