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Jason compares two games as they currently are, and acknowledges that both are somewhat modified. Just how much each is modified relative to the 'original' is of course begging the question, but he rightly points out that Xiang Qi is far closer to its pre-Cannon precursor than FIDE Chess is to Shatranj and Chaturanga. It does not follow that pre-Cannon Xiang Qi is itself closer to the common ancestor of all these games. Jason could be saying that as change has been slower in China recently, it has always been slower, but that is ultimately just a guess. It could equally be argued that we would expect the average change has been the same both east and west of India, in which case the mere addition of Cannons to Xiang Qi is a change to a game that had alreday been drastically changed - from being on an 8x8 board, perhaps. This too is just a guess, but one pointing to an Indian rather a Chinese 'original'. My instinct is still to credit India, simply because it is so much easier to imagine an 8x8 board in two halves turned into a 9x10 board with a River than vice versa.