Chess - A living Fossil
Gerhard Josten
Gerhard Josten(2001), Chess - A Living Fossil, In memoriam Professor Joachim Petzold. 에서 발췌 및 worldhistorymaps.info 에서 중앙아시아 역사 지도 가져옴.
Six chess games which can be extended at random will be presented for this purpose: FIDE chess, Xiangqi and Shogi as living variants as well as Indian four-handed chess, Byzantine chess and Arabian chess as extinct variants (cf. Fig. 2).
Fig. 2: Living and extinct chess variants(from en.chessbase.com)But just what is the outstanding feature of all of these chess games? All chess games differ
from all other old games by one characteristic feature, namely that they have three different
types of pieces. These are, listed in order of significance for the game:
• Type 1: A relatively immobile central piece, the goal of the game being to paralyse this
piece. The way in which it can be paralysed varies. This rule does not apply in the game of
four-handed chess.
• Type 2: A number of pieces which can make various longer moves and – with some exceptions
– can move in all directions without restriction.
• Type 3: A number of pieces which can only move forwards, and if needs be sideways too.
All other characteristics of the game of chess such as the board, the symmetrical initial array,
the capture of opponent's pieces, the central piece or the moves in alternation can also be
found in other old Asian games. However, this concentration of three different types of pieces
is unique in chess and will form the basis of my supplementary thesis.
........
3.3 Type 3 pieces and their idea almost certainly come from India
No other region in the world is more well-known for old race games with undifferentiated
pieces and simple boards than the Indian sub-continent. Neither the Near Eastern regions nor
China can offer such a variety of games, which are normally played with dice. Two examples
of board games will be shown here (cf. Fig. 5):
• Thaayam. This is a typical Indian race game with dice upon which Yuri Averbakh based
his first considerations. Each player had four identical pieces. The goal was the central
field on the board.
• Pachisi / Chaupur. This is the national game of India. Since we know it as "Ludo" it requires
no further explanation.
The elements of these games are to reach the end field and to capture opponent's pieces on the way, whereby the pieces cannot move backwards. This is precisely the function of type 3
pieces in chess. If a certain region did provide this type of piece for the game of chess, then all
indications point to the Indian region. The question as to the origin of the promotion of a piece
on the final field of the chess board, which is unknown in race games, must remain a mystery
for the time being.
......
The river on the Xiangqi board, unknown in all other chess games, almost certainly came from Liubo, the central field of which according to Röllicke was called "Water". I regard this a further, very important indication of the kinship of old games.
If this process did not take place in one of the formerly suspected regions, then according to
my thesis there must have been a Central Asian culture which had intensive contact to the
Near East, India and China.... A first glance at the distribution of power at this time in the Central Asian region shows that the Kushan Empire is a top candidate since it ideally meets all requirements in terms of geography, time and culture.
This empire reached its prime during the reign of the ruler Kanishka. The Kushans merged
the influences of various cultures from Greece to Mongolia into their own style in a masterly manner. The following statement, taken at random from the Internet, is typical: "The Kushans
became affluent through trade, particularly with Rome, as their large issues of gold coins
show. These coins, which exhibit the figures of Greek, Roman, Iranian, Hindu, and Buddhist
deities and bear inscriptions in adapted Greek letters, are witness to the toleration and to the
syncretism in religion and art that prevailed in the Kushan Empire."
Isaak Linder is, as far as I know, the only chess historian who has suggested the Kushan
Empire as a potential candidate for the genesis of chess and presented pieces from the 2nd
century AD, found in 1972 during archaeological excavations in the Bactrian settlement of
Dalversin-Tepe, a citadel from the later Kushan Empire(cf. Fig. 7). Linder believes that these pieces belonged to a game which predates "Tschaturanga". Meissenburg has not left this opinion unchallenged. Perhaps we are only at the very beginning of our work!
Fig. 7: Pieces according to Linder아래 지도 참조: BC500-AD500 중앙아시아 역사지도 from worldhistorymaps.info.
The core of my thesis is thus: Military, divinatory, mathematical or other theories did
not create chess, these theories followed the game of chess. Rather, the systematic combination of sophisticated game concepts in the Kushan Empire were the beginnings of
this game.
So these are my answers to the questions of Egbert Meissenburg:
• Who? ►The Kushans
• Where? ►In Central Asia
• When? ►Between 50 BC and 200 AD
• How? ►By systematic combination of three sophisticated game concepts
• Why? ►Because of the Kushan syncretism
And finally, the thesis of an intercultural development of the game of chess along the Silk Road with the melting pot of the Kushan Empire may help the centuries-old debate on "Either-Or" (Persia or India or China) out of it's dead-end street. Nearly all chess historians would thus be right to a certain extent - or would have been right, regardless of where they suspected chess as having its origins, but only in part. I could put this more positively: I believe that it is only thanks to the variety of reports, theses and legends over thousands of years, which as Petzold so succinctly put it sometimes contain a speck of truth, that a promising, but as yet to be verified scent has been uncovered which points towards Kushan.
I hope that my reflections and theses have a stimulating effect so that we can finally come a
little closer to understanding the "Melting Pot of Chess" through our concerted efforts, and
enrich our research through the additional aspect of Kushan. A number of introductory texts
on the topic of Kushan can be found at various sites on the Internet, some of which I have
listed by way of example.
During my search of the Internet I also hit upon the web site of Robert Bracey. In response
to my inquiry, he wrote that he knew of more pieces apart from those objects discovered in
Dalversin-Tepe and amongst others named a Kushan piece from the 1st – 2nd century AD. On
August 18, 2001 he informed me: "I have enclosed a picture of the gold figure I mentioned. It
was exhibited a few years ago and I have taken the figure from the catalogue. The figure has
a lead core and is covered in gold (it is the deformation of the lead core which is responsible
for its poor condition). It is probably intended to represent a charioteer and the dress is similar to that of Kushan royalty. However it is dissimilar to votary pieces and the flattened base indicates its use for games (though perhaps not chess)." I would like to show this object here to give you an initial impression of Kushan art, though I do not want to relate it directly to chess(cf. Fig. 9).
Fig. 9: Kuschan Piece, 1. - 2. century AD