Go and Ancient Chinese Divination

Sparhawk · Feb 7, 2008

Today I found this interesting article about Go and Chinese divination:

Go and Ancient Chinese
Divination:
A Commentary on
A Journey in Search of the Origins
of Go
By Shirakawa Masayoshi

charly · Feb 11, 2008

sparhawk said:
Today I found this interesting article about Go and Chinese divination[/URL]

Thanks very much, Luis:

I believe that almost all board games proceed from divinatory techniques. John Fairbairn has a page about history of go where he rebuts Murray, till now an autoritative «historian» whose opinions about origin of chess I never trust.

Here the pag: http://gobase.org/reading/history/china/

I wonder if 8 x 8 chess is not a chinese invention, I try few years ago in a correspondence between the ba gua and the major pieces of standard chess:

right serie → yang
left serie → yin

from left to right:

Queen's Castle/Tower → ||> 兌 duì [lake, younger daughter]
Queen's Knight/Horse → |>| 離 lí [fire, middle daughter]
Queen's Bishop → >|| 巽 xùn [wind, elder daughter]
Queen → >>> 坤 kūn [earth, mother]
King → 乾 qián [heaven, father]
King's Bishop → |>> 震 zhèn [thunder, elder son]
King's Knight/Horse → >|> 坎 kǎn [water, middle son]
King's Castle/Tower → >>| 艮 gèn [mountain, younger son]

I don't know if there are any historical facts about it.

Yours,

Charly

martin · Feb 11, 2008

Interesting. I started working on a new chessprogram. It's still rather dumb. Maybe if I tell it that the pieces can be interpreted as trigrams it will become smarter.

I don't know if chess has roots in China. As far as I know it was invented in India. Originally with different rules, the queen was less powerful for instance.
There is another game called 'Chinese Chess' though. Perhaps similar to our chess, but I don't know it.

sergio · Feb 11, 2008

Hola Charly;
Robert Temple in his books"The Genius of China" and 'Netherworld" claims that the game of chess was indeed invented in China and then went to India.He talks about a board with magnetized piece and presents a compelling case about its origins but with no martial conotations-he says those were a later modification.Luis also has an I Ching version were there is a procedure to consult the Yi by playing a game of chess
-not too convincIng IMO.You can check at www.roberttemple.co.uk re:the origins of chess.
Sergio
P.S.;also checl Steve Marshall's site for a very interesting article(and link)on the ancient game of Liubo,another boardgame from China with clear divinatory connotations.

Sparhawk · Feb 11, 2008

sergio said:
Luis also has an I Ching version were there is a procedure to consult the Yi by playing a game of chess
-not too convincIng IMO.

Correct, it is from a book by Louis T. Culling. The darn book is almost impossible to find (at least when I was searching for it) For that reason I scanned it to share it. it is here

P.S.;also checl Steve Marshall's site for a very interesting article(and link)on the ancient game of Liubo,another boardgame from China with clear divinatory connotations.

Also an interesting connection between Liubo (六博) and TLV mirrors. I've been fascinated by TLV mirrors and their history and use for a long time. Have quite a bit of info and I'm always collecting what I find about them.

charly · Feb 14, 2008

sergio said:
Hola Charly;
Robert Temple in his books"The Genius of China" and 'Netherworld" claims that the game of chess was indeed invented in China and then went to India....

Sergio:

This is the hypotesis from Neeham, I have read that maybe it is not confirmed by archaeologial findings, but for me it sounds very interesting.

The Indian hypotesis provides ancestral coverage for the lobby of moden chess players that see Indoeuropeans as a sort of totemic respectable ancestors instead of devaluated ancient chinese people.

But as any tribe proceed from pigs, bears or crows there is high probability that chess do not proceed from India. And Murray doesn't bring reliable evidence.

