Читать книгу History of Chess - H. J. R. Murray - Страница 26

1. In the name of God! It is related that in the reign of Khusraw-i-Anūshakrūbān, Dēwasārm, the great ruler of India, devised the chatrang with 16 emerald and 16 ruby-red men in order to test the wisdom of the men of Īrān, and also from motives of personal interest. With the game of chess he sent 1,200 camels laden with gold, silver, jewels, pearls and raiment, and 90 elephants, of all of which an inventory was made, and he sent Takhtarītus, who was the most famous of the Indians, in charge of them. Moreover, he had written the following in a letter: ‘Since you bear the name of Shāhānshāh (King of Kings) and are king over all us kings, it is meet that your wise men should be wiser than ours: if now you cannot discover the interpretation of the chatrang, pay us tribute and revenue.

2. The Shāhānshāh asked for 3 days’ time, but there was none of the wise men of Īrān who could discover the interpretation of the chatrang.

3. On the third day Wajūrgmitr of the house of Būkhtak rose and said, ‘Live for ever! I have not revealed the interpretation of the chatrang until this day, in order that you and every dweller in Īrān may know that I am the wisest of all the people of Īrān. I shall easily discover the interpretation of the chatrang, and take tribute and revenue from Dēwasārm. And I will make yet another thing and send it to Dēwasārm, which he will not discover, and we shall take double tribute and revenue from him. And from that day none shall doubt that you are worthy to be Shāhānshāh, and that your wise men are wiser than those of Dēwasārm.’

4. Then said Shāhānshāh: ‘O Wajūrgmitr, hail to our Takhtarītus!’, and he commanded that 12,000 dirhems should be given to Wajūrgmitr.

5. On the next day Wajūrgmitr called Takhtarītus before him and said: ‘Dēwasārm has fashioned this chatrang after the likeness of a battle, and in its likeness are two supreme rulers after the likeness of Kings (shāh), with the essentials of Rooks (rukh) to right and to left, with a Counsellor (farzīn) in the likeness of a commander of the champions, with the Elephant (pīl) in the likeness of a commander of the rearguard, with the Horse (asp) in the likeness of the commander of the cavalry, with the Foot-soldier (piyādak) in the likeness of so many infantry in the vanguard of the battle.’ Thereupon Takhtarītus arranged the chatrang, and played with Wajūrgmitr. Wajūrgmitr won 12 games against Takhtarītus, and there was great joy throughout the whole land.

6. Then Takhtarītus stood up and said: ‘Live for ever! God has bestowed upon you such glory and majesty and power and victory. Verily you are lord of Īrān and An-īrān.

7. Several wise men of India devised this chatrang with much toil and labour, and sent it hither and (?) arranged it. There was none who could expound it, but Wajūrgmitr by his innate wisdom has interpreted it with ease and speed and has added many riches to the Shāhānshāh’s treasury.’

8. On the next day the Shāhānshāh called Wajūrgmitr before him and said to him: ‘My Wajūrgmitr, what is that thing of which you said, “I will make it and send it to Dēwasārm”?’

9. Wajūrgmitr replied: ‘Of all the rulers of this millennium has Artakhshīr been the most active and the wisest, and I erect a game Nēw-Artakhshīr⁵ after the name of Artakhshīr. I fashion the board of Nēw-Artakhshīr in the likeness of the land of Spandārmadh, and I fashion 30 men in the likeness of the 30 days and nights; I fashion 15 white in the likeness of day and 15 black in the likeness of night; I fashion the movement of each after the likeness of the movement of the constellations, and in the likeness of the revolution of the firmament.’

10. (The explanation of the spots on the faces of the dice) ‘I fashion “one” in movement in this likeness because Hurmazd is one, and he has created all that is good.

11. “Two” I fashion in the likeness of heaven and earth.

12. “Three” I fashion in this likeness because good thoughts treat of words, works, and thoughts.

13. “Four” I fashion in this likeness because there are 4 temperaments of which man is formed, and because the points of the world are 4, East, West, South, and North.

