[no subject]

[Robert de Neufville <rden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I took a stab at translating the Leibniz passage on go.  I thought it was quite interesting.  One caveat (besides the fact that I am not a translator) is that I translated it primarily from the German and French translations, so I can't vouch for how well it accords with the original Latin.  The German translation seems like it might be pretty close to the original, but the French clearly takes a lot of liberties and is quite garbled in places.  Anyway, here is roughly what Leibniz had to say.

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> I come now
> to the account of a Chinese game, to which I will take the opportunity
> to add several remarks.  There are several pictorial
> representations  of it in a book of Chinese drawings in the
> library of the famous Prussian kings in Berlin, one of which drawings
> I have made an engraving of.  This game is one of those that are
> based on skill alone with no element of chance mixed in.  It has
> the peculiar feature that the players (so it seems) do not take each
> other's pieces in turn, but rather corner and surround each other so
> that in the end the player who takes away the other's freedom to
> move wins, as it were, without murder or bloodshed.  This can
> happen in other games too, but here it is always the
> case.
>
> But on
> this game listen to Nicolas Triglautius, in the eighth chapter of the
> first book of On the Christian Expedition to China, from the
> notes of Matthaeus Riccius, one of the illustrious founders of the
> mission to China. He has this to say: 
> > The most
> > substantial game among them is of the following type:  several
> > people play on a board with three hundred squares [in my opinion the
> > word "several" must be read as meaning that the game is played on
> > a board with more than three hundred squares since there are only two
> > players; this may be the result of a Latin translator who
> > misinterpreted the Italian of Riccius or the French of Triglautius]
> > with two hundred stones, of which some are white and some are black. 
> > With these stones each player tries to push other's stones into the
> > center of the board in order to control the remaining squares; at the
> > end, the player who controls the most squares on the board is
> > considered the winner.
> >
> > The
> > magistrates are wild about this game and often spend the greater part
> > of their day playing at it; between skillful players a single game
> > takes a whole hour.  Those who have mastered the game, even if
> > they are distinguished in no other area, are nevertheless praised and
> > sought after by everyone.  These masters even read  at the
> > traditional ceremonies, so that others can learn the strategy of the
> > game from them. (?)
>
> Thus
> Triglautius.  But a visual examination of the game's design
> reveals a problem with this account.  Namely, that the board is a
> square, with eighteen squares on a side.  Therefore there are in
> all eighteen times eighteen squares, that is, not three hundred, but
> three hundred and twenty-four.  And the rest of the description
> doesn't accord well enough with the actual facts: it is obviously
> not always possible or necessary for one player to push the other into
> the middle of the board, since it is enough to surround your opponent,
> either in the middle or in a corner.  And the player who has
> control of the most squares (however one wants to define this) would
> not be the winner unless, after surrounding his opponent, he alone has
> a free field.
>
> Even
> though we don't know all the rules, the number of stones and the
> size of the board make me certain that this game requires very great
> skill and is extremely difficult.  Certainly, it is worth
> noticing its peculiar manner of play, namely, that the point of the
> game is not to destroy the opponent but rather only to push him back
> across the board (unlike in our games).  And one can well believe
> that the creator of this game was some brahmin who abhorred killing
> and wanted a victory without bloodshed.  For it is known that
> most of the peoples of the East Indies are in these things more
> Christian than those who call themselves Christian, and as rule avoid
> killing even in war.

-- 

                                                        Robert de Neufville
                                                             rden@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx