Single Comment

Odalisque's comments were for being 4x16 like Ramayana. I ran across 'Odalisque' in print in Isabel Fonseca's 'Bury Me Standing' pp. 125-126, Vintage paperback 1995. ''...And rugs, depicting Biblical scenes, peacocks, and voluptuous odalisques reclining in a harem setting.'' Not intending a pun, Robert Bell means Obelisque not Odalisque, and some miscarriage continues to be advanced here in the name. Now 'BMS' is the famous Gypsy book, and if Gypsies had emigrated en masse from India by 10th Century, having arrived at Persia by 700 as Zotts, could they have had something indirectly with dissemination of Chess? Murray may or may not document anything like this idea, as Gypsies are more ignored or less understood than other European societies. The Caliph of Baghdad, heir to the great chess-player Al-Rashid, sent troops in 820 against the Zott-Gypsies. This research is preliminary, and some Zotts appear earlier in Persia 5th-century. There is also the legend among Gypsies of the fourth nail forged for the crucifixion of Yeshua. For eventual follow-up, the versions bear upon justification for the peripatetic tradition as well as the ordinary utility that only three nails were used and his feet drawn together, and the mythic fourth just keeps making its rounds among the descendants of the Gypsy forger-blacksmith. [same source]