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Table of Contents

A variety of stories.—The oldest versions associated with India.—The connexion with nard.—The earlier legends from the chess MSS., al-Ya‘qūbī, al-Maṣ‘ūdī and Firdawsī.—The dramatis personae.—The story of the reward for the invention.—The Geometrical progression in literature.—Later stories introducing Adam, the sons of Noah, &c., and Aristotle.

The main facts of the earlier history of chess were well recognized by the older Muslim historians and chess-writers. They admit without reservation that the ordinary chess on the board of 64 squares was originally an Indian game which had reached them through the medium of Persia. But they were not content to leave the history in so bare a dress, and they endeavoured to take it farther back, to find a motive for the invention of the game, and to explain the manner of its discovery. Only in all this they had no historical foundations upon which to build other than the obvious relationship in arrangement, plan, and nomenclature that existed between the game of chess and the army and the tactics of war. This left an excellent opportunity for the literary artist, and he did not hesitate to adorn the story with details derived from his own imagination. Thus there appeared in quite early Muslim times a number of stories, more or less plausible, to account for the invention of chess, and the compilers of works on chess, from al-‘Adlī down, were diligent in collecting these from the sources at their service. Even writers of repute like al-Ya‘qūbī (c. 297/907) and al-Maṣ‘ūdī found a place for them in the pages of their historical works, while Firdawsī gave literary shape to one of the most widely known in the Shāhnāma. We find single legends repeatedly also in MSS. of miscellaneous contents in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish.

When we survey the material¹ at our disposal we find that the legends fall into three groups: those which are connected with India, those which associate the game with characters drawn from Scripture history, and those which bring in noted names from Greek philosophy. These two last groups are of later date, and have none of the detail that accompanies the stories of the first group, and it is not difficult to see a motive for the departure from the earlier association with India.

The legends of the earlier group are all, openly or tacitly, concerned with an Indian king or with the wise men of India. The connexion, however, is quite general, in that a special kingdom or district of India is seldom specified. The earlier Muslim writers appear to have formed their conception of a country on the model of the Eastern Roman Empire, or of the Sāsānian Empire which their forefathers had overturned.² India was to them a single kingdom, and it was long before they discovered that India was a geographical, not a political entity. Only a few of the legends give names to the king or sage of whom they treat, and still fewer attempt to fix the date at which the events they are recording took place. The ordinary story is quite indeterminate as to locality, dramatis personae, and date.

Several legends, however, connect the invention of chess in some way or other with the game of nard (tables, backgammon). We have already met with one instance of this association of games in the story of the introduction of chess into Persia in the time of Nūshīrwān. This linking of two games that to us seem so dissimilar—chess, a game in which chance plays the smallest of parts, and nard, a game in which chance plays the dominant part—appears somewhat singular, yet no association of games has been so persistent or has endured so long. It was not only prominent in Muslim lands, where it runs all through the legal discussion, the literature, and the traditions, but even in Christian Europe chess and tables appear in constant juxtaposition. The player of chess appears almost everywhere in the literature of the Middle Ages as a player of tables also, and the larger European problem MSS. treat of chess, tables, and merels. In these collections, however, the essential distinction between chess and tables is minimized, since in most of the problems on tables the constraint of the dice has been replaced by the liberty to select the throw desired, but this is, so far as the evidence goes, a purely European innovation. In Muslim literature it is upon the essential difference between chess as the game of skill and nard as the game of chance that stress is everywhere laid. The player’s complete liberty to select the move he wished to make in chess is contrasted with the player’s subjugation to the dominion of blind chance in nard. Throughout the legends with which I am about to deal, nard appears as the older and chess as the younger game; this is the reverse of what we find in the Nūshīrwān story as told in the Chatrang-nāmak and in the Shāhnāma. There, it will be remembered, the invention of nard is Buzūrjmihr’s reply to the Indian challenge to discover the nature of chess.

