Читать книгу History of Chess - H. J. R. Murray - Страница 19

La Loubère, the envoy-extraordinary of Louis XIV of France to the court of Siam in 1687–8, tells, in the account of Siam which he published on his return to Europe,¹² that the Siamese ‘jouent aux échecs à nôtre manière, et à la manière chinoise’. This information agrees with that given by travellers in the present century, and explains the apparent discrepancies that exist between other descriptions of Siamese chess. An admirable account of the games of Siam (first written in 1829) was contributed in 1836 to Asiatic Researches (XX, part ii, pp. 374 seq.) by Capt. James Low, M.R.A.S.C., and Falkener supplements this by giving reliable native information which he obtained from Prince Dewawongse, the Siamese Minister of Foreign Affairs, through the assistance of Mr. E. B. Gould, our consul at Bangkok in 1889.¹³ As the Chinese chess of Siam does not appear to differ materially in move or rale from that of China itself, I propose in the present chapter to confine my attention to the native variety alone.

It is not possible to discover any trace of Indian ancestry in the nomenclature of Siamese chess. This is the more remarkable, for the word chaturanga has actually been adopted in Siamese in the sense of army.¹⁴ The game bears the name of mak-rūk, a word of which both origin and signification have been forgotten. It cannot be explained by reference to any existing Siamese root, and is therefore in all probability a loan-word adopted from some neighbouring language.¹⁵ Loan-words in Siamese often undergo such radical changes that the original word is completely disguised; the language, being originally monosyllabic, although it now shows a large admixture of Burmese and Burmese Pali, has a tendency to reduce all foreign words to a monosyllabic form.

Siamese Chessmen. From the Schachzeitung.

The Siamese chessboard is unchequered, and, so far as information goes, exhibits none of the additional lines that are to be found on the Indian and other boards of the far East.

The Siamese chessmen are fashioned after a conventional pattern, approximating somewhat to European and somewhat to Indian models. For the Pawns it is usual to use cowrie shells, placing them with the aperture downwards. On promotion the player merely turns the shell over so that now the aperture is uppermost. Instead of shells the glass counters used in the Chinese game of wei-k‘i are often used.

The names and power of move of the Siamese pieces are exhibited in the following table:

The meanings of the Siamese names are not altogether certain. Khūn is the ordinary word for nobleman, but the King’s name may be a contraction for Khūn luang, meaning king. Met in Siamese means a small seed or trifle, but the name is not very appropriate, and it has been suggested that met may be really Skr. mantri. The chief objection to this conjecture is the absence of any other trace of Skr. nomenclature. According to Mr. Gould khōn has no meaning at all. Falkener’s conjecture that khōn = Burmese chein (Cox), sin (Shway Yoe), is too far-fetched. Mā is Chinese for horse. Bia means a cowrie shell and is due to the common use of these as Pawns.

The Siamese arrangement of the Chessmen.

The Boat also appears among the chessmen in the Annamese game, and we have already met with it in the modern chess of Bengal, and in the Javan game. I have already expressed the opinion that these coincidences are accidental. Siam and Annam are both countries in which the principal means of communication is by water, and the presence of the Boat in chess may reflect this fact.

The initial arrangement of the game is invariable and yet not that of Indian chess. The Kings are placed crosswise, each met (Q) being on the King’s right. The eight Pawns on each side are all advanced to the third rank. We have already seen that there is some evidence for the existence of this or a similar arrangement in Burmese chess.

The same arrangement of the Pawns upon the third line is found in the Japanese game. The resemblance is probably accidental, although there are other features of Siamese chess which approximate curiously to features of the Japanese game. The fivefold move of the Khōn (B) appears in Japanese chess as the move of the Gin, which also is posted on the third square from the corner (c1, &c.). Still more curious is the fact that in both games the row upon which promotion takes place is the third from the opponent’s edge of the board—in Siamese chess the player’s sixth row, upon which the opponent’s Pawns were originally posted. But the resemblance is probably accidental and extends no further, for, while in Japanese chess pieces and Pawns alike obtain promotion, in the Siamese game promotion is confined to the Pawns. A Pawn reaching the sixth row becomes at once a Met (Q), whether the player’s original Met be on the board or not. There is no limit to the number of Mets that a player may have at any one time.¹⁶

Capt. Low gives the following rules in connexion with the ending (op. cit., 378):

The following are established rules. If a King is left alone to contend, his aim is to get so placed as to prevent being checkmated within a certain number of moves. In the first place, however, the number of pieces actually on the board is deducted from the prescribed number of moves in each case. Thus, if the King has opposed to him a King and two Castles, the number of pieces on the board (4) is deducted from the prescribed number 8. If the adversary has only a Castle, the prescribed number is 16. If he has two Bishops, it is 22. If with one, 44. If with three Knights, 33. If with one Knight, 66. If with a mét, it is a drawn game. If with a Queen or mét and two Pawns, 88 moves; with a Queen, Bishop, Knight, and Castle, 16 moves are prescribed,¹⁷

This is a curious attempt to overcome the slowness of the game: of all varieties of chess that I have studied, the Burmese and Siamese are the most tedious and prolonged.

Stalemate is a drawn game.

The differences between Siamese and Burmese chess have the effect of making the former game at once older and more modern in type. The existence of an initial arrangement of the men in Siamese chess, and the absence of any limitations to Pawn-promotion, belong to an older type of game than the Burmese, while the crosswise arrangement, and the larger powers of move of King and Met are more modern in type than anything in the existing Burmese game.

The following specimen of Siamese chess was supplied by Prince Dewawongse to Mr. Gould and is taken from Falkener. The white men were played by Chong Kwa and Coy consulting, the black by Nai Chang. All three were reputed to be good players.

The Siamese have paid no attention to the End-game or the chess problem.