' The second advantage is in the promotion and cultivation of
religion; predestination and free-will are both exemplified--the
player being able to move where he will, yet always in obedience to
certain laws. 'Whereas,' says the writer, 'Nerd--that is, Eastern
backgammon--on the contrary, is mere free-will, while in dice, again,
all is compulsion.' The third and fourth advantages relate to
government and war; and the fifth to astronomy, illustrating its
several phenomena as shewn by the text, according to which 'the board
represents the heavens, in which the squares are the celestial houses,
and the pieces, stars. The superior pieces are likened to the moving
stars; and the pawns, which have only one movement, to the fixed
stars. The king is as the sun, and the wazir in place of the moon, and
the elephants and taliah in the place of Saturn, and the rukhs and
dabbabah in that of Mars, and the horses and camel in that of Jupiter,
and the ferzin and zarafah in that of Venus; and all these pieces have
their accidents, corresponding with the trines and quadrates, and
conjunction and opposition, and ascendancy and decline--such as the
heavenly bodies have; and the eclipse of the sun is figured by shah
caim or stale mate;' and much more to the same purport.
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