14. “Five” I fashion in this likeness because there are 5 lights, the sun, the moon, the stars, fire, and the light which comes from heaven, and because the divisions of day and night are 5.

15. “Six” I fashion in this likeness because the creation of the world was in the 6 times of the Gahanbār.

16. The arrangement of Nēw-Artakhshīr upon the board, I fashion in this likeness because Hurmazd the lord placed the things which he had created upon the world.

17. The movement of the men in this direction and in that I fashion in this likeness because man’s energy in this world is linked with the heavenly bodies; and the 7 stars move in 12 fixed circles, and fall when it is time for one to defeat and remove another, just as men in this world defeat and remove one another.

18. When (?) all are removed … it resembles man because men must all depart from the world, and when they are again arranged, it resembles man because at the resurrection all men are made alive again.’

19. When the Shāhānshāh heard this oration he was filled with joy and commanded (his servants to provide) 12,000 Arab steeds all adorned with gold and pearls, and 12,000 young men, the most distinguished in Īrān; and 12,000 coats of mail with 8 …; and 12,000 belts with 7 clasps; and everything else that is necessary to equip 12,000 men and horses in the most worthy fashion. And he placed Wajūrgmitr of the house of Būkhtak over them as leader at an auspicious season, and he arrived in India in good health by God’s help.

20. When Dēwasārm, the great ruler of India, saw him in this manner he asked Wajūrgmitr of the house of Būkhtak for 40 days’ time, but there was none of the wise men of India who could discover the interpretation of the game of Nēw-Artakhshīr; and Wajūrgmitr received from Dēwasārm twice the tribute and revenue; and he returned in good health and with great ceremony to Īrān.

21. The solution of the interpretation of the chatrang is this, that in it the understanding in particular is recognized as the essential weapon by virtue of which, as certain wise men have said, ‘the victory is obtained by intellect’. The principle of play in chatrang is to watch and strive to maintain one’s own pieces, to take great pains as regards the being able to carry off the opponent’s pieces, and in the desire of being able to carry off the opponent’s pieces not to play an unfair game. The player must always guard that one piece which is most convenient for the (?) move, and take care to (?) move in a fair way so that he may stand blameless in the matter of good manners.

It is obvious that we have here a literary work, not a simple record of historical fact. The intention of the narrative lies upon the surface, the exalting of the wisdom and fame of the Persian race at the expense of a neighbouring people. The Shāhnāma shows many similar examples of this form of patriotic writing. The colour and treatment of the stories are entirely literary, but behind all these embellishments there is always to be found a basis of fact from which the narrative has been developed. In the present case the basis of the story is the historical fact that the game of chess was introduced into Persia from India, coupled with the popular tradition that this event had taken place in the reign of Nūshīrwān.

The literary construction of the Chatrang-nāmak is crude and conventional. The parallelism of the incidents, the embassies, their riddles, the attempts at solution, the amazing success of the one party and utter failure of the other, all betray the want of experience and skill of the early explorers in the field of fiction. The plot of the story by which rival monarchs stake tribute or lands upon the solution of a puzzle or riddle recurs very frequently in rudimentary forms of literature.⁶

In opposition to the Indian invention of chess is placed the Persian invention of nard (tables or backgammon); surely a very unsatisfactory contrast from the patriotic Persian point of view, for the invention of chess seems in every way the more wonderful achievement. But the romance shows no sign of any suspicion of this, and the writer would appear to have judged of nard by the elaborate symbolism of the game which occupies so considerable a portion of his work. We cannot give him credit for the invention of the interpretation: it is almost a commonplace among Arabic writers; and Nöldeke has suggested that it may everywhere go back to a Neo-Platonic or or Neo-Pythagorean Greek source. It is, however, possible that the writer’s choice of nard for the Persian reply to the Indian invention of chess, may be due to the admiration that he felt for this symbolic explanation of the game. In any case the choice was unfortunate. The history of nard has still to be written, but its antiquity is undoubtedly very great. Chinese works record its introduction from India into China in the 3rd c., A.D. As will be seen in the following chapter, there is good reason to believe that the game was known to the Greeks in the 6th c., A.D., by the name of tabla or taula. The older Arabic historians attribute its invention to India, and associate it with the mythical kings whom they allot to that peninsula. At the same time other Arabic works show a persistent attempt to connect the invention of nard with Ardashīr, the first of the Sāsānians, and the hero of the Kārnāmak. I think that this was due to the popular attempts to explain the alternative Arabic name of nardshīr,⁷ though it also requires a greater antiquity than the Chatrang-nāmak allows. It seems clear that we can attach no weight to this portion of the story. The embassy to India is pure invention.

