by Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones, Professor Duncan Forbes and native works, that for the first source of chess or any game with pieces of distinct and various moves, powers and values we must look to India and nowhere else, notwithstanding some negative opposition from those who do not attempt to say where it came from or to contravert the testimony adduced by Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes, and despite the opinion of the author of the Asiatic Society’s M.S. and Mill in British India that the Hindoos were far too stupid to have invented chess or anything half so clever.

Not a particle of evidence has ever yet been adduced by any other nation of so early a knowledge of a game resembling chess, much less of its invention, and it is in the highest degree improbable that any such evidence ever will be forthcoming.

Note.  There are some who do not concur in this wholesale reflection on Indian intelligence, among others, may be mentioned Sir William Jones, Professor Wilson, a writer in Fraser’s, and Professor Duncan Forbes.

AS TO THE SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF CHESS

One of Sir William Jones’ Brahman correspondents, Radha Kant, informed him that it is stated in an old Hindoo law book, that the wife of Ravan King of Lanka, the capital of Ceylon invented chess to amuse him with an image of war, when his metropolis was besieged by Rama in the second age of the world, and this is the only tradition which takes precedence in date of the Hindu Chaturanga.

The Princess Anna Comnena in the life of her father Alexius Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople who died A.D. 1118, informs us that the game of chess which she calls Zatrikion was introduced by the Arabians into Greece, The Arabians had it from the Persians, who say that they themselves did not invent it, but that they received it from the Indians, who brought it into Persia in the time of the Great Chosroes, who reigned in Persia 48 years, and died A.D. 576, he was contemporary with the Emperor Justinian who did A.D. 565.

Of all the claims which have been advanced to the invention and origin of chess, that of the Hindu Game the Chaturanga is the most ancient, and its accounts contain the earliest allusion worthy of serious notice to anything partaking of the principles and form of chess.  The description of it is taken from the Sanskrit text, and our first knowledge of it is obtained through the works of Dr. Hyde, 1693, and Sir William Jones, 1784, Professor Duncan Forbes in a History of Chess, dedicated to Sir Frederic Madden and Howard Staunton, published in 1860, further elaborated the researches of his predecessors and claims by the aid of his better acquaintance with chess, and improved knowledge of the Sanskrit to have proved the Chaturanga as the first form of chess beyond a shadow of doubt.  Accounts of it also appear in native works published in Calcutta and Serampore in the first half of this century, and it receives further confirmation in material points, from eminent Sanskrit scholars, who refer to it rather incidentally than as chess-players.