One of the older legends which occurs in AH (f. 1 b), C (f. 1 b), and V (f. 2 a), with the omission of all proper names, as an extract from the work of al-‘Adlī, and in almost identical words, with the addition of the proper names, in the Ta’rīkh of al-Ya‘qūbī (ed. Houtsma, Lugd. Bat., 1883, i. 99–102), brings the two games together. In this legend, an Indian monarch named Hashrān is represented as appealing to an Indian sage, Qaflān by name, to devise a game that should symbolize man’s dependence upon destiny and fate, and depict the way in which these forces work by means of man’s environment. The philosopher accordingly invented the game of nard, and explained to the king that the board stood for the year. It had 24 points (‘houses’) in all, because there are 24 hours to the day. It was arranged in two halves, each with 12 points to symbolize the 12 months of the year, or the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The number of men (‘dogs’) was 30, because there are 30 days to the month. The two dice³ stood for day and night. The faces were arranged with the 6 opposite to the 1, the 5 opposite to the 2, and the 4 opposite to the 3, so that the total of the dots on each pair of opposite faces should be 7, to bring in the number of days of the week and the 7 luminaries of the heavens.⁴ The players threw one of the dice in order to determine the order of play, and the one who secured the higher throw commenced, and moved his men in obedience to the throws given by the two dice. In this way man’s dependence upon fate for good or evil fortune was made evident. Hashrān was delighted with the game and introduced it in India, where it became extremely popular.

At a later date there arose a king, Balhait by name, who was advised by a Brahman that this game was contrary to the precepts of his religion. The king accordingly planned to replace nard by a new game, that should demonstrate the value of such qualities as prudence, diligence, thrift, and knowledge, and in this way oppose the fatalist teaching of nard. His Brahman friend undertook the task, and invented chess, explaining its name of shaṭranj by the Persian hashat-ranj, in which hashat means eight and ranj means side.⁵ The board was 8 by 8 squares, and there were 16 men (kalba, = dogs) on either side, viz. shāh, firz, 2 fīls, 2 faras, 2 rukhs, and 8 pawns. It was made on the model of war, because war is the most effective school for teaching the value of administration, decision, prudence, caution, arrangement, strategy, circumspection, vigour, courage, force, endurance, and bravery. Balhait was charmed with the game, and did his best to induce his subjects to adopt it in the place of nard.

Al-Maṣ‘ūdī’s version of the story is very similar, but there is some variation in the characters of the story. He does not, however, give it as one story, but places the two incidents in what he considered to be their proper chronology. Thus in ch. vii of his Murūj adh-dhahab (ed. cit., i. 157), under the reign of al-Bāhbūd, the eldest son of al-Barahman, we read:

It was at this time that nard and its rules were invented. It is symbolical of property, which is not the reward of intelligence or strength in this world, just as possessions are not gained by scheming. Others say that Ardashīr b. Bābak discovered and invented this game, which was suggested to him by the contemplation of the changes and caprices of fortune. He made its points 12 after the number of the months, and the men (‘dogs’) 30, after the number of days in the month. The two dice represent fate and its capricious dealings with men. The player, when the chances are favourable, secures what he wants; but the ready and prudent man cannot succeed in gaining what a happy chance has given to the other. Thus it is that property is due in this world to a fortunate chance.

A little later in the same chapter (ed, cit., i. 159) we read:

The next king (to Dabshalim) was Balhait. At this time chess was invented, which the king preferred to nard, because in this game skill always succeeds against ignorance. He made mathematical calculations on chess, and wrote a book on it called Taraq jankā,⁶ which has continued popular among the Indians. He often played chess with the wise men of his court, and it was he who represented the pieces by the figures of men and animals, and assigned them grades and ranks. He likened the Shāh to the chief ruler, and similarly with the rest of the pieces. He also made of this game a kind of allegory of the heavenly bodies (the 7 planets and the 12 zodiacal signs), and dedicated each piece to a star. The game of chess became a school of government and defence; it was consulted in time of war, when military tactics were about to be employed, to study the more or less rapid movements of troops. The Indians ascribe a mysterious interpretation to the doubling of the squares of the chessboard; they establish a connexion between the First Cause which soars above the spheres and on which everything depends, and the sum of the square of its squares. This number equals 18,446,744,073,709,551,615 … The Indians explain by these calculations the march of time and of the ages, the higher influences which govern the world, and the bonds which link them to the human soul. The Greeks (al-Yūnānīyan), the Byzantines (ar-Rūm), &c. have special theories and methods about this game, as we may see in the works of the chess-players from the most ancient down to aṣ-Sūlī and al-‘Adlī, the two most famous players of our time. Balhait reigned until his death, for 84 or, as other authorities say, 300 years. [His successor was Qūrush.]

