H. J. R. Murray

Harold James Ruthven Murray (24 June 1868 – 16 May 1955) was a British educationalist, inspector of schools, and prominent chess historian. His book, A History of Chess, is widely regarded as the most authoritative and comprehensive history of the game. He was the son of James Murray, the lexicographer.

Quotes

A History of Chess (1913)

• Historically chess must be classed as a game of war. Two players direct a conflict between two armies of equal strength upon a field of battle, circumscribed in extent, and offering no advantage of ground to either side. The players have no assistance other than that afforded by their own reasoning faculties, and the victory usually falls to the one whose strategical imagination is the greater, whose direction of his forces is the more skilful, whose ability to foresee positions is the more developed.
  • Pt. 1, ch. 1, p. 25

• Western civilization has evolved other games, and teems with other interests for leisure moments, so that chess to-day can only be regarded as the game of the minority of the Western world. In the Middle Ages chess was far more widely played, and the precedence among indoor games that is still accorded by courtesy to it is a survival from a period when chess was the most popular game of the leisured classes of Europe.
  • Pt. 1, ch. 1, pp. 25-26

• Early Persian and Arabic tradition is unanimous in ascribing the game of chess to India. The details naturally vary in different works, and the names in the tradition are manifestly apocryphal. Chess is usually associated with the decimal numerals as an Indian invention, and its introduction into Persia is persistently connected with the introduction of the book Kalīla wa Dimna (the Fables of Pilpay) in the reign of the Sāsānian monarch Khusraw I Nūshīrwān.
  • Pt. 1, ch. 1, p. 26

External links

• Encyclopedic article on H. J. R. Murray on Wikipedia