It should be recollected to their
credit, that the germ of almost every known invention, the
original idea of nearly every useful secret in arts, the knowledge
of the highest branches of the abstract sciences, had been familiar
to the wise men of the East, and were taught in the most perfect
language in the world, the mother of all other languages, the
Sanskrit.
The anonymous or rather unknown author of the Asiatic
Society's M.S. often declares that the Hindus were far too stupid
a people to have invented chess.
------
SALVIO, DOCTOR OF CIVIL LAWS
The inventor as some authors declare, and among them Jacobus
de Cessolus, a Friar and Master of the Dominican Order, is Xerxes,
a philosopher and minister of Ammolius, King of Babylon whose
object was to admonish his monarch of the errors that had been
committed in the government of the realm. This opinion is
followed by many, of whom the author of the Historia del Mondo
is one. St. Gregory of Nazianzen in his third oration, Cassiodorus
the Great in his thirty-first epistle and eighth book, Allesandri
Allesandro in the third book and twenty first chapter of his Dies
Geniales, Torquato Tasso in his Romeo del Gioco, Thomas Actius
in his Tractatus de Ludo Scaccherum, and other legal authors who
have treated of play, say that chess owes its origin to Palamedes
who at the siege of Troy, employed it in order that his soldiers
should not remain inactive, and not being able to practice actual
warfare, they might amuse themselves with mimic conflicts.
Pages:
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159