﻿CAME OF CHESS. 165 



of Arabia and Persia with many lively reflections on. 

 human life. It appears that this privilege of Shat- 

 pada was not allowable, in the opinion ot Gotarria s 

 when a player had three pawns on the boa r d ; b ., 

 when only one pawn and one ship remained, the pawn 

 might advance even to the square cf a king or aship, 

 and assume the power of either. Fifthly, " According 

 " to the Racskasas, or giants (that is, the people of 

 L..Kca, where the game v/as invented there could 

 " be neither victory nor defeat it a kins - ::" the 



" plain without force: a situation which t ned 



u Cacacashfha." Sixthly, " If three ships happen to 

 <s meet, and the fourth can be brought up to them in 

 i( the remaining an°;le, this has the name of Vriaan- 

 " nauca, and the player of the fourth seizes ail the 

 " others." Two or three of the remaining couplers 

 are so dark, either from an error in the manuscript or 

 from the antiquity of the language, that I coulJ not 

 understand the Pandit's explanation of them, and 

 suspect that they gave even him very indistinct ideas ; 

 but it would be easy, if it were worth while, to play at 

 the game by the preceding rules ; and a little practice 

 would, perhaps, make the whole intelligible. One cir- 

 cumstance, in this extract from the Pumn, seems very 

 surprizing : all games of hazard are positively forbid- 

 den by Memiy yet the game of Chaturanga, in which 

 dice are used, is taught by the grear Vyasa himself, 

 whose law tract appears with that of Gotama among 

 the eighteen books which form the Dhermasastra ; but, 

 as Radhacant and his preceptor Jagarmafh are both 

 employed by government in compiling a digest of 

 Indian laws, and as both of them, especially e- 



rable sage of Tribeni, understand the game, they are 

 able I presume to assign reasons why it should have 

 been excepted from the general prohibition, and even 

 openly taught by ancient and modern Brahmans. 



M 3 



