236 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



or " four-bodied." The game thus devised was itself called chaturan- 

 </a, for when it passed into Persia it carried with it its Indian name in 

 the form shatranj, still retained there, though lost'by other nations who 

 received the game from Persia, and named it from the Persian name 

 of the principal piece, the shah, or king, whence schach, eschecs, chess. 

 According to this simple theory, which seems to have the best evi- 

 dence, chess is a late and high development arising out of the ancient 

 draught-games. But there is another theory maintained by Professor 

 Duncan Forbes in his " History of Chess," and prominent in one at 

 least of our chess handbooks, which practically amounts to saying that 

 chess is derived from backgammon. It is argued that the original 

 game was the Indian fourfold-chess, played with four half -sets of men, 

 black, red, green, and yellow, ranged on the four sides of the board, 

 the moves of the pieces being regulated by the throws of dice ; that in 

 course of time the dice were given up, and each two allied half-sets of 

 men coalesced into one whole set, one of the two kings sinking to the 

 position of minister, or queen. Now, this fourfold Indian dice-chess 

 is undoubtedly a real game, but the mentions of it are modern, whereas 

 history records the spread of chess proper over the East as early as the 

 tenth century. In the most advanced Indian form of pachisi, called chu- 

 pur, there are not only the four sets of different-colored men, but the very 

 same stick-dice that are used in the dice-chess, which looks as though 

 this latter game, far from being the original form of chess, were an 

 absurd modern hybrid resulting from the attempt to play backgammon 

 with chess-men. This is Dr. van der Linde's opinion, readers of whose 

 book will find it supported by more technical points, while they will 

 be amused with the author's zeal in belaboring his adversary Forbes, 

 which reminds one of the legends of mediaeval chess-players, where the 

 match naturally concludes by one banging the other about the head 

 with the board. It is needless to describe here the well-known points 

 of difference between the Indo-Persian and the modern European chess. 

 On the whole, the Indian game has substantially held its own, while 

 numberless attempts to develop it into philosophers' chess, military 

 tactics, etc., have been tried and failed, bringing, as they always do, 

 too much instructive detail into the plan which in ancient India was 

 shaped so judiciously between sport and science. 



In this survey of games, I have confined myself to such as offered 

 subjects for definite remark, the many not touched on including cards, 

 of which the precise history is still obscure. Of the conclusions brought 

 forward, most are no doubt imperfect, and some may be wrong, but it 

 seemed best to bring them forward for the purpose of giving the sub- 

 ject publicity, with a view to inducing travelers and others to draw 

 up minutely accurate accounts of all undescribed games they notice. 

 In Cook's " Third Voyage " it is mentioned that the Sandwich Island- 

 ers played a game like draughts with black and white pebbles on a 

 board of fourteen by seventeen squares. Had the explorers spent an 