The same legend, but told more baldly and with omission of names, occurs in Man., f. 16 b. The root idea of the story is seen in the witty remark which al-Maṣ‘ūdī quotes on a later stage of the same book (ed. cit., viii. 320), at the close of some additional remarks on nard.

Lastly, a Muslim philosopher has maintained that the inventor of chess was a mu‘taẓilite believer in the freedom of the will, while the inventor of nard was a fatalist who wished to show by this game that man can do nothing against fate, and that the true wisdom is to mould one’s life in agreement with the decrees of chance.

It is assumed in this legend that nard was a game of Indian invention,, and in so far the story is opposed to the other tradition, that nard was the invention of Artakhshīr the son of Bābakān, the first of the Sāsānian kings of Persia (A.D. 226–40), which is quoted at length in BM f. 5 b, in H f. 4 b, and in Man. f. 16 a. The attempt was made by later writers to bring the two legends into harmony by introducing modifications into the chess story. The motive for the discovery of chess is no longer the moral improvement of the Indian nard-players, but becomes the humiliation of the Persians. King Balhait is represented as being so aggrieved at the boastings of the Persians because of their discovery of nard, that he called upon a philosopher of his court, Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, to invent a game that should transcend nard. The game of chess was Ṣaṣṣa’s reply. We find this in the chess MSS. H (f. 5 a), and Man. (f. 16 a)—in the latter from b. Taimīya (D. 728/1328).

It is this story which is included in the life of aṣ-Ṣūlī the chess-player in the K. wafayāt al-a‘yān of b. Khallikān (D. 681/1282),⁷ whence it was taken by aṣ-Ṣafadī (D. 764/1363) in his Sharḥ Lāmīyat al-‘Ajam, and by b. Sukaikir (S f. 25 a).

I have met many people who thought that aṣ-Ṣūlī was the inventor of chess. This is a mistake, for chess was invented by Ṣiṣṣa b. Dāhir for King Shihrām. Ardashīr b. Bābak, the founder of the last Persian dynasty, discovered nard, which was hence named nardashīr. Balhait was King of India at that time, and Ṣiṣṣa invented chess for him. The wise men of that time held it to be more excellent than nard. It is said that when Ṣiṣṣa had invented chess and produced it to King Shihrām, the latter was filled with amazement and joy. He ordered that it should be preserved in the temples, and held it the best thing that he knew as a training in the art of war, a glory to religion and the world, and the foundation of all justice. He expressed his joyful thanks for the favour which heaven had granted to his reign through such a discovery, and said to Ṣiṣṣa, ‘Ask whatever you desire,’ &c.

There is an obvious contradiction in this allusion, and both of the later writers endeavoured to remove it. Aṣ-Ṣafadī omits all mention of Shihrām, and names the Indian monarch Balhait throughout. B. Sukaikir, on the contrary, calls the monarch Shihrām and expressly describes him as an Indian king. He adds the note: ‘Some say that it was invented for Balhith, e.g. al-Yāfi‘ī.’⁸

The analogy existing between chess and war is the motive for four legends which are peculiar to the chess books. In one of these (BM f. 4 a, H f. 6 a, and RAS) the game is invented to find a distraction for a king who was passionately fond of war, but who had overcome all his enemies and was falling ill from ennui at not being able to pursue his favourite occupation. A philosopher produced for him chess, and showed him how he could still conduct forces and devise tactics in this game. The king tried the game, ascertained that the philosopher had spoken truly, and found distraction and health in playing chess. All the MSS. place the scene in India, H has no names for the characters of the story, BM calls the philosopher Ṣuṣa b. Dāhir, while RAS names the king Kaid, and the philosopher Ṣaṣṣa, placing the event shortly after the invasion of Alexander the Great. In this particular version, however, Ṣaṣṣa merely abridges the ‘Complete Chess’⁹ by reducing the size of the board from 11 by 11 to 8 by 8 squares, and the number of pieces from 56 to 32, because the Indians were incapable of appreciating so complicated a game. The complete chess itself was the invention of a Greek sage, Hermes, and had been introduced into India by Alexander and his soldiers.

