NEURAL NET
The Delphi Discussions
History Topics - India's architectural traditions & chess

 

 

From: JanDamcar Dec-30 9:12 am
To: ALL (1 of 10)
191.1

India's architectural traditions and the religious and esoteric and tantric traditions behind them contain a great stress and important focus on the very numbers in chess, the 8,16,32 and 64 and the 64 square is a very important mandala. Could chess have been evolved from these Indian traditions? Furthermore could the Chinese have later turned it into a game and the use of such a new use of these esoteric patterns as a game, found its way back into India? Or could there have been in ancient India a game-divinatory situation which was frozen into its temple traditions later and this game aspect survived only in China to come back later to India?

From: Alpheta Dec-31 8:01 pm
To: JanDamcar (2 of 10)
191.2 in reply to 191.1

Hi JanD, welcome to Goddesschess Discussion Group.

You ask some really loaded questions and I don't think I have any definitive answers for you.

Have you read Nigel Pennick's book "Secret Games of the Gods"? Pennick states "The Hindu tradition of earth harmony from India known as Vastuvidya is probably a very pure survival of the ancient geolocational art which gave rise to both the European and Chinese traditions. He describes the procedure for laying out a basic square which is then subdivided into a sacred grid (p. 116 of the paperback).

What I find fascinating about Pennick's description is that the sacred Paramasayika grid as he presents in illustration 32 has a center of 9 squares,or 3x3, the Square of Brahma. The shogi board (Japanese chess) has a center of 9 squares, while the "citadel" on the xiang qi board (Chinese chess), is a space on each side of the board consisting of 4 squares - but 9 points. Chinese chess is played on the intersections or points of the squares, not inside the squares, so the 3x3 or sacred 9 remains intact, although somewhat obscured in xiang qi. Korean chess, Changgi, also has the 4 square/9 points "fortress" on each side of the board. The square used in kumulak divination is 3x3.

The smallest magic square is 3x3 and, I believe, is earliest attested to in Chinese legends. Tony Smith, who does things with Clifford algebra I can't even begin to understand,

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/ichgene6.html#3x3msq says "China's first emperor, Fu Xi, saw, rising from the Yellow River, a dragon-horse" (the Ho Tu); that legend dates back about 5,300 years; the eight trigrams of the I Ching were derived from this arrangement. Fu Xi is not accounted an "actual" emperor but is a "myth." Later, Emperor Yu Di is said to have discovered the Lo Shu on the back of a turtle rising out of the Lo River, around 4,200 years ago. His magic square was 4 9 2/3 5 7/8 1 6, totalling 15 in all directions.

So, did all of this begin in ancient China, with their emphasis on the I Ching and the early divination techniques of geomancy and astrology advanced by the Daoists? Or is it more likely that chess arose out of Indo-European geomancy/sacred geometry that was best preserved in the Hindu traditions?

At this point, I don't know enough! All I can tell you is that I see definite similarities/resemblances among the Paramasayika grid, ancient Chinese liubo boards and ancient merels boards.

I'm attaching some images - hope this works!

- Attachments follow -

Sacred grid 9x9 Indian square.jpg

sacred grid 3x3 citadels on xiangqi board.jpg

sacred grid 3x3 square on 9x9 shogi board.jpg


Sacred grid Kumulak cloth 1.jpg

sacrid grid 9 mens morris board from Khejaralax Rajesthanx India.jpg



From: Isis (georgia18) Jan-1 12:38 am
To: JanDamcar (3 of 10)
191.3 in reply to 191.1

Happy New Year, and welcome to the GoddessChess discussion group. We are alway excited when we meet someone that loves the story/mystery of chess. Please continue to ask questions and we wil do our best to help you.

Your new friend,
Isis

From: JanDamcar Jan-30 11:40 am
To: Alpheta (4 of 10)
191.4 in reply to 191.2

Hi Alpheta, thanks for your reply. And a happy new year to you at Godesschess. Sorry for the delay. I am internet cafe bound and have been also ill amongst other things. So be patient in my replies generally at the moment.

I am primarily fascinated with the 8x8 square, and the numbers 8,16,32 and 64. Indian traditions, especially the Krishna traditions often depict the main deity surrounded by first 8 principle emanations, which expand outwards to 16, then 32 and the 64. Krishna's birthplace in India, Vrindaban, is divided into 64 sections. his previous incarnation in the Vishnu scheme of things, Rama, has a royal city whose foundation is a square of 64 too. There are 64 qualities of Krishna, 8 principle female shaktis or gopis, who are also grouped into 16, 32 and 64. What is interesting for me in all this, and I am writing a book with this in it, is that the Krishna tradition's emphasis upon these chess numbers is an example of the numbers of chess being associated with love and play. For in the Krishna tradition Krishna's love play with the Gopis is the unique focus and of course play is also what chess is too.