Nor can we attach any more weight to the story of the embassy from India which brought chess to Persia. The wisdom of Buzūrjmihr has at all times been extolled, to Persian literature, but in this story it transcends belief. To discover the moves of the chessmen and the rules of play from a study of the board and pieces is to do something miraculous. Moreover, it is impossible to identify the Indian characters with any contemporaries of Nūshīrwān. Like all Arabic writers before al-Bērūnī, our author appears to have thought of India as a political entity similar to Sāsānian Persia. He shows no intimate knowledge of Indian history, for although he has given his Indian king a Sanskrit name (Dēwasārm answers to Devasharman⁸), it is difficult to see whence he obtained it. Nöldeke hazards the conjecture that it may be really identical with the name Dabshalim, the king in the Kalīla wa Dimna, and that the legendary Shahrām or Shihrām of another chess story may be a further perversion or misreading of the same name. The deficiencies of the Pahlawī script made misreadings of unfamiliar words that could not be guessed from the context extraordinarily easy. The name Takhtarītus⁹ also presents difficulties. Nöldeke suggests that the first element is the Per. takht, chessboard; West sees in it a compound term takht-rad, priestly counsellor of the throne, which he supposes may be a Mid. Per. rendering of some Sanskrit title or name. This much alone seems certain: the name is not Sanskrit.

We therefore come back to the simpler tradition that lies behind the Chatrang-nāmak, that chess was introduced into Persia in the reign of Nūshīrwān. The same tradition is to be found in al-Maṣ‘udī’s Murūj adhdhahab (A.D. 947). In his account of the reign of Nūshīrwān he says:

He had sent from India the book Kalīla wa Dimna, the game of chess, and a black dye called hindī, which dyes the hair to its roots a brilliant and permanent black.¹⁰

That is to say, the initiative in the introduction of chess was taken by Nūshīrwān, as was the case also in the translations of Greek and Sanskrit classics which were made in his reign. This reference in al-Maṣ‘ūdī appears to me to be quite distinct in origin from the Chatrang-nāmak, especially as it shows no attempt to magnify the reputation of the Persians, and as al-Maṣ‘ūdī adopts elsewhere a different opinion of the invention of nard.¹¹ It will be noted that al-Maṣ‘ūdī connects the introduction of chess with the arrival in Persia of the collection of Indian fables called Kalīla wa Dimna.¹² Most Persian scholars accept the evidence for the transmission of this work to Persia in the time of Nūshīrwān as satisfactory when stripped of the absurd embellishments and details that are added to the story in the Shāhnāma.

The only difficulty that I can see in accepting this traditional date of the introduction of chess as historical is the shortness of time which it leaves for the general adoption of chess in Persia. Within 120 years the game has attained the reputation which is evidenced by the reference in the Kārnāmak, and the fixity of nomenclature which the Arabic nomenclature requires. But no other Persian king is associated with the introduction in any known Arabic work. Ardashīr, son of Pāpak, is the Sāsānian most likely to be made the hero of a fictitious story, but he is only named in connexion with the discovery of nard. Shahrām (Shihrām), the king in the story of The Doubling of the Squares, is an Indian monarch. The phenomenon of the rapid spread of chess, however, can be paralleled by diffusions equally rapid at later points of the history of the game, and is indeed one of the most characteristic features of that history. If chess reached the royal Persian court first, and became the fashion there, its spread first to the upper classes and then to the lower orders may easily have taken place in the course of three generations.