In the second of these (AH f. 3 a, C f. 4 a, V f. 5 a, from al-‘Adlī’s work, and in RAS) the game is invented to assist in the military education of a young prince who pleaded that he was incompetent to lead his armies in war owing to his want of experience. The game of chess is alleged to have given the necessary training in tactics to convert him into an efficient commander. In both manuscript accounts the scene is laid in India, but RAS alone attempts to determine the characters of the story. These are stated to have been the young son and successor of Fūr (Pauras, the opponent of Alexander) and his vizier Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir. RAS again substitutes the abridgement of a Greek game for the invention of a new one.

The third story again represents chess as invented for the purpose of affording an opportunity for the practice of military tactics, and only differs from the previous legend in the matter of the particular circumstance of the invention. This story occurs in AH f. 3 b (C f. 4 b, Vf. 5 b, H f. 6 a, Man. f. 15 b, Y and S) as one of the three versions occurring in al-‘Adlī’s book. Its special interest consists in the fact that the game is represented as invented for a certain king¹⁰ named Shahrām¹¹ by the Indian sage Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, who gave the game to the king ‘with the 14 ta‘bīyāt which are depicted in this book’.¹² The story of the reward is attached in AH to this story. B. Khallikān, at the end of his biography of aṣ-Ṣūlī the chess-player, interpolates a reference to this story when he mentions Shihrām as the monarch for whom Ṣiṣṣa b. Dāhar invented chess.

The fourth story is told in Man. f. 15 a, on the authority of b. Makhsharī. It is to the effect that a certain King of India, who was peaceably inclined, procured the invention of chess in order that his fellow-monarchs might settle their disputes over the board without effusion of blood.

I have left to the last what is probably the oldest of all the legends on the subject, dating back to pre-Muhammadan days. I have already called attention to the allusion to it in the tradition connecting the caliph ‘Omar b. al-Khaṭṭāb with chess, which I believe to be a genuine tradition. The legend is neither in al-‘Adlī (AH) nor in al-Maṣ‘ūdī, but al-Ya‘qūbī has a version of it which is interesting because of some of the details (ed. cit., i. 102–5).

It is related by some of the wise men of India that when Ḥūsīya, the daughter of Balhait, was Queen, a rebel rose against her. Now she was a prophetess with four children, and she invested her son. And the rebel slew her son. Now the men of her kingdom honoured him, and they guarded against her learning it. So they went to the philosopher Qaflān who was possessed of knowledge, wisdom, and prudence, and told him of it. He asked for three days and they granted it. He spent the time in thought. Then he called his disciple, ‘Summon a carpenter with wood of two colours, white and black.’ Then he devised the chessmen and ordered the carpenter to carve them. Next he called to him, ‘Bring me tanned leather.’ He ordered him to mark 64 squares on it, and he did so. Then he arranged a side, and studied it until he understood and had learnt it. Then he said to his disciple, ‘This is war without bloodshed.’ So he came to the men of the kingdom and produced it, and when they saw it they knew that no one exceeded him in wisdom. He made his disciple fight, and there befell shāh māt, and the Shāh was conquered. Now the Queen was interested in the news about Qaflān, and she visited him and bade him show her his invention. He called his disciple with the chess, and arranged it square by square. They played, and the winner said shāh māt. And she remembered and knew what he wished her to know, and she said to Qaflān, ‘My son is dead.’ He said, ‘You have said it.’ Then she said to the doorkeeper, ‘Let the people enter to comfort me.’ And when she had made an end, she summoned Qaflān and said to him, ‘Ask what you will.’ He said, ‘Give me a gift in grains of corn upon the squares of the chessboard. On the first square one grain (on the second two), on the third square double of that on the second, and continue in the same way until the last square.’ She said, ‘How much is this?’ and she ordered the corn to be brought. So they went on until she had exhausted the corn in the country. Then he estimated its value in money, and received that. And when this went on for a long time, he said, ‘I have no need of it: a small portion of worldly goods suffices me.’ Then she asked him about the number of grains that he had demanded.

