1879.] on the History of Games. 135 



three stones, where the game is " continuasse sues," to got your men 

 in a line, which is, of course, our own childish game of tit-tat-to. This 

 case of the permanence of an ancient game was long ago recognized 

 by Hyde in his treatise, ' De Ludis Orientalibus,' It is the simplest 

 form of the group known to us as mill, merellcs, morris, played by 

 children all the way across from Shetland to Singapore. Among the 

 varieties of draught-games played in the world, one of the most elabo- 

 rate is the Chinese wei-chi, or game of circumvention, the honoured 

 pastime of the learned classes. Here one object is to take your enemy 

 by surrounding him with four of your own men, so as to make what is 

 called an " eye," which looks as though the game belonged historically 

 to the same group as the simpler classic draughts, where the man is 

 taken between two adversaries. In modern Europe the older games 

 of this class have been superseded by one on a different principle. The 

 history of what we now call draughts is disclosed by the French 

 dictionary, which shows how the men used to be called inons, or 

 pawns, till they reached the other side of the board, then becoming 

 dames or queens. Thus the modern game of draughts is recognized 

 as being, in fact, a low variety of chess, in which the pieces are all 

 pawns, turned into queens in chess-fashion when they gain the adver- 

 sary's line. The earliest plain accounts of the game are in Spanish 

 books of the Middle Ages, and the theory of its development through 

 the mediaeval chess problems will be found worked out by the best 

 authority on chess, Dr. A. van der Linde, in his ' Geschichte des 

 Schachspiels.' 



The group of games represented by the Hindu tiger-and-coios, our 

 fox-and-geese, shows in a simple way the new situations that arise in 

 board-games when the men are no longer all alike, but have different 

 powers, or moves. Isidore of Seville (about a.d. 600) mentions, under 

 the name of lairunculi, a game played with pieces of which some were 

 common soldiers (ordinarii), marching step by step, while others were 

 wanderers (vagi). It seems clear that the notions of a kriegspiel, or 

 war-game, and of pieces with different powers moving on the chequer- 

 board, were familiar in the civilized world at the time when, in the 

 eighth century or earlier, some inventive Hindu may have given them 

 a more perfect organization by setting on the board two whole opposing 

 armies, each complete in the four forces, foot, horse, elephants, and 

 chariots, from which an Indian army is called in Sanskrit chaturanga, 

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

 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 evidence, 

 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 



