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It seems that we may be satisfied that chess is of Asiatic origin,
and India its birth place without subscribing entirely to the
view that even the ancient Hindu Chaturanga so minutely
described and which comes so long before any other game
mentioned in China or Egypt is even the first of chess; but we
may say this much, that, notwithstanding, the doubts expressed by
Crawford in his history and Rajah Brooke in his journal, and the
negative opposition of Dr. Van der Linde, we cannot bring
ourselves to be skeptical enough to discredit the trustworthiness of
the accounts furnished to us in the works of Dr. Hyde, Sir. William
Jones and Professor Duncan Forbes of the existence of the game
called the Chaturanga at the time stated.
NOTE. The Amara Kosha was one of the most valued works of Amara
Sinha one of the nine gems which adorned the throne of Vikramaditya.
The period, when he lived, was that from which the Hindoos date
their present chronology; that is he lived about the middle of
the first century B.C. The Amara Kosha was one of his numerous
works preserved, if not the only one that escaped. They perished,
it is said, like all other Buddhistical writings at the time of
the persecutions raised by the Brahmans against those who
professed the religion of Buddha.
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