Whereupon follows the total of the Geometrical Progression, which I give below.

There is a brief allusion to this story in H f. 6 a, but it is best known through its inclusion in the Shāhnāma (ii. 2889–3431; in Mohl’s edition, Paris, 1868, vi. 400–444),¹³ where Firdawsī names as his immediate authority a certain Shāhūī. As Nöldeke has pointed out,¹⁴ this is probably a misreading of the name Māhūī, Māhūī Chorsēdh, the son of Bahram of Shāpūr, being one of the four Zoroastrian priests to whom Abū Manṣūr al-Ma‘marī entrusted the work of arranging the national annals of Persia in A.D. 957–8. The section now bears the title of ‘The history of Gau and Talkhand, with the invention of chess’. The titles of the various sections do not, however, go back to Firdawsī.

The story treats of some incidents in the history of a kingdom in North-West India, which comprised Kashmīr and all the land to the confines of China, with Ṣandalī for capital. A king of this realm, Jamhūr, who excelled Fūr (Pauras) in fame, had died, leaving a widow and an infant son, Gau. He was succeeded by his brother, Mai, who married the widow and, after a short reign, died, leaving an infant son, Talkhand, who was five years younger than his half-brother. During the minority the widow held the regency, the question of the ultimate succession being left in abeyance. Each of the princes considered that his claim was the stronger, and their mother foolishly encouraged each in turn. As the boys grew up, the disputes became more bitter, and Talkhand adopted a most aggressive attitude. Gau, on the other hand, was as conciliatory as possible. Finally, however, Talkhand forced an appeal to the arbitrament of war. Gau gave the strictest instructions to his supporters that Talkhand’s life was to be spared. In the first battle Gau was successful, but Talkhand managed to collect his scattered forces, and a second battle took place close to the sea-shore. At the close of the battle, Talkhand was separated from his army and surrounded by the forces of his opponent, but when these came up to him, he was found to be already dead. The tidings plunged his mother into the deepest sorrow, and in her grief she accused Gau of slaying his brother. Gau defended himself, but to no purpose, and finally he offered to destroy himself if he could not demonstrate clearly to her how Talkhand’s death really happened. In order to compass this, Gau took counsel with his tutor, and by his advice convened all the wise men of the kingdom and laid the case before them. After a whole night’s consideration,

These experienced men ordered ebony to be brought, and two strong men made from it a square board to represent the ditch, the field of battle, and the armies drawn up opposite one another. They marked on this board 100 squares on which the armies and the two kings were to move, and finally they made two armies of teak and ivory, and two kings with heads erect, majestic and crowned. The infantry and cavalry formed the ranks in the battle array. They carved the figures of horses, elephants, viziers, and brave men charging on horseback against the enemy, all just as they went to the battle, some leaping in their haste, others moving calmly.¹⁵ Ready for battle, the Shāh (king) stood in the centre; on one side was the Firzāna (counsellor), his faithful companion. Next to the Shāh on both sides were two Pīls (elephants) who raised a dust, dark as indigo, about the throne. Two Shuturs (camels) were placed next to the Pīls, and two men of pure intention were mounted on them. Next to the Shuturs were two Asps (horses) with their riders, ready to fight on the day of battle. As warriors the two Rukhs at the two ends of the lines of battle raised their empty hands to the lips, as if to drink the foe’s heart’s blood. In front and rear moved the Piyāda (foot-soldiers), who were to come to the assistance of the others in the battle; if any pressed through to the other end of the field of battle, he was placed beside the Shāh like the Firzāna. The brave Firzāna never moved in the battle more than one square from his Shāh. The mighty Pīl ran through three squares, and observed the whole battle-field, two miles wide. The Shutur also ran through three squares, snorting and stamping on the field. The Asp’s move also extended over three squares, in crossing which one of the squares remained untouched. To all sides ran the vindictive Rukh, and he crossed the whole field of battle. Each piece moved in its own area, and made neither less nor more than its appointed move.¹⁶ If any one saw the Shāh in the battle, he cried aloud, ‘Remove, O Shāh!’ and the Shāh left his square until he was able to move no longer. The other Shāh, the Asp, Rukh, Farzīn, Pīl, and Piyādas had closed the road to him. When the Shāh had looked about him on all four sides, and with knit brows had seen his army overthrown, and his road barred by the water and the ditch, while the enemy were to left and right, before and behind, he died (was mate) of weariness and thirst.

