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I'm not a chess junkie. Your average cell phone has a pretty good chance of beating me, which is somewhat disheartening. Playing people is another matter. I do very well against humans. I suspect a spook them. ;)
The other day I had cause to visit Wikipedia, looking for the exact spelling on "en passant." I know, it's not hard to spell, but some friends in my youth used to always call the move en poupon, like the mustard. It was amusing at the time, but has probably scarred me for life.
In the process, I noted the commonly accepted dogma of the origin of chess, that it was birthed in India. I thought, isn't that debated? Aren't there other contenders? How old is xiangqi? Do they even mention China? Way at the bottom, I find reference to "chinese chess", under the ignoble variants section. And, it's pretty old.
I surfed to the origins of chess and found reference upon reference to India. None of the criteria and evidence offered disqualified xiangqi as a reasonable predecessor to India's chaturanga. And yet, when mentioned at all, China's game seems summarily dismissed, despite being documented in literature at least six centuries earlier. Possibly ten.
Thus far, all my poking around is on the same site. Time to ask google. The first hit shows I'm not alone in my confusion over India's blind claim to chess progenitor. This guy's obviously spent a lot more time considering this than I have.
The real question is why is India such a popular choice? I suspect, like most historical fallacies, we can blame the Brits. In particular, one Sir William Jones (1746-1794) who, among other things, wrote Chess poetry! I'm not blaming the poem, though. Rather his 1790 paper, "On the Indian game of Chess" ( obscure enough not to get a wiki link ). While not the first chess book, this one is often quoted for historical evidence. Perhaps it doesn't have to be true, just repeated the most.
Which brings us back to India. Billy was just repeating what has been repeated by almost all Arabic and Persian source material. Perpetuating a story of chess and India. I don't really care where it came from, I'm just fascinated by the apparent bias of the supposed history.
I know I have a few games geeks and library types that read this so I ask, am I missing something? Is there some irrefutable something that my half hour of clicking has failed to reveal?
The other day I had cause to visit Wikipedia, looking for the exact spelling on "en passant." I know, it's not hard to spell, but some friends in my youth used to always call the move en poupon, like the mustard. It was amusing at the time, but has probably scarred me for life.
In the process, I noted the commonly accepted dogma of the origin of chess, that it was birthed in India. I thought, isn't that debated? Aren't there other contenders? How old is xiangqi? Do they even mention China? Way at the bottom, I find reference to "chinese chess", under the ignoble variants section. And, it's pretty old.
I surfed to the origins of chess and found reference upon reference to India. None of the criteria and evidence offered disqualified xiangqi as a reasonable predecessor to India's chaturanga. And yet, when mentioned at all, China's game seems summarily dismissed, despite being documented in literature at least six centuries earlier. Possibly ten.
Thus far, all my poking around is on the same site. Time to ask google. The first hit shows I'm not alone in my confusion over India's blind claim to chess progenitor. This guy's obviously spent a lot more time considering this than I have.
The real question is why is India such a popular choice? I suspect, like most historical fallacies, we can blame the Brits. In particular, one Sir William Jones (1746-1794) who, among other things, wrote Chess poetry! I'm not blaming the poem, though. Rather his 1790 paper, "On the Indian game of Chess" ( obscure enough not to get a wiki link ). While not the first chess book, this one is often quoted for historical evidence. Perhaps it doesn't have to be true, just repeated the most.
Which brings us back to India. Billy was just repeating what has been repeated by almost all Arabic and Persian source material. Perpetuating a story of chess and India. I don't really care where it came from, I'm just fascinated by the apparent bias of the supposed history.
I know I have a few games geeks and library types that read this so I ask, am I missing something? Is there some irrefutable something that my half hour of clicking has failed to reveal?