ON CHESS
XX - Ancient games from which chess is supposed to have been derived
In two former articles we investigated the powers of the pieces, and endeavoured to afford an easy account of the various methods which have been adopted for obtaining those numerical values which are given to the pieces in elementary works on chess. We propose now to inquire how the pieces became invested with their present powers; and although our information on this subject is not very precise, yet it is sufficiently interesting to form part of the present series.
The Hindoo origin of chess, supported by Dr. Hyde, Sir William Jones, and others, was for a long time credited, until Mr. Christie proposed to consider "whether it be more natural to conceive the game to have been invented by an effort of the mind of one person, and devised, formed, and perfected at one instant of time; or whether it may not be considered probable, that some rude materials existed, which falling into the hands of ingenious and able workmen, at different periods, were variously fashioned by them, and united at last in the elegant structure of the modern game." We propose to give a brief analysis of Christie's attempt to prove "that a game of pastoral origin was already in general use, which being expanded as to the superficies of its board, and augmented in the number of its men, and varied in the properties of its pieces, might have been fashioned and completed by the ingenuity of the Orientals into the modern game of chess."
Among the ancient games of skill the one to which writers have referred the origin of chess is the petteia, or the game of the pebbles, supposed to have been invented by Palamedes at the siege of Troy. From scattered words and phrases in various Greek writers, it is probable that the game was played on a board containing sixteen squares with a central space called lera gramme, the sacred barrier. The game was played by two persons, one being provided with five white pebbles and the other with five black pebbles, arranged at the beginning of the game as in the accompanying figure.  Each player endeavoured to cut off, inclose, or block up, his adversary's men. In Constantino's Lexicon the "sacred barrier" is thus alluded to: "The middle line was the extreme boundary beyond which the men could not be moved, and this was also termed the sacred line; wherefore when either of the parties was driven up to this fixed line or mark in the centre of the board, he then moved his piece from it, saying, ' I move my pebble from the sacred.' " The offensive moves seem to have had the following objects: 1, the temporary circumvention, where the pebble was checked between the sacred and another pebble; and was then, according to a law of the game, withdrawn with the expression just quoted; 2, the circumvention of any pebble took place between two hostile pebbles; retreat being cut off, such pebble was then taken; 3, each party endeavoured to get beyond the sacred, so as to occupy his adversary's half of the board, and so to crowd his game that no move should be left to him: the game was then finished.
There is a game which has been played all over the north of Europe from the remotest antiquity, which Christie supposes to be identical with the Greek game pludion, and more ancient than the petteia, since depositing the pebbles seems to be more simple and primitive than moving them. The game is played on a board of the following form,  and is known in England by various names, such as, "Ninepenny Marl," "the game of Morris" or "Nine Men's Morris" also "Fivepenny Morris," and lastly "Merelles." Some writers state that the game was introduced into this country by the Norman conquerors, under the name of merelles; and that this word, which signifies counters, was afterwards corrupted into morals and morris. Others suppose the pastime to have derived the appellation of "Nine Men's Morris" from the different coloured men being moved backwards and forwards as though they were dancing a morris.
The scheme or board for the game is frequently chalked on the ground; on barn floors; on the crown of a hat; on the side of a pair of bellows; upon a table; or, (as we have often seen it on Salisbury Plain,) it is cut out in the green sward. Hence the remark of Titania in the Midsummer Night's Dream:
The nine men's morris is filled up with mud,
alluding to the wet season, which had obliterated the rustic merelle board.
Strutt, the historian of the Sports and Pastimes of the People of England, gives a figure of the merelle-table as it appeared in the fourteenth century, the lines of which are similar to those in figure 2; the only difference is, that each of the angles is marked by a black spot.
The manner of playing the gamp is briefly thus: two persons, each having nine men, different in colour or form, for distinction's sake, place them alternately, one by one, upon the angles or spots; and the object of either party is to prevent his antagonist from placing three of his pieces so as to form a row of three, without the intervention of an opponent piece. If he succeed in forming a row, he takes one of his antagonist's pieces from any part except from a row of three which must not be touched if he have another piece on the board. Every piece that is taken is put into the central square. When all the pieces are laid down, they are played backwards and forwards, in any direction that the "lines run, but they can only move from one spot to another at one time. He that takes all his opponent's pieces is the conqueror. The game is subject to slight variations in different counties of England. In Wiltshire, if the losing party have his men reduced to three, they can hop and skip into any vacant place, in order to form a line. However simple this rustic game may appear, much skill is required, particularly in the choice of the first places, so as to enable the player to form the lines as perfectly and as quickly as possible.
The Oriental name for the central space (Fig. 2) is equivalent to the English pound or fold, and Christie thinks it very probable that it was originally intended to represent something of this kind; for, as the Eastern shepherds amused themselves by playing with the pebbles, whilst they watched their folds, they might afterwards have introduced the figure of the fold itself as an ornament to the board, and as a settled place for depositing the pebbles captured during the game.
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From a critical examination of the Greek writers, our author concludes, that the game of the pebbles was derived from the original game of the Asiatic shepherds. The pastoral character of this game now became military the central fold was converted into a sacred, which acted as a kind of mound or barrier against mutual incursions. In the course of time the game was modified by the use of dice as well as pebbles, and formed the ancient pludion: the board was now called the city, the pebbles dogs, and the object of the game was said to be to capture the city: the pieces appear to have been of two colours, and one pebble being circumvented by two others of an opposite colour was captured. There appear to have been twelve points on each side of the board, and fifteen men of each colour; but here, as the conclusions of our author lead us rather to the game of backgammon than to chess, we omit much of his theory.
