Читать книгу History of Chess - H. J. R. Murray - Страница 17

Table of Contents

Introductory remarks.—I. Burmese chess.—Name of the game.—The chessboard.—The chessmen.—Nomenclature.—Initial arrangement.—Rules.—II. Siamese chess.—Name of the game.—The chessboard.—The chessmen.—Nomenclature.—Initial arrangement.—Rules.—Specimen game.—III. Annamese chess.

Modern European observers have recorded the practice of chess in each of the three great political divisions of Further India (Indo-China). Their accounts show that each of these countries has its own peculiar variety of chess, while the Chinese game has been introduced by the numerous Chinese settlers, and is widely played in Siam and Annam.

At first sight the native Burmese and Siamese games, of which alone we have sufficiently detailed information as to the method of play, look very diverse. Closer investigation, however, results in the discovery of certain features which link the two games together. These are—(a) the fivefold move of the Elephant, which al-Bērūnī recorded as existing in India in his day, occurs in each game; (b) both games begin from a different arrangement of the chessmen from that followed elsewhere: in Burmese there is no prescribed arrangement for the pieces, but only for the Pawns; in Siamese chess a definite initial arrangement exists; (c) the rules of Pawn-promotion are unusual.

I have already shown that the Burmese and Annamese names for their forms of chess both go back ultimately to the Skr. chaturanga, and thus point to the Indian ancestry of both games. Although the Siamese name for chess is of different origin, the names of the pieces show a closer connexion between Siamese and Annamese chess than between either of these games and Burmese chess. We know too little of the history of these nationalities to be very certain as to the history of their games, but it seems most probable that chess, which has always been in attendance on great missionary movements, reached Further India with Buddhism, and spread over the peninsula with that religion. It has been commonly held that Buddhism reached Burma from Ceylon and that its further spread was by way of the river basins. The introduction is placed in the 5th c. A.D., and the diffusion from the Irawadi basin to Arakan first, and later to Kambaya, Pegu, and Siam, where Buddhism was introduced in the 7th c There is, however, good reason to believe that the overthrow of Buddhism in Northern India resulted in migrations into Burma from the Ganges basin direct, and that Buddhism spread down, as well as up, the river valleys. Chess may well have reached Burma by land.

Chess is undoubtedly of high antiquity in Burma, but no tradition of its history has been recorded.¹