prize13-2, Exercise 3: Cautions about the Karnamak

Model answer (check the details):

First, the text was written long after Ardashir, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty, so it cannot be a contemporary account. It shows only that chatrang was known when the text was composed.

Second, the Karnamak is a legendary biography full of fables, so a detail such as skill at chess may be a later embellishment, added to flatter a hero with a favourite pastime of the author's own time. Its date and the state of its surviving text are also disputed, and later copyists may have altered it.

A careful historian would look for independent evidence, such as dated pieces or boards, or other texts of known date.

Care: the cautions apply to the mention of chess, not to the whole text.