The oldest complete go manual is the Wangyou Qingle Ji (Collection of the Carefree and Innocent Pastime: C&IP), dating from the middle of the 12th century under Northern Song dynasty in China.

There is an older and important text from the Aurel Stein excavations in the Dunhuang Caves (now in the British Museum), but as it has many gaps and no diagrams it is really only of interest to specialists. Furthermore, the C&IP contains much old material, including complete games that go back to Tang times.

The book is a collection, by Li Yimin, of old text classics (Go Secrets, The Go Classic in Thirteen Chapters), uncommented games, openings and a smallish number of problems. Much of it was copied into the more accessible Xuanxuan Qijing (Gateway to All Marvels - see elsewhere on this site) a century later, but the latter book is a problem book par excellence. The main interest of C&IP is its window on the past, and the clearest view is through its games, most of which we present here.

It should be noted that there are variant texts and even some variations in diagrams. The most notable is that sometimes five starting stones are shown instead of four, the extra one being a white one at the centre point. Modern go scholars reject this extra stone in these games, but there are some grounds for believing that old Chinese go did once use such a fifth stone.

The title needs a little explanation. It is from a poem by the last Northern Song emperor Huizong (1082-1135). He produced a collection of 300 linked poems under the title Palace Songs between 1102 and 1125. Two relate to go. The relevant one here, beginning Wang you qing le, may be rendered, with considerable loss of subtlety, as: "Forgetting sorrows and finding pure joy lie in the go board and stones; the fairy maiden [his concubine] studies intensely, though in years she is young. Beneath my window I constantly play over games and positions on the eucalyptus board, fearful that I will have to defend when the time comes to compare our respective merits."

Part of the reason for Li Yimin's use of this poem was to counter the charge of Confucianists that go was a wasteful, even harmful, game. "Carefree and Innocent Pastime" is my own attempt to capture all the nuances.

Li Yimin - Li the Hermit - styled himself a "Former official at the Imperial Academy, granted by Imperial Edict the purple silk of an official of the 5th rank." In other words, a court go player, but he belonged to the court of the Southern Song.

It is worth noting that, although the original gives only the title and players for each game (I will add a few explanatory notes, however), the method by which the games are recorded is exactly the same as the one we use today, except that the numerals are in Chinese.