From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 00/01/01, 11:32 Re: Chess History on the Web (2000 no.1) The next review, following the Chess History bookmarks, is for 'The Origin of Chess' by Sam Sloan. Unlike previous reviews in this series, the site is a single page at http://www.ishipress.com/origin.htm. The page is listed in the bookmarks as 'Origin of Chess (China)', because Sloan, 'also known as Mohammad Ismail Sloan' according to the bio at the end of his article, argues that chess originated in China. There are few chess history discussions which can arouse more passion & heat than discussions about its origin. Before I started to write this article, I had little knowledge of the various theories and a vague recollection that it had originated in Persia. I didn't own & hadn't read any of the basic works. If you're also not familiar with the subject & would like a very quick introduction, then see 'The Intervolving Roots of Chess' by Gary A. Thomas on InternetChess.com at http://www.internetchess.com/columns/gthomas/chessroots1.shtml. The section 'history of chess' in 'The Oxford Companion to Chess' by David Hooper & Kenneth Whyld starts, 'The earliest evidence of a recognizable form of chess, CHATURANGA, is around AD 600. Before that, all is speculation.' The section on Chaturanga starts, 'The earliest precursor of modern chess that can be clearly defined. The Sanskrit name means "quadripartite" and was also used to describe the Indian army of Vedic times'. Sloan's 'The Origin of Chess' attempts to show otherwise. Sloan is a known personality in the chess world, especially the online chess world. I started reading his online posts in the rec.games.chess (r.g.c) newsgroups sometime in 1993. I wasn't even sure if he was a real person until I saw his picture in the July 1996 issue of Chess Life, running against Don Schultz for President of the USCF. I approached his 'Origins' piece with an open mind, which is not easy to do after reading his posts or the many chess articles on his site. His homepage, which is full of sensational stories, reads like the front page of a supermarket tabloid. He especially seems to enjoy demolishing the reputations of others. Aware of Sloan's reputation, I had originally decided not to bookmark his page. Another member of the discussion group added the bookmark & wrote in a private email, 'I've placed a link to Sam Sloan's page which is a recreation of his pamphlet about the origin of chess. [...] I feel that his research into chess origin makes him the premiere authority of the subject'. Sloan's thesis is based on three arguments:- 1) Similarities among the chess-like board games played in different countries point to a common ancestor. 2) The widely held view that chess originated in India is based on erroneous interpretations of various sources. 3) Chess originated in China. The arguments for (1) are compelling, but I know now that Sloan is not alone here. The arguments for (2) are less compelling & reduce to Sloan's challenging the scholarship of his predecessors -- 'Golombek is but a mere chess player' [...] 'Murray, a mere school teacher without any scholarly credentials, never read these works himself' [...] 'Raverty was nothing more than a layman and was not a trained linguist' -- and are little more than ad hominem attacks. The arguments for (3) reduce to a number of observations... - A possible reference to chess in a single work of Chinese literature predates any references in Indian literature. - The Russians believe chess came from Uzbekistan, but 'Nobody seems to believe that the much maligned Uzbeks are capable of inventing such a game', so 'this is evidence for an origin of chess in nearby China'. - Only in China (and in no other country in Asia) are horses & elephants found together. - 'Chinese chess is the most popular game in the world'. - The Chinese are good mathematicians. - China is isolationist, so the adoption of a game from outside would have been unlikely. ...which seem neither original, nor profound, nor entirely accurate. Sloan tends to make unfortunate statements like... 'I have also looked it up in the sources which [Murray] cites. This is not so easy, as the aging pages crumble in my finger tips, but it is not so difficult either. All of the sources cited by Murray can be found in the New York Public Library and in similar repositories.' ...which implies that the New York Public Library does not take good care of the books in its collection, or... 'One day, Copernicus was looking at this wealth of data collected by others, when it occurred to him that all of this could be explained more easily by saying that the earth moved around the sun, rather than the other way around. Similarly, in the case at hand, the evidence has always clearly showed that chess was invented in China and did not arrive in India until nearly a millennium had passed, or perhaps even considerably longer.' ...where he compares himself to Copernicus, or... 'Even McDonnell, of LaBourdonnais - McDonnell fame, was perhaps no better than class A, and that was in 1834 and he was the best player in England.' ...where he maligns the quality of McDonnell's games. Reaction to Sloan's article, which he has actively solicited on the Internet, has not always been kind. A few examples from the r.g.c newsgroups... 'I would suggest him to submit his article to a scholarly historical journal as a part of verifying his claims. The comments I imagine the referees will make will surely help licking this article into better shape. Much better shape.' 'I would have deep reservations about accepting chess advice from a person who tries to force a win in a king and knight vs king endgame. Same thing about history lessons from Sloan.' 'Sloan says that Murray is a case of the blind leading the blind, and compares himself with Copernicus, who took a fresh look at what was known and produced his explanation. "For this heresy, he was justifiably nearly executed, but due to some oversight, he escaped." Perhaps the "oversight" was because the theory of Copernicus was not published until after his death! Sadly, the same cannot be said for Sloan's book.' ...and from http://www.sulekha.com/articles/ssloan_chess.html, an online Indian review, where Sloan published another copy of his piece... 'This article by Sloan reminds me of the famous spoof on post-modern critical theory written by someone in New York that was published in a high-brow journal, and later exposed by the author to be jargon-laden nonsense. The difference here is that the author appears to believe in the nonsense!' 'While I am of the belief that more than one country contributed to the development of modern chess, some of the statements in this article border on the ridiculous.' ...Sloan's article is entertaining, but it can't be taken seriously. He may be right -- perhaps chess did originate in China -- but his evidence is weak. My email correspondent was wrong in calling him 'the premiere authority of the subject', and I'm going to remove the bookmark from the Chess History discussion group. The bookmarks may not get many visitors, but there is no sense misleading those that they do get. There is an indirect link from the bookmarks to Sloan's page at http://chess.about.com/games/chess/msub30.htm, where Sloan's article is summarized as 'to be taken with a grain of salt'. Bye for now & best wishes for the new millenium, Mark Weeks