The story of the Chatrang-nāmak appears again, but in a rather different form, in the national epic of Persia, the Shāhnāma of Abū’l-Qāsim Mansūr Firdawsī (begun by Daqīqī, 975; finished 1011).¹³ It is not certain whether Firdawsī had the earlier version before him. Wherever it has been possible to check the Shāhnāma by the older legends—as in the case of the Kārnāmak and the Yātkār-i-Zarīrān—the general fidelity of the later poet to ancient legend, even in matters of minute detail, has been established. In the present legend there are fundamental differences between the two versions, extending to the whole second part of the story. Nard, with the elaborate account of its symbolism, has gone entirely, and in its place Firdawsī describes another game of uncertain origin and arrangement.

The whole setting of the story in the Shāhnāma is different, and the story is told with greater literary skill. In one point alone does Firdawsī adopt a more sober colouring. He replaces the jewelled chessmen of the older writer by pieces of ivory and teak. The colours of the older work would seem, though, to be the more accurate historically. Red and green have apparently always been the favourite colours for the pieces in India, if not in Persia. Ath-Tha‘ālibī, in his Ghurar akhbār mulūk āl-Furs (1017–21),¹⁴ in his description of the marvellous treasures of Khusraw II Parwīz (590–628) says:

He had also the game of chess, of which the pieces were made of red rubies and of emeralds, and the game of nard made of coral and of turquoise,—

a treasure which in later historians¹⁵ was magnified until the chessmen were made of single rubies and single emeralds, and their value had grown until the smallest of the pieces was estimated at 3,000 golden dīnārs. Can it be that the story of the embassy from India arose from the existence of this chess set?

Firdawsī commences his story¹⁶ with a description of the magnificence of Nūshīrwān’s court, to which one day an ambassador from the Raja of India came, bringing many noble presents from Kanūj. Macdonell points out that the mention of this town as the home of the Indian monarch is very happy, since Kanūj (= Skr. Kānyakubya) is the very place where Bāṇa represents chess as being known not long after Nūshīrwān’s time.¹⁷

When he had displayed the treasures, the Indian envoy presented a richly illuminated letter from the Raja to Nūshīrwān and a chessboard constructed with such skill that it had cost a fortune, and proceeded to deliver the following message:

O king, may you live as long as the heavens endure! Command your wise men to examine this chessboard, and to deliberate together in every way in order that they may discover the rules of this noble game, and recognize the several pieces by their names. Bid them try to discover the moves of the Foot-soldiers (piyāda), the Elephants (pīl), and the other members of the army, viz. the Chariots (rukh), the Horses (asp), the Counsellor (farzīn), the King (shāh), and how to place them on their squares. If they can discover the rules of this beautiful game, they will excel all the wise men of the world, and we will willingly remit to this court the tribute and dues which the king demands of us, but if the wise men of Īrān are unable to solve the riddle, they ought to desist from demanding tribute from us, for they will not be our equals in wisdom; nay, rather, you ought to pay tribute to us, for wisdom is more excellent than everything else of which man may boast himself.

The message ended, the chessmen were presented and placed on the board. One side was of polished ivory, the other of teak. In reply to some questions from the king, the ambassador said that the game was a representation of war, and that in the game would be found the course, the plans, and all the apparatus of a battle. Nūshīrwān then asked and was granted a space of seven days for the investigation. For several days the wise men of Persia tried in vain to discover the game, but in vain. At last Buzūrjmihr, who had hitherto stood aloof, approached his king, and promised to solve the riddle which had proved too much for all the other wise men of the nation. He took the chess home to his house, and after a day and a night’s experimentation, he unravelled the whole game.

At his request the Indian ambassador was summoned, and made to recount again the terms of the challenge. Then Buzūrjmihr produced the chessmen, and proceeded to arrange the forces.

He placed the king in the centre, and on his right and left the ranks of the army, the brave foot-soldiers in the van, the prudent vizier beside the king to advise him in the battle, next to king and vizier were the elephants both observing the battle, then the horses ridden by two expert riders, lastly at the two extremities were the rukhs, both rivals, and ready for the battle on the right and on the left.

