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THEORIES AS TO THE INVENTION OF CHESS

In the second volume of the “History of British India,” by James Mill, Esq., we are told that the Araucanians invented the game of chess.

Forbes sums up an article upon this claim by saying, “We must in charity suppose that Mr. Mill really knew nothing of chess, whether Hindu, Persian, or Chinese.”

Professor Wilson’s opinion of Mr. Mill’s work is better worth recording.  “History of British India,” by James Mill, Esq., fourth edition, with notes and continuation, by Horace Hayman Wilson, M.A., F.R.S., &c., London 1840, 9 vols., 8 vo., Vide Preface by Professor Wilson, page vii, &c.

Of the proofs which may be discovered in Mr. Mill’s history of the operation of preconceived opinions, in confining a vigorous and active understanding to a partial and one-sided view of a great question, no instance is more remarkable than the unrelenting pertinacity with which he labours to establish the barbarism of the Hindus.  Indignant at the exalted, and it may be granted, sometimes exaggerated descriptions of their advance in civilization, of their learning, their sciences, their talents, their virtues which emanated from the amiable enthusiasm of Sir William Jones, Mr. Mill has entered the lists against him with equal enthusiasm, but a less commendable purpose, and has sought to reduce them as far below their proper level as their encomiasts may have formerly elevated them above it.  With very imperfect knowledge, with materials exceedingly defective, with an implicit faith in all testimony hostile to Hindu pretensions, he has elaborated a portrait of the Hindus which has no resemblance whatever to the original, and which almost outrages humanity.  As he represents them, the Hindus are not only on a par with the least civilized nations of the old and new world, but they are plunged almost without exception in the lowest depths of immorality and crime.  Considered merely in a literary capacity, the description of the Hindus, in the history of British India is open to censure for its obvious unfairness and injustice, but in the effect which it is likely to exercise upon the connexion between the people of England and the people of India, it is chargeable with more than literary element, its tendency is evil, it is calculated to destroy all sympathy between the rulers and the ruled.

A writer in Fraser’s Magazine, observes:  “The native of India is defective in that mental and moral energy, that restless enterprise, which distinguishes the Anglo Saxon genius, and which gives him such a preponderance over the impassive and contemplative Oriental, but, on the other hand, the native of India possesses in a high degree that acute perception and common sense strengthened by numerical traditions and maxims, which enable him to judge correctly of both the acts and motives of his Foreign superior.  It should be recollected to their credit, that the germ of almost every known invention, the original idea of nearly every useful secret in arts, the knowledge of the highest branches of the abstract sciences, had been familiar to the wise men of the East, and were taught in the most perfect language in the world, the mother of all other languages, the Sanskrit.