Chaucer, without any proof, gives us in rhyme another candidate for the glory—Athalus. He describes, in a sort of dream, a visionary opponent, Fortune—
"At chesse with me she gan to pleye
With hir fals draughtes dyverse,
She staale on me and toke my ferz, (now queen.)
And when I saugh my ferz awaye,
Alas, I kouthe no longer pleye.
With a powne errante, allas I
Ful craftier to pleye she was
Than Athalus, who made the game
First of the chesse, so was hys name."[167]
A repetition of half the assertions and conjectures on this subject would fill volumes; indeed, volumes have been written on it; for no other thing of pure amusement has ever enlisted in its cause so many learned commentators of all tongues and nations, who unite, however, upon two points—its remote antiquity and its mighty renown.
The most reliable account of the origin of the game is, without doubt, that given by Sir William Jones. His high official rank for many years under the English government in India, and his familiarity with oriental languages, gave him opportunities for oriental research beyond almost any other writer. He asserts, as the result of his inquiries, that it was invented by the Hindoos, and from them (according to a universal Persian tradition) it was brought, in the sixth century, to Persia. Its next step was to Arabia, and from thence it was carried by the Saracenic conquest of Spain to western Europe. He found no mention of it in the classic writings of the Brahmins, although (he continues) they say confidently that Sanscrit books on chess exist.
Who the gifted individual was from whose brain emanated such an ingenious complication of mathematics and strategy, disguised under the mask of amusement, we shall perhaps never know. He might well have exclaimed with Horace,
"Exegi monumentum ære perennius."
But alas! the name of the builder is lost; or perhaps a future Layard, in exhuming the splendors of some ancient city, may find a record on some crumbling stone of the inventor of chess.
To an indefinite number of persons the honor is at present ascribed, evidently in mere conjecture, as in the following extract translated from a Chinese annal on chess; but it has an interest, in showing the antiquity of the game and the high esteem in which it was held:
"Three hundred and seventy-nine years after the time of Confucius, or 1965 years ago," says the annal, "Hung Cochu, King of Kiangnan, sent an expedition into the Shense country, under command of a mandarin named Hansing, to conquer it. After one campaign, the soldiers went into winter quarters, and they grew homesick and wanted to return. Then Hansing invented the game of chess. They were well pleased. In the spring they took the field again, and soon added the rich country of Shense to the kingdom of Kiangnan."
It is more likely that Hansing only taught the soldiers what he had himself learned elsewhere; but Shense is still the name of a northern province of China, and Chinese soldiers still play chess.