The whole tenor of such reasoning as can be found
in Linde’s stupendous work, seems to rest on
subtle distinctions as to the precise accuracy of
the word chess, rather than to valid argument to the
effect that no game resembling it ever existed before
the time he fixes, yet his diagrams of the Tschaturanga
which comes Vol. 1 following page 423, is exactly in
accordance with the game as explained to us by Sir
William Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes, though
Linde seems to call it by the name of Indischer Wurfelvierschach
or Indische Kriegsspiel, and there is not a single
diagram of what the German writer conceives it to
be other than the real Tschaturanga (Chaturanga).
Note. From such an assumptive writer, one
would like to ask whether he had looked through the
pages of Livy Polybius and Tacitus, or explored the
treasures in the Fihrist, or the Eastern Works referred
to by Lambe, Bland, and Forbes, as well as Dr. Hyde
and Sir William Jones.
Forbes in the body of his work roughly estimates the
Chaturanga at 3000 B.C., but at page xiii of appendix,
he says: “The first period (of chess) is
altogether of fabulous antiquity, that is, of three
to five thousand years old,” in fact, he seems
to have been rather loose in his estimation, and not
to have sufficiently distinguished between the supposed
antiquity of the four sacred Vedas, the Epic poems,
the Ramayana and the Mahabarata, and the Puranas.
Professor Weber and Dr. Van der Linde assume a much
more recent date for the Bhavishya Purana, from which
the account of the Chaturanga is mainly taken, than
that assigned to it by Sir William Jones and Professor
Duncan Forbes.
------
The 4,098 name index already referred to includes
Adam ten times and even Jesus three times, used, as
it appears to me, rather for the purpose of irony,
rather than valid or useful argument.
When Forbes gives the earliest chess position, known
from British Museum M.S.S. Linde says Adam was
the first chess player (??) to Sir F. Madden about
1,150, for the time when Gaimur wrote quoting the
incident of the Earl of Devonshire and his daughter
being found playing chess together, (Edgar’s
reign 958 to 975). Linde says Madden about it
“Keinen Pfifferling werth.” In another
place he says, “Forbes natte der Freicheut,”
“Insolence, Impudence, Audaciousness, Boldness.”
It is not pleasing to English ears to be told that
George Walker is a humbug and a snob. Professor
Duncan Forbes the same, and William Lewis something
worse, and to find notes of exclamation and of queries
(! !! ?), instead of argument opposed to the statements
of such writers as Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones, the
Rev. R. Lambe, Sir Frederic Madden, and Mr. Bland.
Linde’s dealing with Forbes’ statement
concerning his examination of the copies of the Shahnama
in the British Museum, puts a crowning touch on his
arbitrary and insulting style and furnishes an example
of his notions of courtesy and argument.