And in medieval times the Troubadours also associated chess with love too, sacred amor. And there are so many links between this mystical amor of the Troubadours and certain strains of Catholic mysticism which share so much with Krishna bhakti (devotion) too. I have also found that the Syrian Song of the Bride, a celebration of early Syrian Christianity's link to sacred love has the Lady Wisdom Sophia Shekinah or Magdalene (although not named as such, the Lord's Bride as surounded also by 16 handmaids and other chess numbers feature in this piece of early Syrian Christianity too (I cant remember offhand and am in internet cafe with limited time and dont have my file with me). The Song of Solomon in the Bible too has 8 chapters and 32 speeches attributed to the lover of the beloved as well. And then of course we have the Taoist yin yang, male and female (love too) play of opposites with their 8 and 64 trigrams too. All seems to point towards a sacred eros of male and female duality interplaying. Also the Tantric yogini tradition specifically focuses upon 64 yoginis and some of their mandalas and also those of the Goddess Durga are in fact a chess board of 64 squares, each with a goddess quality within it.

I have heard that in temple architectural terms, the 9x9 square is associated with royalty and kingship and the 8x8 more spiritual things for general worship, but cant remember where I seen this.

I used to have Nigel Pennick's book years ago and have seen it going for a huge price on Amazon books. It is one I intend getting hold of once again. I had it years back and cant remember much of it though. Anyway thanks for your reply and links. Bye for now. God bless.

From: Alpheta Jan-30 8:48 pm
To: JanDamcar (5 of 10)
191.5 in reply to 191.4

Hola! I'm glad you're feeling better. Having to do your computer work from internet cafes isn't very conducive to steady research! At this point, I would probably go nuts without my computer at home! I hope you will soon have your own computer to work on - or if you already have one but it's in the repair shop, get it back.

This is a short post - I hope to do more later, hopefully over the weekend. Going back to your first post where you were pondering China/India connections, I dug out Murray's "A History of Chess" because I wanted to pass this along:

"From very early times an important trade route has existed from Northwest India by Kashmir, Leh, the Karakoram Pass, Yarkhand, to the basin of the Hoang Ho and the fertile plains of Northern China (5). By this route Buddhism penetrated t China, together with much else of Indian culture. It was for long the principal round from West to east. And by this route other Indian games reached China, of which tables or backgammon is one of the most interesting, because it long retained a name revealing its Indian origin. This name, 't'shu-p'u,' is a Chinese transliteration of the Indian 'chaupur' (=Skr. 'chatush-padam'). Chinese works mention its introduction as having taken place as early as A.D. 220-265, and the game had reached Japan before the end of the seventh century (6)."

The footnotes are a little long so I'll transcribe them in my next post.

Since the game of backgammon was "passed along" to the Chinese (according to Murray) along this part of the Silk Road as early as the beginning of the 3rd century CE, there's every reason to think that chess or a proto-chess could have and would have been passed along at the same time, that the Chinese made it their own and then, perhaps, passed it back to the Indians at a later date.

Traditionalists date chess to perhaps the 5th century CE invention in northwestern India (I believe, in "Hind", which is in Pakistan these days), but there's no reason to suppose that late of a date for its genesis is correct. The Chinese chess board IS 9x8, but the center "river" that divides the two sides is not counted or used in the game of xiang qi, so the actual playing area is 8x8 (putting aside for the time being that the Chinese place their pieces on the points and not inside the squares).

The Chinese board size of 9x8 (72) sums to "9," just as the very important "432" number of the Goddess in India does, and the numbers 8 and 9 are important in Indian iconography (and 8, especially, in the religious and philosophical usages you noted) and in ancient Egyptian iconography as well.

I wish I remembered more about the usages of 8's and 9's - we wrote so many posts about these topics so long ago (hard to believe we've been at this 9 years now).

Seeing chess as a sort of balancing exercise between the male/female energies is something we've long advocated; too bad the game was corrupted into a war game. I think you're definitely on the right track!

