Less magnanimous and wise, these two, Henry and Ras,
did not in this respect resemble Al Mamun and Tamerlane, whom Ibn
Arabshah, Gibbon and others tell us, had no dislike to being beaten,
but rather honored their opponents. The chessmen of Henry VIII were
last heard of in the possession of Sir Thomas Herbert, those of
Charles I were with Lord Barrington. Chess men were kept for Queen
Elizabeth's use by Lord Cecil, the Earl of Leicester, and Sir
John Harrington.
In olden times as supposed, Alexander the Great, perhaps from
acquaintance with India and its Kings, and their powerful Porus,
326 B.C., may have known chess and possibly Aristotle, sometime his
tutor, who some say, invented chess, also played it. The most
ancient names are the renowned Prince Yudhistheira, eldest son of
King Pandu of the Sanskrit chess period, the yet earlier Prince
Nala of the translated poems, and further back we have the Brahmin
Radha Kants account from the old Hindu law book, that the wife of
Ravan, King of Lanka, Ceylon, invented chess in the second age of
the world. Associated with games not chess, but more like Draughts
in China, there are Emperor Yao, 2300 B.
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