THE GERMAN CHESS THEORISTS

Dr. A. Van der Linde's great work (Berlin, 1874), following Weber, Berlin, 1872, Der Lasa and others, containing 1,118 pages, 540 diagrams, 4,098 names, and 2,500 catalogue items.

In Linde's book, no less than 500 of the 540 diagrams are on the eight times eight square board, with the 32 pieces used in Modern Chess (i.e., examples of the game with positions or problems thereat as we understand it).

It is also curious as affecting Linde's consistency, that Al Suli and Adali, whose problems he gives at chess as we now play it, were dead before the time he assigns for the first knowledge of the same. His own pet authority, Masudi, 890-959, gives the story of Al Suli's chess, to which nothing could be compared without declaring it to be any other game (pages 58 and 59).

ITALY

Opposite Italienisch Linde has 1,348 to 1,358, but the story of the rebuke of the Bishop of Florence by Cardinal Damianus, for playing chess in a tavern when he should have been at prayers, given by Forbes and repeated by Linde, is of earlier date (1061), Buzecca's blindfold play at chess on the invitation of Dante's patron, the Master of Ravenna, before a distinguished company, is attributed to the year 1266.

KRIEGSSPIEL

To Sanskrit Tschaturanza (column 1) under the head of "Kriegsspiel," A.D. 954, is affixed to Arabisch (column 10), the same year 954 appears. (NOTE. To this date of 954 I cannot help adding for once a query mark like those in which Linde's book abounds (!!).

To Persich (column 7) 1000 (!) Fransofitch 12 Jht, English 13 Jht, Spanisch 1283, Italien 1348-1358.

To Tschinesich, Japanisch, Siamesich, Birmesich, and Tibetisch, under Aeltestes Datum Columns, 2 to 6 Unbekannt appears as well as to Tschaturanga column 1, notwithstanding the date of 954 in another place. An the above are under the one head of "Kriegsspiel."

SCHACHSPIEL

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 precisely those I mentioned, viz., No. 18188 and No. 7724 preserved in the British Museum. At the same time I briefly consulted some nine or ten other M.S.S. of the Shahnama in the British Museum as well as Macan's printed edition, yea more, I consulted the so called copy of great antiquity alluded to by Alpha before it came to the Museum. Well, in all of these, with, I believe, only one exception, the account of the moves does occur exactly (!) as I have given them, always excepting or rather excluding a couplet about two camels (die namliche nicht in die Bude des Tachenspielers passten es weiter unten) Und nun geht es echt fesuitisch weiter, Alpha denies the existence (!) (A hat in Gegentheil Hyde I, p. 63 Citirt) of the account of the moves in every copy of the Shahnama. I, on the other hand pledge my truth and honour (!!) Linde), that the account of the moves does occur in every one of the manuscripts as well as in Macan's printed edition (Vgl. App. p. x. lin. 6 unt.). The misconception on the part of Alpha arose from a very simple (:) circumstance. In Firdausi's account of the game the story happens to be interrupted (:) in the middle of the insertion of two other long stories, as we often see in the Arabian nights.

"In matters of this sort it is only the truth that offends.

"(Man vergleiche hierzu noch seine Schnapserklurung der Weisheit des Buzurdschmir, p. 54.)"

Forbes also adds p. 56. And I am quite ready to point out the passage in all of them to any gentleman and scholar who may have the least doubt on the matter.

Historians of the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries who lived before Masudi, deemed the game worthy of notice and recommendation, Razi and Firdausi thought so too, and Hippocrates and Galen before them refer very favourably to its advantages, describing it as beneficial in many ailments, and we may reasonably assume that they at least, as well as the poets and philosophers before them, back to the fifth century B.C. deemed the game passing in their minds, and the invention of which they were wont to speculate on, as one of some interest, beauty and significance and worthy of appreciation then as it has been in succeeding ages.

Once more, no example is given of his Kriegsspiel, Nerdspiel, Wulfervierschach, Trictrac, or any Spiel or game implied under the word Bretspiel, the last named being moreover a general term for games played on a chess board, rather than a distinctive appellation for a particular species of game or indication of the pieces or value of forces employed in it.

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