Gau took this game of chess which thus explained the death of Talkhand to his mother. She continued to study it day and night without desiring food, until death released her from her sorrow. And from that time the chessboard has remained in the knowledge of mankind.

It is somewhat remarkable that in this legend Firdawsī has replaced the ordinary chess by a variety requiring an enlarged board, when no motive for the change can be discovered. As will be seen from the account of the derived forms of chess in Chapter XVI, he has not even adopted the standard variety on the 10 by 10 board of the chess books, but describes a form that is not mentioned elsewhere. The legend is repeated in RAS, as from the Shāhnāma, but the author of that MS. set out with the deliberate intention of enhancing the age and importance of another modification of chess, the Complete chess that was preferred by his sovereign the Mongol Tīmūr, and he has substituted for Firdawsī’s account of the invention a new version which makes Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir abridge the Complete chess into a game on the 8 by 8 board. We have already seen that he has dealt similarly with two other older legends.

Gildemeister (cf. Qst., 16) has expressed dissatisfaction with the ordinary texts of the Shāhnāma for this story. He points out that there is much variety of text in accessible MSS., and suggests that a scribal error first led to the appearance of the camel in one line which gives the names of the pieces, and that then later scribes restored the self-consistency of Firdawsī’s description by altering the dimensions of the board from 8 by 8 to 10 by 10, and introducing the lines relating to the camel’s position and move. It is much to be desired that a critical examination of the known MSS. could be made, but the immensity of the task of doing this for the Shāhnāma has probably deterred scholars from attempting it. The gain would not be worth the toil, except for points like the present, which do not touch the literary or historical value of the epic.

There is, however, at least one other work which makes the same substitution of the 10 by 10 board for the 8 by 8. This is the short history of ar-Ristāmī (840/1436–7), contained in MS. Gotha Arab. 1738 (old 1419). It mentions the introduction of chess into Persia thus (f. 3 a)—

After the sage Barzūya had brought the K. Kalīla wa Dimna from India with the Complete chess (ash-shaṭranj at-tamma), which has 10 by 10 squares, he translated it from Indian into Persian.

To this, however, I attach no importance. I do not know what authorities this late writer followed.

Various attempts have been made to identify the characters whose names recur most frequently in these legends, on the assumption that the names are really Indian in origin. The task is, however, one of great, if not insuperable, difficulty. The history of India, as it appears in the pages of early Muslim writers, is as unreal as their knowledge of the condition of India in their own days. Foreign names were peculiarly liable to misrepresentation when they were put into an Arabic dress. Moreover we are not certain of the forms of the proper names in the legends.¹⁷ The reader will have already noticed how I have used different vowels with different MSS. In the older Arabic MSS. the short vowels are unmarked, and when MSS. began to contain instructions as to the vocalization of the names, it was too late for them to have any historical authority behind, and the directions are based upon the analogy of native Arabic words. How unsafe a guide this analogy could be, we have already seen in the substitution of shiṭranj for shaṭranj. But there are other elements of uncertainty and error that are more serious still. The accuracy of the consonants in Arabic depends upon the close and accurate copying of the diacritical marks which distinguish many of the letters. Errors were always possible, but they are most dangerous in the case of foreign words, where detection is most difficult. If, again, the word has been derived from Pahlawī MSS., as is not impossible in the case of some of these legends, there is the additional possibility of error due to the deficiencies of the Pahlawī script. Nöldeke¹⁸ sees nothing impossible in tracing Shihrām or Shahrām, al-Ya‘qūbī’s Hashrān, the Dabshalīm of the Kalīla wa Dimna, and the Dewasarm of the Chatrang-nāmak all back to one Pahlawī original. If this be so, how can we feel certain of anything?

