and profound secret from the King of Hind.  Writers who concur in or do not dissent from either of these accounts, yet differ as to which should take priority in point of date, the more reasonable supposition seems to be, that Burzuvia not unwilling to propitiate Chosroes’ favourite vizier and Counsellor, reserved his knowledge from all but Buzerjmihr in which no doubt he exercised wise policy and did not himself go unrewarded.  The chief Counsellor and vizier of a great King was a desirable person to conciliate in those days, and afterwards as is abundantly proved throughout Eastern history and dynastics from the time of Abu Bekr, Omar, Osman, Abdullah, and the Prophet, and later from Harun, and Al Mamun (786-833) even to the time of the enlightened Akbar, (1556-1605), continued examples are to be found in the reigns of the rulers through all these ages where the real sway vested in the vizier who frequently combined a great knowledge of learning with an extraordinary capacity for war.

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The ten advantages of chess according to the Persian
philosopher, are thus given in translation.

The “first advantage” of which the commencement is wanting in the M.S., turns chiefly on the benefits of food and exercise for the mind in which chess is marked out as an active agent, intended by its inventor to conduce to intellectual energy in pursuit of knowledge, for as the human body is nourished by eating which is its food, and from which it obtains life and strength, and without which the body dies, so the mind of man is nourished by learning which is the food of the soul, and without which he would incur spiritual death; that is ignorance, and it is current that a wise man’s sleep is better than a fool’s devotion.  The glory of man then is knowledge, and chess is the nourishment of the mind, the solace of the spirit, the polisher of intelligence, the bright sun of understanding, and has been preferred by the philosopher its inventor, to all other means by which we arrive at wisdom.

The Second Advantage is in Religion, illustrating the Muhammedan doctrines of predestination (Sabr and Cadar) by the free will of man in playing chess, moving when he will, or where he will, and which piece he thinks best, but restricted in some degree by compulsion, as he may not play against certain laws, nor give to one piece the move of another, whereas, on the contrary, Nerd (Eastern Backgammon) is mere free will, while in Dice again all is compulsion.  This argument is pursued at some length in the text.  Passing from this singular application of theology to chess play, we find the Third Advantage relates to Government, the principles of which the author declares to be best learned from chess.  The board is compared to the world, and the adverse sets of men to two monarchs with their subjects, each possessing one half of the world, and with true eastern ambition desiring the other, but unable to accomplish his design without the utmost caution and policy.  Perwiz and Ardeshir are quoted as having attributed all their wisdom of government to the study and knowledge of chess.