From: JanDamcar Mar-19 10:10 am
To: Alpheta (6 of 10)
191.6 in reply to 191.5

Dear Alpheta, much much sorry for the delay. I had problems signing in as I forgot my password and was waiting for this site to send me my new one thinking it would show up in my emails with a Delphi forums of Goddesschess in the title. It came up under another title and thus I didnt see it. Anyway its sorted out now. Internet cafe based research does have its limits but it is workable when you have a computer at home as well, but does take time.

I would like to accept the Indian origin for chess, but as there are no evidences archeologically of any chess or protochess in the region which made its way into China to come back again later, it is difficult. Although the temple traditions contain the chess numbers and chess board layouts, and the symbolism within their traditions harmonise with chess board and pieces, we can only speculate really. But the ideas behind protochess are most certainly there and who is to say that instead of having wooden and stone boards, ancient Indians may have used sand. It is relatively easy to trace the 64 square board in sand, and use either pieces of stone painted colours or even trace pieces in the sand as one goes along. Sand mandalas are a popular Indian and Chinese tradition. It is all speculation though.

What I do find interesting more than all this is the link between chess and love in the west, the Troubadours etc, Grail legend of Walewein, and east-Indian Bhakti traditions of Radha Krishna which has an extensive symbolism of 8, 16, 32 and 64. There is also the Yogini traditions too with their 64 yoginis to add to this, but they are more alchemical and tantric, whereas with the Troubadorian Grail Bhakti links there is a complete system of love chess within all this and much similarity.

I am writing a novel and it is going well and this theme of love chess east and west is an important part of it. The novel is basically how in another realm outside of ours but linked to ours at the same time there are chess players who create storyworlds out from their chess games, and these worlds of theirs they play in are made out of akasha, a subtle material that western occultists have tuned into. And the genesis of how they created their chess playing story machine is a mystery which we can only see by hints at such chess story creative phenomena in out world and history, thus the many references to many things you will find in this site and chess history and chess in litterature too. The book is mainly a novel, set with a colection of fictional essays and writings drawn from the fictional archives of akasha of this land within and slightly beyond but connected to our history, our history of chess and all those things related.

Anyway bye for now as my time is running out. Be patient in my replies which will most certainly be there sooner than has been so far. Take care. God-dess bless.


From: Alpheta Mar-21 11:46 am
To: JanDamcar (7 of 10)
191.7 in reply to 191.6

Hola!

I am home from work today, I have developed strep throat and laryngitis. I'm glad to be home (although not glad to be sick) because there is an early spring snow storm raging outside right now. We may get between 8-15 inches of snow. Just when most of it had finally melted away too. I am not happy about this weather!

You are correct that at present there is no concrete evidence for the development of chess in India, other than the stories in the Persian literature Chatrang-namak and the much later Shahnameh which tell how chess was introduced into Persia by the ambassador of the King of Hind. Dr. Renate Syed has worked for many years to link the discovery of many excavating small artifacts to the development of chess in India. There was an article back in March, 2007 that talked about this and her word with Manfred Eder. http://www.goddesschess.com/chessquest/kanaujindianchess.html

You pointed out one of the problems - one cannot discover evidence of proto-chess anywhere if the materials used to play the game were made of something other than stone! Game boards scratched into the ground would not survive; generally neither would boards made out of cloth or wood except under very special conditions - for instance, a very few wooden game boards have been discovered in ancient Egyptian tombs and I know of one wooden game board excavated at Shari Sokhtah (the "Burnt City") that dates back to about 2400 BCE. The wooden game boards that Woolley excavated at Ur did not survive, but the inlays used to decorate them did survive, so the shape of the boards was able to be reconstructed. There are, I believe, one or two other ancient wooden game boards excavated elsewhere in the middle east that have survived.

Game pieces that were colored pebbles, who would know they would used for games if found next to a stream thousands of years later? The problem that Syed has run into - the refusal of the specialists to accept individual pieces excavated in isolation to identify them as "chess" pieces - sometimes even refusal to identify them as game pieces (witness what happened with the chess piece excavated at Butrint - the consensus of the "experts" was that the obvious chess piece dating to 465 CE was a "finial!")

These days, I'm more inclined to look to ancient Persia as the home of proto-chess.

