Читать книгу The History of Chess - H. J. R. Murray - Страница 27

I have already above (p. 150) dealt with the older name of chess in Persia, and shown the importance of the two recorded uses of it. Chatrang is very close in form to the Sanskrit chaturanga, and its existence is a valuable link in the chain of chess history.

The names of the pieces are given in the Chatrang-nāmak and in the Shāhnāma. They are shāh (king), farzīn (wise man, counsellor), pīl (elephant), asp (horse), rukh (chariot), and piyādah (foot-soldier). In the Shāhnāma the word mubāriz (champion) is occasionally used to describe the rukh.

Shāh is the Middle and Modern Persian form of the Old Per. khsháyathiya, which is found on the cuneiform inscriptions on the rock-face of the cliffs at Behistūn. In Pahlawī writing the Huzvārish form malka was used in its place. It has always been the royal title of the Persian monarch. When the Shāh in chess was attacked by any other piece it was usual to call attention to the fact by saying Shāh, it being incumbent upon the player whose Shāh was attacked to move it or otherwise to remedy the check. This usage passed into Arabic, and was adopted in European chess, although with the change in name of the piece it ceased to have any obvious meaning. Indeed in Med. Lat. the word scac in this sense was simply treated as an interjection. When the Shāh was left in check without resource, māt or shāh māt was said. Māt is a Persian adjective meaning ‘at a loss’, ‘helpless’, ‘defeated’, and is a contracted form of the adjective mand, manad, manīd (RAS² uses regularly shāh manad and manad for shāh māt and māt), which is derived from the verb mandan, manīdan, ‘to remain’.¹

When a check ‘forked’ another piece, it was usual to name this second piece also, thus shāh rukh meant a check that also attacked a Rook. In Muslim chess this was a check that would generally decide the game, since the Rook excelled the other pieces so much in value.

Farzīn (later in Ar. as firzān, firz, and firza) is connected with the adjective farzāna, ‘wise’, ‘learned’, ‘and’, means literally ‘a wise man’, ‘a counsellor’. It has no connexion with wazīr, ‘vizier’, and a wise man is not necessarily a vizier. That the piece was at a later time associated with the vizier of the Persian kings and ‘Abbāsid caliphs was due to its position on the chessboard at the side of the king.

Pīl, later Arabicized as fīl, means elephant. It is not, however, a native Persian word, nor is it Skr. Gildemeister suggests that the Persians may have obtained the word from a language that was spoken by some tribe situated between Persia and India. The elephant was not a native Persian animal.

Asp is the ordinary Persian word for horse.

Rukh is less simple. The European dictionary statements that the word means ‘an elephant bearing a tower on its back’, or ‘a camel’, are based upon guesses suggested by the modern carved Parsi pieces, and have no Persian authority whatever behind them. The guess of Herbelot that rukh meant ‘hero’ in Middle Persian has been shown to depend upon the use of the word rukh in the chapter-heading of the legend of the Eleven Champions, which has been added by some later copyists of the Shāhnāma. It is true that Firdawsī does describe the Rukh as a champion or hero, reflecting the rôle that the chariot rider has always played in the Indian epics, just as in Homer. But it is necessary to show that Firdawsī or other early Persian writers used rukh where one would naturally expect mubāriz (hero), and this has not been done.

The word has two other well-established senses in Persian, (1) the cheek, and (2) the fabulous bird, familiar to readers of the Arabian Nights. Its derivation in both these senses is unknown.³

There can be no doubt that the chess-term Rukh meant simply chariot. The regular practice in the westward march of chess has been this: the term the meaning of which was well known to all who used it was translated into the new language and thus was replaced by a native and intelligible word; the term the meaning of which had ceased to be familiar to those who were using it in the land whence chess was travelling was adopted unchanged or in a native dress. Rat·ha can never have been unintelligible in Sanskrit chess circles, and the analogy of the rule followed in the case of every other of the chessmen requires that the Persians translated rat·ha also by some Persian word meaning chariot. Although rukh has never been the ordinary word in use for chariot in Persian, there is some evidence to show that it did bear that meaning both in Persian and Arabic. In Vullers’ Persian Lexicon, Bonn, 1855–64, s.v. shaṭranj (chess), p. 410, a native Persian dictionary is quoted as giving ‘araba as an alternative name for the rukh. ‘Araba is the ordinary Arabic word for chariot, which, like so many other Arabic words, has been adopted as Persian. This makes the authority somewhat late, and accordingly evidences the persistence of this knowledge of the real meaning of rukh in Persia. The knowledge was, of course, by no means general. For Arabic we have two valuable entries in early Arabic-Latin glossaries, the knowledge of which we owe to Dozy. The earlier of these is the Leyden Glossarium MS. 231 from the Leg. Scaliger, the MS. of which is dated 12th c. by palaeographists. Here we have currus, rukhkh;² quadriga rukhkh dhū arba‘a’aflāk (rook of four wheels); and auriga, rukhkh, thumma sāni‘ar-rukhkh (rook, then chariot-maker). In the other glossary, the Vocabulista, a Florence MS. of which has been edited by Schiaparelli (Florence, 1871) we have, p. 106, rukhkh, currus; and, p. 329, currus, ‘ajala,—rukhkh, to which a marginal gloss adds roc de scas. It seems quite clear from these two entries in Spanish glossaries that the word rukhkh was in common use among the Moors in Spain in the sense of chariot. There is also the evidence of the chess-pieces in the Bibl. Nat. at Paris, which are popularly known as Charlemagne’s chessmen, in which the Rook is carved as a two-wheeled chariot with a single man in it. Also a 15–16c. Hebrew MS. (Vatican, 171, f2), which contains a poem on chess (v. d. Linde, i. 180, text, 189), substitutes the chariot for the rook. There is a possible reference in a Latin poem on chess (MS. Einsidlen-sis, 365) which is probably older than 1100 (11. 141–2):

Extremos retinet fines inuectus uterque

Bigis seu rochus, marchio siue magis.

Piyādah, older payādah, which was Arabicized as baidaq, is a derivative of the Persian pai, ‘a foot’, and means a foot-soldier.