Chess In Early Literature
One of the most common ways for chess historians to trace when the board game chess entered a country is to look at the literature of that country. Although due to the names associated with chess sometimes being used for more than one game (for instance Xiang-qi in China and Tables in England), the only certain reference to chess is often several hundred years later than uncertain earlier references. The following list contains the earliest references to chess or chess-like games.
Read more about Chess In Early Literature: Byzantium, China, England, France, Germany, India, Italy, Persia, Russia, Spain, Sumatra, Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the words chess, early and/or literature:
“I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)