I think a case might be made for the spread of certain "core" proto-Indo-European ideas about the relationship between the female and male principles in the universe (which I believe were initially incorporated into proto-chess) that followed people's migrations from central asia to Persia, thence west into Europe, into the Indian sub-continent, and east across the Tarim Basin into China, over thousands of years. Along the way, unfortunately, much corruption of the ideas embodied in the game occurred so that chess became warped into a "war" game when it's nothing of the kind! However, enough of the ideas survived, mangled and twisted and their original truths lost, in a sort of "goddess underground" if you will, so that when the links of cultural transmission opened up again in the Middle Ages between the east and the west, there was a resonance that occurred. The goddess had never really been lost in the east, but she had been beaten down and corrupted in the west and nearly exterminated by the patriarchal religions of the jews, christians and the muslims.

When that cultural corridor opened up between the east and the west again due primarily to the Crusades (how ironic), the trickle of information transmitted from the east about the goddess was enough, I believe, to trigger the great emancipation of the Goddess in the west, through the elevation of the adoration of the Virgin Mary in the great cathedrals built all over Europe, most particularly in France (a hot bed of religious radicalism).

There is a linkage that can be traced between the traditions of sex, love and the accoutrements of chess in the east, and the traditions in the west that exploded into being during the age of the troubadors after having been repressed for a thousand and more years. Good luck with your novel!

From: JanDamcar Mar-26 10:39 am
To: Alpheta (8 of 10)
191.8 in reply to 191.7

Hi again. Hope you get well soon. Try to remeber it is a passing cloud although hard to remeber at the time. When you mention Persian origins, are you saying then that the Indian traditions that deal with the chess number structure 8, 16, 32 and 64 (Goddess tradition in your understanding?) made their way from India, China whatever and were turned into a chess game in Persia? Possible.

You mention the three religions of the west with small capitals and pass them all off as patriarchal. I feel this is a very mistaken viewpoint from the view of a religious scholar who studies sourcetexts and such tings and has no axe to grind too. And by the way I am a devotee of Sophia, the Goddess of the Bible who appears as Mary Magdalene, the Virgin and other aspects. I personally have a great respect for the three Semitic faiths and do not hold that there was a Goddess 'stamping down' 'patriarchal takeover' myself. Such an understanding does not take into account things such as whole Goddess cults being headed by males who castrated themselves for instance, Demeter, or Goddess cults who were encouraging those very patriarchal warrior type practises in the first place. It does not take into account sacred androgyny in the Biblical tradition as it sees all as male one sidedness. And it does not take into account that sects who choose a male aspect of God may just emphasise upon that and tolerate and even be devotees of female aspect Godhead cults elsewhere, with a different emphasis and the two in places went side by side.

I think this patriarchy take over simplification of history stems out of dissilusioned feminists with their religious upbringing and is a modernist projection on a more complex past. How do we know for instance, that the Goddess cult was originally the inspiration for those things we now label as patriarchy? And were these matriachys any better, or were they oppressive in their own way? And thus any 'takeover' (if such was the case- although I believe these so called takeovers are later traditions and not at the roots)would have been in the spirit of freedom of oppression. And how does one know that the Bible was originally a text which empahsised the male aspects of the Godhead as part of a wider tradition of devotion, wherein it was harmonious and side by side with other texts and traditions which empahasised the Goddess or paired them both in some kind of harmony? We see a similar thing in India where texts in praise of the Goddess as supreme and the root of all gods are just as orthodox as those who extoll Vishnu, Krishna or Shiva as the all in all and highest too. And if one looks at those qualities in 'patriarchal' religion they are qualities that encourage gentleness and goodness, humility and are against the wanton warrior spirt which certain Goddess cults (and certain women today) still encourage. But I do believe there was a difference between later translations imposed on the gematria Hebrew Torah which reflect traditions wherein the roles of men and women were defined in that way which so appalls modernist feminists, and yet doesnt appall religious women, and may have even been due to simple practical reasons in a society which was tribal and at war and much more simple without al its mod cons as today.

For the sake of love, peace and unity and harmony between the sexes this patriachy takeover conspiracy theory is actually going to stop people from actually dealing with the real distortions of religions which is simply the fundamentalist side which dries up the mathematical, esoteric and kabalistic interpretations and uses them as tribal beating sticks of superioroty over others, men over women, women over men, tribe over tribe. So please consider carfeully before subscribing to this modernist projection onto past by disgruntled feminists.

It should also be considered that the original teachings of Christianity actually raised womens rights from what they had been before and may well have been the best that could have been done and quite radical in its day. The same for all religions. Those patriarchal roles were around before the religions came about and were changed to various degrees by them as best they could, but their message aint simply a patriarchal one either but a message of spirituality and freedom from the misdirected lusts of greedy men and women of this world. When I mean Biblical religion I do not mean later traditions encrusted and their fundamentalist translations. Anyway I may be wrong as well and am open but someting does really rankle about this patriarchy conspiracy theory as most I have read seems to have such a bad understanding of theology, history and is in denail of opening up to truths with a fear of them being 'patriarchal' and brainwashing etc.