The steps by which our author supposes the advance to have been made from this primitive game to that of chess, (in which there is, first, not a sacred line, but a royal line behind each row of pebbles or pawns, secondly, a king whose person is sacred, and, thirdly, officers to attend him,) are so very ingenious that we quote the passage at full:
I have before explained, the meaning and office of the sacred mark in the petteia; and have shown that, as the object of the game was to effect a circumvention of any one pebble, between two of the adverse party, so, the same could be produced by forcing a pebble into an intermediate station between the sacred and a hostile piece. This was an advantage only to be found in the centre of tlie board. But the purpose of the sacred was not complete; for the assistance of the sacred would often have been desirable for effecting a circumvention in the distant parts of the board. Hence arose the idea of making it moveable. By its power of co-operating with a pebble in circumventing, it was already endowed with the properties of a piece; and it was therefore no great stretch of innovation to raise it to the dignity of one, thereby giving it in form what it already possessed virtually. As the advantages of it, in its first inactive state, had been common to both, so it was now but fair that each party should have a pebble endowed as the "lera gramme" had been. To distinguish it from the rest, it was perhaps called the "inviolable pebble." As the central mark was sacred, so was this inviolable; and hence the Custom of NEVER TAKING THE KING AT CHESS. As it would not huve been prudent to expose the sacred person of this pebble in the front line, and the scanty dimensions of the board wonld not allow of the pebbles being obtruded further upon the middle of the board, a place was assigned to it in the centre of an ADDITIONAL or REAR rank. An imperfection yet remained. The properties of the sacred were twofold, inviolability, and the power of making any pebble recede from it. We have only found a representative for its first property. The whole virtue of the sacred was to be called into action. The inviolable pebble was the solitary occupier of the rear rank: it was thought proper that attendants should be given to the right and left of it, who should share amongst them the offensive powers of the sacred, which it might not have been so consistent with the character of the first dignified pebble to assume. The power of causing to retire, was therefore vested in the companion of the inviolable piece; and hence we have derived the custom of checkink. And with all this, the original object of the petteia was still retained, namely, the BLOCKADE; to which the checkmate of the modern chess is certainly analogous; only that in the early game it was attempted indiscriminately upon the pebbles in general; and in the improved game, the effect of it is exclusively directed to the most conspicuous piece.
The most important feature in this ingenious argument is the metamorphosis of the sacred mound, barrier, or temple, into a "king," endowed with the inviolability of the sacred (that is, not subject to capture); but conferring the repelling power of the sacred on the persons ot certain officers or superior pebbles provided for that purpose. In modern chess the king has little or no repellent power; for he cannot put himself into check, while all the other pieces may do so. The sacred being thus converted into an inviolable piece, and four officers being created in order to repel attack, and guard the person of the king, the central's sacred was removed, and an additional line or row of points was added behind the common pebbles or pawns. Doubling some of these officers, so as to increase the number to eight, and increasing the number of single pebbles, or pawns from five to eight, are regarded as subsequent innovations.
The learned inquiries of our author tend to show that the Scythians, (the ancestors of the present Tartars,) occupying the desert tracts eastward of the Caspian, were the original inventors of the game from which chess has been produced by a regular series of improvements and modifications made during three thousand years: therefore that the game existed long before the siege of Troy; and that it thence spread westward to Greece, southwest to Persia, south-east to India, and east to China; and that in each country it received certain modifications and additions.
The game was gradually introduced into Rome, and probably formed the Ludus Latrunculorum. The object of this game, and the method of playing it, were similar to the petteia, except that there was no sacred; and that the power of checking was lost by the absence of the central space. Hyde is of opinion that the Ludus Latrunculorum greatly resembled the modern draughts, in that the pebbles moved diagonally, made captures by leaping over the pebbles of the antagonist, and that they were crowned. On these points Christie is at issue with Hyde, and he also objects to the interpretation of Ovid by Daines Barrington, that the pieces were shaken like dice instead of being moved like draught-men.
The Chinese chess is a contest between two small bands of soldiers on the banks of a river: to these a number of pieces is added, the chief office of which is to defend the general, and to capture straggling opponents. The pieces and men, as in the ancient petteia, have no distinction as to form: they are flat counters of ivory, an inch in breadth, and a quarter of an inch in thickness, and are distinguishable from each other only by means of certain lines marked upon them.
Christie is of opinion that the Hindoo who, thirteen centuries ago, is said to have invented chess, borrowed the ancient game from the Tartars, who were, and still are, the links of communication between all the nations of Asia, and gave to it some of the modifications already alluded to. The Chinese game in which the combatants, five on each side, fight on the opposite banks of a symbolical river, is supposed by our author to be a more primitive form than the Hindoo, derived from the Tartars, and subjected to less alteration. Mr. Davis, in his recent work on China, says, "The Chinese chess differs in board, men, and moves, from that of India, and cannot in any way be identified with it, except as being a game of skill, and not of chance."
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Arqueología del Ajedrez 