From Neeham:

... there was a dice element as well as a move element, and there were many intermediate forms between pure throwing and placement followed by combat moves. All these go back to China of the Han and pre-Han times, i.e. to the -4th or -3th century, and similar techniques have persisted down to late times in other cultures.
Thoughts on The Origin of Chess by Joseph Needham, (Cambridge), 1962
http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/needham1.html

Maybe after more than 40 years this is something obsolete, does Temple bring more recent findings?

Yours,

Charly

charly · Feb 14, 2008

sparhawk said:
Correct, it is from a book by Louis T. Culling. The darn book is almost impossible to find (at least when I was searching for it) For that reason I scanned it to share it. it is here

Luis:

I go to look Culling Chess Method, meanwhile...

Go in chinese is named YI and the characeter 弈 depicts:

a man with water dripping from him (1) (like a dog after taking a bath)
over two united hands,

maybe a chieftain after having crossed the big river? Maybe Mao?

Yours,

Charly

__________________
(1) From Sears : http://www.chineseetymology.org/Cha...aspx?characterInput=亦&submitButton1=Etymology

martin · Feb 14, 2008

charly said:
The Indian hypotesis provides ancestral coverage for the lobby of moden chess players that see Indoeuropeans as a sort of totemic respectable ancestors instead of devaluated ancient chinese people.

Lol! Well, in any case, the current world chess champion (Viswanathan Anand) is Indian.

charly · Feb 14, 2008

martin said:
Lol! Well, in any case, the current world chess champion (Viswanathan Anand) is Indian.

Martin:

I'm only speaking of the true origin of the game, not about the quality of the modern players. Maybe both the Indian/Persian and the Chinese evolve from a common chinese ancestor not yet played at China.

Chess was not invented in India. Chess was invented in China.'!!

When I say this to my otherwise well informed fellow chess players, they stare at me with an expression which indicates either horror, dismay or disgust, or some combination thereof. Finally, after a polite pause, they usually say, "I'm sorry. You're wrong. Chess was invented in India. Look it up in H.J.R. Murray."
From: The Origin of Chess By Sam Sloan
the entire 1985 article: http://www.ishipress.com/origin.htm

Not all chess players are good historians.

Yours,

Charly

charly · Feb 14, 2008

sparhawk said:
Correct, it is from a book by Louis T. Culling. The darn book is almost impossible to find (at least when I was searching for it) For that reason I scanned it to share it. it is here

One page from the book of Culling posted by Luis:

The method is based upon the exact correspondence of the meanings of the six line positions of the hexagram and the nature of the six different chess pieces... [It] PROVES that either King Wan knew of the game or that the game is indeed DESCENDED from the Yi.

page 20 from the book of Cullings

The quoted correspondence is:

bottom line → multitude → paws
2nd. line → knight
3rd. line → bishop
4th. line → castle
5th. line → king
6th.line → queen

Following it there is the method for getting an oracular reading, where the player plays against himself until checkmate.

See the next image, please.

Charly

charly · Feb 14, 2008

charly said:
...Chess was invented in China...

Chinese chess is different from occidental chess, but here are the rules and an image with westernized pieces for perceiving similarities:

From: http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_chinaway/2003-12/31/content_44528.htm

Charly

charly · Feb 14, 2008

charly said:
... Chess was invented in China...

But maybe GO was invented in Tibet!

子曰：
“飽食終日，無所用心，難矣哉！不有博弈者乎？為之，猶賢乎已。”

Confucius said :

"If you eat your full all day long, and have nothing to apply your mind to, that is really bad !
Are there not games of chance and skill ?
Would it not be better to play such games than do nothing ?"

Lun Yu 論語 "The Analects of Confucius" (Zhonghua Shuju, 1980) 17.22.
From: The Origins of Go
http://babelstone.blogspot.com/2006/03/origins-of-go.html

Was Confucius a compulsive gambler?

Charly

Sparhawk · Feb 15, 2008

charly said:
Was Confucius a compulsive gambler?