All the best and keep well, eat well and enjoy what you can and bless the creation and keep on the good alchemical refining of chess history towards the sparkling truths of its existence as a game of love of the opposites not in opposition as in war but as in play and truth. God-dess bless.

From: Alpheta Mar-29 12:24 am
To: JanDamcar (9 of 10)
191.9 in reply to 191.8

Hola!

I am better - the voice is back and I have spent the last week coughing up lots of phlegm. My voice is still an octave lower than normal, though, so I think either I have undergone a magical sex change as a result of this illness or I have another week or two of coughing up "stuff" in order to get back to normal!

Regarding your comments - it would take a long time to try and answer them all! I will just say this. When did you ever hear of women burning men at the stake because they were "warlocks"? What you have heard from history is that men burned women at the stake for being "witches." Witches was just another word for being worshippers of the goddess - or else just being "different" from the average person.

We don't even know how many thousands of women were killed this way. The last "witch" was burned in the 19th century CE, I believe! I posted about her at the Goddessches blog.

So much for male tolerance of goddess worshippers. It is FACT that the Roman Catholic Church as well as Islam actively suppressed goddess worship. Islam went so far as to totally repress its female population - they can't vote, drive, be seen in public without a male escort who is a family member, and must be shrouded from head to foot in covering deemed "modest." What a joke for a religion that was founded on a stone that was worshipped as a goddess!

From: JanDamcar Apr-9 10:08 am
To: Alpheta unread (10 of 10)
191.10 in reply to 191.9

Hiya again, I totally agree with you but the witch burnings and inquisition are well over a thousand years after the Bible and Christ and the accusation that the original writings in the Bible are mysogynistic to me at least from my studies seem to be wrong and without understanding of the times and the climes and minds which are almost another world. And this Bible as patriarchal propaganda con doesnt take into account how much gematria and kabalistic metaphor is actually in the original Hebrew Torah, where Adam can be translated as reason and Eve intuition on another level, for instance, how can this kind of perception be overlooked and passed off as Patriarchal conspiracy? The Bible like chess has to do with numbers, esepcially 8, 16, 32 and 64 alongside of 7, 12 and others related. And weren't also templars burnt at the stake alongside of alchemical kabalistic hermetical Jews and Christians who revered the holy text as well and what about other Christians also? It wasnt just witches. Witch paranoia may also have been due to ergot poisoning, (I will post some links when I can on this) where rye was infected with rye molds (from which LSD is derived) and got into the paranoias of- yes you are right there- a patriarchally obsessed system which was suspicious already about women, by this time. But how do we know the witches were part of a Goddess cult? Perhaps they were women who the authorities wished to nick land off , perhaps women who knew about a secret Magdalene tradition or herbal craft, could be any of these just as much as they could have been members of some specific goddess cult which no one has yet located precisely. My Goddess anyway is Sophia and also Her equivalents in Indian traditions, mainly Radha of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. I am a Rosicrucian Gaudiya Christian Vaishnava and thus a mad heretical ecelectic with no axe to grind but from my studies simply cannot accept this Bible as patariachal propaganda simplistic misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

From my researches I have found that the chess number structure is most prominant within Judaic kabalah, Syrian Christian traditions, the cult of Radha Krishna Chaitanya of Bengal, the cult of the 64 Yoginis and the Taoist I Ching.In amidst all these, there is so much which if applied to chess, one has a very rich symbolism indeed.

What are your views on Chaturanga, is it an adaption of Persian two handed chess, or a continuation of proto-chess?

In regards to Islam we have them to thank for the preservation and the bringing of chess into the west, therefore if it wasnt for them would we even being discussing the things we do? Also the Bahai faith are Islamic inspired and born out of it and they hold equality between men and women as also do Sikhs too, who are inspired equally by Islam and Hinduism. origianlly Islam raised the status of women from those 'pagan' cults in Arabia beforehand, who used to bury their unwanted daughters. And not all branches of the tradition are women down pressors and apparently there is a movement amongst Islamic women raising teir status too, and what did the more esoetric sects like Sufis see in their understanding of women???

Anyway wish you good health and keep up the preservation of the esoteric.