Or as Siva puts it cryptically in his dialogue with Michel: ‘The quarrel of man is between zero and infinity, between Truth—and God.’ (670) But what is important to realize is that the philosophical positions in Chessmaster are more clearly defined and more neatly expressed. Thus, not only are the thematic preoccupations similar, they are carried out by similar characters in both novels.

Hence we can propose the following schema:

The arrow mark indicates that the latter character has evolved from the former; sometimes the resemblances are so pronounced as to make them almost identical, at the other end of the spectrum, as with Anand turning into Ashok; the former is merely a hint. In all cases, there is a strong relationship, either in the traits of the two that make up the set or in their functions in the narrative. Not just the central characters, but incidents, events, discussions and locations, and even the quotations, are common to both books. The resemblances are more than a sense of déjà vu and it would require a more detailed analysis to discuss their implications.

It is almost as if Chessmaster were written by an older Raja Rao, revisiting the terrain of the earlier novel. This movement is seen in the shift from the early fascination with the philosophy of history to the fulfilling discovery of an Indian way of doing mathematics. This discovery of a unified Indian method is crucial. From such a perspective, the Chessmaster’s resemblance to The Serpent and the Rope does not pose a problem at all, but illustrates a rather audacious example of intertextuality.

The second interpretive tool has to do with Rao’s method of reasoning in Chessmaster. Most readers have not been able to figure out whether or not there is a system to Sivarama Sastri’s philosophical disquisitions. Is his erudition simply impressionistic badinage or does he work from some logical principles? Often, we are baffled by the numerous discussions in the book, which seem vaporous, incoherent and directionless. We are challenged to unravel his method of reasoning and philosophizing.

Some clues are provided by the text. Siva is shown to be a mathematician in the book, but he hardly does any mathematics. True, there are references to Poincaré, Pascal, Einstein and, above all, to Ramanujan, and his goddess Namakkal, and a sprinkling of mathematical terminology throughout the book, but the fact is that Siva spends most of his time discussing philosophy with lovers, friends and acquaintances. Rao would imply that he is a mathematician not because he does mathematics, but because he uses a mathematical method to do philosophy. Siva explains his method somewhat like this: