858 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1896. 



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any other piece. He might, if expedient, be captured by his partner's 

 men, who thus placed himself in command of both armies. 



The name of the game, Chaturanga or "four angas," is that of the 

 four angas or members of an army, a term which is applied to real 

 armies by the epic poets of India.^ 



The relation of the game of Chaturanga to the game of Pachisi is 

 very evident. The board is the square of the arm of the Pachisi cross, 

 and even the castles of the latter appear to be perpetuated in the 

 camps, similarly marked with diagonals, on the Chinese chessboard 

 (No. 51).2 The arrangement of the men at the corners of the board 

 survives in the Burmese game of Chess (No. 46). The four-sided die is 

 similar to that used in Chausar (No. 40). The pieces or men are of the 

 same colors as in Pachisi, and consist of the four sets of men or pawns 



of the Pachisi game, with the addition 

 of the four distinctive chess pieces, the 

 origin and significance of which remain 

 to be accounted for. By analogy, it 

 may be assumed that the board, if not 

 indeed all boards upon which games 

 are played, stands for the world and 

 its four quarters (or the year and its 

 four seasons), and that the game itself 

 was originally divinatory. 



The theory that modern chess had 

 its origin in Chaturanga, suggested by 

 Capt. Hiram Cox in 1799, and upheld 

 and developed by Prof. Duncan Forbes ' 

 has not been accepted by students of 

 the game generally. The antiquity of 

 the Purana in which it is described, has been questioned, and the game 

 asserted to be a comparatively modern adaptation of the primal Hindu 

 game. Apart from this discussion the relation of Chess to an earlier 

 dice game, such as Pachisi, appears to be evident. The comparative 

 study of games leads to the belief that practically all games as chess, 

 played upon boards, were i^receded by games in which the jjieces were 

 animated by dice, cowries or knuckle bones, or by staves, as in the 

 Korean Nyout, the Egyptian Tab, and many aboriginal American games. 



'For a further account of the game with a translation of the original authorities, 

 consult Edward Falkeuer, Games Ancient and Oriental, London, 1892, from which 

 the above is taken. 



2 This survival of the Castles on the chessboard is still more clearly seen on the 

 Persian chessboard figured by Hyde, fig. 161. He says: "The chessboard of the 

 Persians living in India is quite square and has the same number of squares. But, 

 in order better to protect the King, some of the squares are ' crosscut.' If now the 

 King is hard pressed, he can evade either by changing with the Castle, or move to 

 one of those crosscut squares." (Historia Shahiludii, p. 60.) A similar marking is 

 to be observed on the Burmese chessboard. 



3 History of Chess, 1860. 



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Fig. 161. 



PERSIAN CHESS BOARD. 

 After Hyde. 