Among other suggestions as to the identity of Shahrām are Hyde’s (ii. 60), that the name is a scribal error for Baharam or Bahram, a name which occurs frequently among the Sāsānian kings, and also was used in India; and Pertsch’s, that Shahrām = Shāh Rāma (v. d. Linde, ii. 441). Sir H. M. Elliott in his History of India by its own historians (i. 409–10) suggests that Shahrām was Shahr Irān or Shahriyār (i.e. Kobād Shīrūyah), one of the last of the Sāsānian kings of Persia, who ruled for a few months (A.D. 628–9) during the disturbed period that followed the death of Khusraw II Parwīz. He, however, assumed that b. Khallikān described Shihrām as a Persian king, which is not the case. In any case it is difficult to see why the least important of all the Sāsānians should have been selected to adorn the legend. I return to Elliott’s argument below.

Balhait, Balhīt or Balhīth is the other Indian king who is frequently mentioned in the stories. Hyde (ii. 62) says that the form Balhīb also occurs. He suggested that these forms, which in the Arabic only differ in the diacritical dots to the last consonant, are intended to represent the Indian dynasty of the Balabhi or Balhara, who ruled in Guzerat from A.D. 319 to 613. This would make the name a title and not a personal name, and in this way he explains the apparent contradiction in the legend as given by b. Khallikān. This is ingenious, but not convincing, since other Arabic writers frequently use the correct form Balhara. It is, however, the only close resemblance that I can discover. Al-Maṣūdī’s succession of Indian kings—Barahman, 366 years; al-Bāhbūd, 100 years; Ramāh, 150 years; Fūr, 140 years (the Pauras or Porus of Alexander’s time, B.C. 326); Dabshalim, 120 years; Balhīth, 80 or 300 years; Kūrush, 120 years (who was followed by many Princes down to al-Ballahra, who was al-Maṣ‘ūdī’s contemporary in A.D. 943)—is of no assistance whatever to the solution of the difficulty.

Although no light has been thrown on the name Qaflān, the more ordinary name given to the inventor himself, viz. Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir,¹⁹ appears to be satisfactorily explained. These two names occur in connexion with a Brahman dynasty which ruled in the lower Scinde towards the close of the Umayyad caliphate, when the Muhammadans conquered this part of India. The kings of this family were Khakha, 632–72; Khandar, 672–79; Dāhir, 679–712. Khakha, the founder of the dynasty, appears in Persian histories as Chach the son of Silāīj, and in Arabic histories (aṭ-Ṭabarī, and al-Balādhūrī) as Ṣaṣṣa, while his son Dāhir retains his Indian name. Al-Balādhūrī gives the latter a son Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, but only mentions him incidentally as having fled from the Muslims to a certain fortress. Elliott,²⁰ who develops the identification, is inclined to see more in it than a coincidence or a conscious appropriation of names. He thinks that the king Khakha or Ṣaṣṣa was the cause of the introduction of chess to the Western world, and associates in the story the nearly contemporary Sāsānian Shahriyār (Shīrūyah). I do not think that this view can be made to harmonize with the history of the game as now known. It puts the introduction into Persia too late for the facts, it ignores the difficulties that Shahrām in the stories is an Indian, not a Persian king, that Ṣaṣṣa is the son, not the father, of Dāhir, that Ṣaṣṣa is a philosopher, not a usurping monarch. I think the truth is to be found in the view that the earliest teller of the legend chose the Indian names that were most familiar to his generation, in order to give verisimilitude to his story. This leaves to Khakha the more modest share in the history of chess of lending his name to the hero of chess-romance.

Bland (62) suggested that Ṣaṣṣa is a corruption of the name Xerxes, and identified him with the philosopher who in European fable is associated with the discovery of chess.²¹ I am inclined to agree with his identification, only I think the perversion of name has been in the other direction, and that the European Xerxes is an attempt to explain the Arabic Ṣaṣṣa.

