HOW I REORIENTATED MY CHESS BELIEFS

Pavle Bidev, Yu Igalo, 1987

Pliant and pliable when necessary, I find cogitation lovely and lovesome. And so it happens that I, "un roseau pensant tremblant au vent" (Pascal), made a big break from the spell of India at the turn of the year 1969/70. The great Needham and his fellow Sinologists at Cambridge taught me better. For a closer understanding of this last statement the reader should study first the last 30 pages of the German text, pages 273-302, and then chapter 8 (of Stammt Schach aus Altindien oder China? Igalo 1986. KM). Needham & Co. convinced me very late that they had discovered a kind of official record of the invention of chinese protochess, Hsiang Hsi, in 569. This record is revealed in a couple of chess texts that were completely unknown to chess historians: the commentary by Wang Pao on the invention by the Emperor Wu Ti in 569 (2 pages) and two pages of a lengthy story by Yu Hsin (513-581), a cavalry general and contemporary of the Emperor. It lies translated before us in D.A. Leventhal's book The Chess of China, Taipei (Taiwan) 1978.

It was not only the two quoted texts that strengthened my belief in China as the birthplace of chess, but also the circular bronze and ivory counters for the astrological Hsiang Hsi and for the war game Hsiang Chhi found during excavations. Similar finds are totally lacking in India. Indeed, India ist a chess Sahara Desert for archaeological finds, written documents, literature, early references, legends in folklore, or anything akin. China actually abounds in all of the afore-mentioned. Wu Ti's book "Hsiang Ching" (manual of the image game Hsiang) had further engendered, in the succeeding Sui dynasty, a two-part commentary. The Emperor's book itself went through a new printed edition in the T'ang dynasty (619-907), under the title "Su-Ku-Siang-King" (manual of the three Siang games). Thus two new games hat emerged from the astrological Hsiang probably even the military Hsiang Chhi. All three were called [H]siang with manifold significance: constellation game, image game, ivory game, but not elephant game, though from 569 to the present day the indistinct outline of the elephant has been discerned in the ideogram for Hsiang. The great researcher of games, Karl Himly, erroneously translated Hsiang Chhi as "elephant game" from 1870 until his death in 1904. Even today people often forget that in our current Hsian only two pieces are known as elephants, and two others have the similar sounding homophone meaning soothsayer. Budde/Bandholz: "Now however no game version classed in general as Xiangqi in the 12th and 13th century has an elephant piece, and so can scarcely be namend after it." (Hollfeld 1985, p.97)

From 569 up to the mid-13th century China had its game versions of Hsiang their precursor; India, but a single early game type, known as chaturanga. And that is not verifiable in India before 621, when Raja Harsha was converted to Buddhism and awarded, as a holy person, the titles Shri (blessed) and Diva (godlike). The Indians took about fifty years to develop the imported Hsiang to a Buddhist version of bloodless war, by means of the magic square of 64 cells. The 9-cell MS has a reciprocal relations to the Chinese chess board, as silent witness to the magical origin of protochess, from the 8 Kua, plus zenith in the niddle, to the 9 numbers of the Lo Shu MS or Chiu Kung, as chess is called in China. When Harsha died in 648 only chaturanga was known in India; but when the Emperor Tsung died in 650 three chess games wee known in China. Thus it is sufficiently clear who the godfather is. That is also the basis for my change from a chess-Indian to a Chinaman.

ON THE ORIGIN OF CHESS