Now the very same change that has taken place in the second piece in chess--namely, from a male to a female--has also happened to the second principal figure in French and English cards. Among the oldest _numeral_ cards that have yet been discovered no Queen is to be found; the three principal figures or coat cards being the King, the Knight, and the Valet or Knave. There was no Queen in the old Spanish pack of cards; nor was there usually in the German in the time of Heineken and Breitkopf. In the Spanish, the coat cards of each suit were the King (_Rey_), the Knight (_Cavallo_), and the Knave, groom, or attendant (_Sota_); in the German, the King (_König_), a chief officer (_Ober_), and a Subaltern (_Unter_).[23] The Italians, instead of making any change in the old coat cards, sometimes added the Queen to them, so that they had four instead of three, namely, _Re_, _Reina_, _Cavallo_, and _Fante_. The following extracts from an Essay on the Indian Game of Chess, by Sir William Jones, printed in the second volume of the 'Asiatic Researches,' seem to establish more clearly than anything that has been expressly written on the subject, either by Breitkopf or others, the affinity between cards and chess: "If evidence be required to prove that chess was invented by the Hindus, we may be satisfied with the testimony of the Persians; who, though as much inclined as other nations to appropriate the ingenious inventions of a foreign people, unanimously agree, that the game was imported from the west of India, together with the charming fables of Vishnusarman in the sixth century of our era. It seems to have been immemorially known in Hindustan by the name of _Chaturanga_, that is the FOUR _angas_, or members of an army, which are said, in the Amaracosha, to be elephants, horses, chariots, and foot-soldiers; and in this sense the word is frequently used by epic poets in their descriptions of real armies. By a natural corruption of the pure Sanscrit word, it was changed by the old Persians into Chatrang; but the Arabs, who soon after took possession of their country, had neither the initial nor final letter of that word in their alphabet, and consequently altered it further into _Shatranj_,[24] which found its way presently into the modern Persian, and at length into the dialects of India, where the true derivation of the name is known only to the learned. Thus has a very significant word in the sacred language of the Brahmans been transferred by successive changes into Axedras, Scacchi, Echecs, Chess; and, by a whimsical concurrence of circumstances, given birth to the English word _check_, and even a name to the _Exchequer_ of Great Britain.