About two thousand six hundred years are supposed to have
elapsed between the time of King Pandu, Prince Yudhisthira,
Vyasa, and the records of the ancient Chaturanga, to the days of
Alexander the Great, to which period the references concerning
chess and the Indian Kings contained in Eastern accounts,
Firdausi's Persian Shahnama and the Asiatic Society's M.S.
presented to them by Major Price, relate.

NOTE. The Shahnama, it is recorded, occupied thirty years in its
preparation and contains one hundred and twenty thousand verses.

The long interval of three or four thousand years, between the
date ascribed to the Chaturanga, and its reappearance as the
Chatrang in Persia, and the Shatranj in Arabia, has perplexed
all writers, for none can offer a vestige of trace of evidence,
either of the conversion of Chaturanga into Chatrang or Shatranj;
or that the game ever continued to be practiced in its old form
either with or without the dice, it is conjectured merely, that
when the dice had to be dispensed with, as contrary to the law
and the religion of the Hindus and when such laws were vigorously
enforced, it then became a test of pure skill only, and was
probably more generally engaged in by two competitors than four;
but, it appears reasonable, when we recollect the oft translated
story of Nala, and the evident fascination of the dice to the
Hindus, to suppose that the dice formed far too an important
element in the Chaturanga to be so easily surrendered; and it is
not at all improbable that the prohibition and suppression of
the dice destroyed much of its popularity and that the game
became much less practiced and ceased to be regarded with a
degree of estimation sufficiently high to make it national in