The Indian was overwhelmed at the discovery, and his admiration for the wisdom and penetration of Buzūrjmihr passed all bounds. He returned to India, and Buzūrjmihr was covered with honour by his grateful monarch.

But Buzūrjmihr was planning further triumphs for Persia. He withdrew himself and pondered deeply until by his unaided genius he invented nard. The game is thus described:

He made two dice of ivory, with figures the colour of ebony. He then arranged an army similar to that of chess, he placed the two sides in order of battle and distributed the troops, ready for battle and for the assault of the town, among eight houses. The field was black, the battle-field square, and there were two powerful kings of good disposition who should both move, without ever receiving injury. Each had at his side an army in its arrangements, collected at the head of the field, and ready for the fray. The two kings advanced upon the field of battle, their troops moved on all sides around them, each endeavouring to outgo the other, now they fought on the heights, now on the plains; when two on one side had surprised a man by himself, he was lost to his side, and the two armies remained thus face to face until it was seen who was beaten.

Nūshīrwān was of course delighted at this fresh proof of his minister’s wisdom and ingenuity, and he sent him on an embassy to India to confound the wise men at the Raja’s court with the game of nard. As in the older story the Indians fail ignominiously, and Buzūrjmihr returned in triumph to receive fresh honours at the hand of his grateful king.¹⁸

In giving Firdawsī’s story at this time, I have rather anticipated the history of chess in the East, although in a way the real connexion is better preserved thus. For Firdawsī voiced again the aspirations of the Persians, and the Shāhnāma is the first great work in which Persian again came to the front after a period of eclipse. The eclipse, however, was only apparent, and extended to little beyond the language. As has so often happened in history, the race that was vanquished on the battlefield became the victor in the years of peace that ensued. The view of those who consider that the two or three centuries which immediately succeeded the Muslim conquest of Persia were intellectually barren, is quite erroneous. On the contrary, it was ‘a period of immense and unique interest, of fusion between the old and the new, of transformation of forms and transmigration of ideas, but in no wise of stagnation or death’. Old ideas and philosophies had to be restated in terms better fitting the changed conditions, and in every branch of learning there was a process of moulding and fusion in full swing; even the faith of Islam took on a new spirit, ‘ce sont eux (les Persans) et non les Arabes, qui ont donné de la fermeté et de la force à l’islamisme,’ writes Dozy.¹⁹ And in the intellectual sphere the debt is still more remarkable; we should leave every branch of Arabic science poor indeed if we removed the work of Persian writers. The whole organization of the state was Persian, and, although at first it was the Arabs who composed the invincible armies that conquered Syria, Egypt, and Persia, by the end of the Umayyad period the Persians had regained the military supremacy, and it was Persian armies that placed the ‘Abbāsids on the throne. In so doing the Persians had a full revenge for their overthrow at the hands of the early Caliphs. Not without reason does al-Bērūnī²⁰ boast that the ‘Abbasids were a Khurāsānī, an Eastern, dynasty, for at their court Persian influences and ideas were supreme, attaining their zenith under al-Ḥādī, Hārūn ar-Rashīd, and al-Ma’mūn. The history of Muslim chess will be largely a history of Persian players, the development, a history of Persian ideas.

The importance of the pre-Islamic existence of chess in Persia can hardly be over-estimated, for it has left an impress upon the game that has proved greater and more lasting than that of any other period of its history. In that time Persia gave the game a fixity of arrangement, a method of play, and a nomenclature that have attended the game everywhere in its Western career. By a singular freak of fate the very name of the game in every country of Western Europe, except Spain and Portugal, has become a witness for the passage of chess through Persia. When the chess-player cries ‘check’, and probably also when he cries ‘mate’, he bears his unconscious testimony to the same fact. It is not too much to say that European chess owes more to its Persian predecessor chatrang than to its more remote and shadowy ancestor, the Indian chaturanga.²¹