Charly

Not to thread on stereotypes here of being politically incorrect, but, Chinese are notorious gamblers, much more so, per capita, than most other cultures.

As for Confucius, who knows. On the other hand, I've yet to meet a perfect "Master," dead or alive...

charly · Feb 15, 2008

sparhawk said:
Not to thread on stereotypes here of being politically incorrect, but, Chinese are notorious gamblers, much more so, per capita, than most other cultures.
As for Confucius, who knows. On the other hand, I've yet to meet a perfect "Master," dead or alive...

Luis:

Notorious gamblers indeed, did they used the Milfoil for gambling? Maybe the origin of pickup sticks (1) ?

Jackstraws, Pick-up-Sticks, Spellicans

...Stewart Culin, ... Games of The Orient, originally published by the University of Pennsylvania in 1895, and reprinted by Charles E. Tuttle Company, Rutland, Vermont, in 1958, 177 pages.

... explains how arrows were first used for divinatory purposes, then as gaming implements for purpose of gambling. Later, by modifying the length of the arrows, these became "throwing sticks" and even later became dice! During this "evolutionary" process, the original arrow feathers (and shapes) gave rise to the practice of carving and decorating the "sticks". Eventually, each type of stick took on a "value". In time the divinatory purpose disappeared, and the use of the sticks for gambling purposes remained.

rom: http://gamesmuseum.uwaterloo.ca/VirtualExhibits/Tablegames/Jackstraws/index.html

I know persons that believe the I Ching is a game and played it with fake coins and short booklets, sometimes chinese booklets.

If Cullings may use the chess for getting an I Ching reading, why not to use the ZhouYi for gambling?

But for gambling, the book must not be very large, maybe only Wen Wang, no lines.

I have read, if I remember well, that Shaugnessy says that when you get an Hex. with the words «li zhen» (perseverance furthers / profitable divination) it's the opportunity for casting another time.

An award waiting in some fixed places, like in the Game of the Goose!

It reminds me that Borges said that The Book and The Labyrinth are both the same thing:

Stephen Albert said to me:

"In a riddle whose answer is chess, what is the only prohibited word?"

I thought a moment and replied, "The word chess."

"Precisely," said Albert. "The Garden of Forking Paths is an enormous riddle, or parable, whose theme is time; this recondite cause prohibits its mention. To omit a word always, to resort to inept metaphors and obvious periphrases, is perhaps the most emphatic way of stressing it.
...

When he died, his heirs found nothing save chaotic manuscripts ... but his executor--a Taoist or Buddhist monk--insisted on their publication."

I replied... The book is an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts. I examined it once: in the third chapter the hero dies, in the fourth he is alive. As for the other undertaking of Ts'ui Pên, his labyrinth . . ."

"Here is Ts'ui Pên's labyrinth," he said, indicating a tall lacquered desk.

"An ivory labyrinth!" I exclaimed. "A minimum labyrinth."

"A labyrinth of symbols," he corrected. "An invisible labyrinth of time...

Ts'ui Pe must have said once: I am withdrawing to write a book. And another time: I am withdrawing to construct a labyrinth. Every one imagined two works; to no one did it occur that the book and the maze were one and the same thing ...

J.L.Borges: The Garden of Forking Paths
From: http://courses.essex.ac.uk/lt/lt204/forking_paths.htm

Another time the chess in a story obvously inspired in the I Ching.

Yours,

Charly

_______________________
(1) «palitos chinos»

sergio · Feb 22, 2008

Interesting article on the game of weiqi from Harmen's site
http://www.sav.sk/journals/aas/full/aas196f.pdf
Sergio

...life can be translucent

Go and Ancient Chinese Divination

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...

charly

visitor

martin

(deceased)

sergio

visitor

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...

charly

visitor

charly

visitor

martin

(deceased)

charly

visitor

charly

visitor

charly

visitor

charly

visitor

Sparhawk

One of those men your mother warned you about...

charly

visitor

sergio

visitor