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H. J. R. MurraySon of James Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. (1868–1955) is a very important figure in the history of board games studies. He published two key works: A History of Chess in 1913 and A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess in 1951.
A History of Chess took 13 years to complete, and Murray taught himself German and Arabic in order to finish the book! A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess was published when he was 83, being nearly 40 years in the making.
Errata for …Other Than Chess
The following are my own notes on what I believe to be incorrect in the book. They are listed in book order, with section number first; the list is incomplete:
§3.1.6 (p. 39): Tre-guti is not equivalent to
three-men’s-morris but is a capturing game; also the citation Games from
the Punjab should be named A Few Types of Sedentary Games prevalent
in the Punjab.
§3.3.2 (p. 41): alquerque de tres is listed as equivalent to three-men’s-morris; it is actually equivalent to noughts & crosses (§3.2).
§3.3.5 (p. 41): the citation of Notice des émaux, bijoux et objets divers, exposés dans les galeries du Musée du Louvre (p. 381) for carré chinois is incorrect (but he is following Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic literature, with historical notes on other table-games (p. 114)).
§3.3.11 (p. 41): Tin-guti pait pait is not in the reference cited (Humphries (1906)), but it is in Datta (1933).
§3.3.13 (p. 42): HydeG[p. 211] writes Che-lo,
not lo che.
§3.5 (p. 45): a3, b1, c3, and b3, b6 being empty
should read (something like) b1, c2, b3, and a2, b2 being empty, as
the pieces should form a cross shape with an empty middle;
vangjamylna should read vængjamylna; also, charri
or saddeh refer to simple mills, not the ‘running mill’ formation.
§3.5.13 (p. 47): al-Fīrūzābādī shows board G, not
B.
§4.9.3 (p. 94): Murray mistakenly suggests that tjeki (i.e. Ceki cards) is the same as the game chuki.
“Books and articles consulted”
pg. 244: All of Hem Chandra Das-Gupta’s articles have incorrect titles. Possibly they were published under different names at some point?
References
Murray, H. J. R. (, originally published 1913). A History of Chess. Skyhorse Publishing: New York, NY, USA. ISBN: 978-1-62087-062-4.
Murray, H. J. R. (). A History of Board-Games Other Than Chess. Oxford University Press: Oxford, England, UK. ISBN: 0-19-827401-7. ℹ 1978 reprint available here
de la Borde, Léon (). Notice des émaux, bijoux et objets divers, exposés dans les galeries du Musée du Louvre volume 2. Vinchon: Paris.
Fiske, Willard (). Chess in Iceland and in Icelandic literature, with historical notes on other table-games. The Florentine Typographical Society: Florence.
Humphries, E. de M. (). ‘Notes on “Pachesi” and similar games, as played in the Karwi Subdivision, United Provinces’. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal vol. 2: pages 117–127.
Datta, Jatindra Mohan (). ‘A few types of Sedentary Games of Lower Bengal’. Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal vol. 29: pages 167–170.
Hyde, Thomas (). De Ludis Orientalibus Libri Duo [Two Books On Oriental Games] volume 2: ‘Historia Nerdiludii [History of the Nerd-game]’. E Theatro Sheldoniano: Oxford, UK.