All the MSS., al-Ya‘qūbī, and b. Khallikān add to one or other of their legends a conclusion which tells how the philosopher was rewarded for his invention of chess. When the king invited him to choose his own reward, he is said to have asked for a quantity of corn which was to be placed upon the chessboard in a particular way. The first square was to hold one grain,²² the second two, the third four, the fourth eight, and so on, each square containing double the number of grains that were placed upon the preceding square. The quantity of corn asked is, of course, enormous, the number of grains being the sum of a geometrical progression of sixty-four terms, with 1 for the first term and 2 for the common ratio. The total is 2⁶⁴ –1, or

18,446,744,073,709,551,615 grains,

a quantity which would cover England to a uniform depth of 38·4 feet.²³ It is added that the king did not know which to admire the most, the invention of chess or the ingenuity of the request.

This calculation is undoubtedly of Indian origin, the early Indian mathematicians being notoriously given to long-winded problems of this character. In its earliest form it may be older than chess, and be based upon the ashṭāpada board.²⁴ I have already quoted a passage from al-Maṣ‘ūdī in which he speaks of the importance which the Indians attached to the sum of the Progression. It would appear to have also been a favourite calculation among the Muslims, though they generally shirked the complete solution by reducing to larger units whenever the figures grew inconveniently large. This also made the immensity of the sum more easy of comprehension. Thus al-Bērūnī reduces the total to 2,305 mountains ‘which is more than the world contains’. He also makes use of the real sum in his Al-āthār al-bāqiya (ed. Sachau, Leipzig, 1878, and Eng. tr., London, 1879) to illustrate the different systems of numeration current in his day. At least two Arabic treatises were written on the problem, viz. the Taḍ‘if buyūt ash-shaṭranj of al-Missisī (9–10th c. A.D.)²⁵ and the Taḍ‘if‘adad ruq‘a ash-shaṭranj of al-Akfānī (D. 749/1348), and several shorter discussions occur in MSS. which I have seen. The MS. Man. gives no less than five methods of treating the problem, one from b. Khallikān (who naïvely states that he did not believe the total could be so great until he met an accountant of Alexandria who showed him the actual calculation), two from ar-Rāghib,²⁶ the fourth from the Durrat al-muḍī’a of Quṭbaddīn Muḥammad b. ‘Abdalqādir, and the fifth from al-Akfānī. MS. Gotha Ar. 1343 has also three calculations, the last of which is interesting since the story is different from the usual one. In this a Sultan who used to challenge all comers at chess, beheading all whom he defeated, after beating ninety-nine opponents met his superior in a dervish. The latter claimed the usual reward—in dirhems.

The calculation reached Europe with the Arabic mathematics, and was discussed by Leonardo Pisano in his Liber Abbaci. Other European references to the Progression will be found below in Part II, Chapter IX.

The later Arabic legends which bring chess into association with Bible history need not detain us. They are clearly an attempt to rehabilitate the game of chess at a time when the legal schools were looking with disfavour upon it. The earliest record of this type of tradition that I know occurs in the preface to aṣ-Ṣūlī’s K. ash-shaṭranj. After referring to al-‘Adlī’s statement that chess was invented by Ṣaṣṣa b. Dāhir, aṣ-Ṣūlī goes on to say that this is a fabrication which he had found in many works. For himself he preferred to accept the ‘statement based on sound tradition’ which he traces back to Ka‘b al-Akhbār, one of the most notorious forgers of traditions that Islam ever knew, that chess was invented by Būshāqūs, Yūsh‘a b. Nūn (Joshua) and Kālab b. Yūfannā (Caleb), and that the first who played the game was Qārūn (Korah). Būshāqūs taught the game to the Persians. Later writers are still more daring in their assertions. The MS. H suggests that chess was invented by Adam to console himself for the death of Abel, and numbers Shem, Japhet, and King Solomon among the chess-players.

From the time of al-Ma’mūn onwards, the writings of the more famous Greek philosophers became known to the Muslim world in translation. It was, perhaps, inevitable that the scattered allusions to the Greek board-games which occur in Plato and other writers should be misapplied to chess, but to this we owe the statements in H and later chess books that Aristotle, Galen, and Hippocrates were also chess-players.