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I'm one of the few 0.01% (or less) who arrived here not knowing modern
orthodox chess previously. In fact, I never played chess, and my interest
on the subject was just recently ignited by a friend who is a chess
enthusiast. I began searching for the basics, the rules, the pieces, their
moves, etc., and I was quickly drawn to the historical origins and
developments of the game(s). From there to the modern variants it was a
quick step.

I can tell you that, from a neophyte point of view, Chaturanga and Shatranj
are easier to understand, but their weaknesses are evident. Modern chess,
on the other side -- or "madwoman chess", as it was pejoratively called
by conservative players five centuries ago, when the queen became a
bishop-rook --, though more agile and powerfull, is more difficult for
beginners to grasp. It appears to me that one needs to be always conscious
of the disposition of every pieces on the board, even the ones distant to
the piece one intends to move next, simply because, at any moment, a queen
or a bishop or a rook can come across from the other side of the board and
totally wrecks one's intended strategy.

Using the war analogies in which the games were originally inspired, the
wide movements of modern pieces are like missiles, whereas the ancient
battles modelled by Chaturanga and Shatranj were fought body to body --
except for the archers. (And isn't weird the absence of "archers" among
the Chaturanga/Shatranj pieces?). The most mobile subsets of any army in
Antiquity were the (mounted) cavalry and the chariots (dragged by horses).
So, it is logical that the most mobile pieces on Chaturanga/Shatranj were
the "horses" (knights) and the "chariots" (rooks). 

But even the wide range movements of the rooks, crossing several squares at
once (potentially an entire row), as recorded in (or infered by) the oldest
known historical Shatranj descriptions, probably were already an early
improvement in the game. It's not reasonable to suppose that any piece in
the game was originally more far-reaching than the horse/knight.

I think the greateast virtue of the Modern Shatranj -- specially the "D"
version, with one dabbabah-wazir in the place of the traditional rook -- is
to restore (and put a limit to) the short-range movements of the pieces,
according to the metaphore that inspired the original game. There was
nothing or nobody in any army that could cross an entire battlefield at
once in Antiquity, hence no piece should be able to cross the entire board
in Chaturanga/Shatranj in one move. Thus, the player doesn't need to worry
with distant pieces in the board, because only the ones close to the piece
he intends to moved can pose an immediate threat to it.

The other great virtue of Modern Shatranj is that, by augmenting the
mobility of the counselor/general and the elephants (but without expanding
too much their reach), it not only turns these pieces more "powerfull",
but it also introduces a beautifull *simetry* to the overall dynamics of
the game -- and here, again, the "D" version is superior to the "R"
version. Now each "army" on the "battlefield" has:

- two elements that can move only one square orthogonally or diagonally,
the king and the general;

- two elements that can move one or jump two squares diagonally, the
elephants;

- two elements that can move one or jump two squares orthogonally, the
chariots;

- two elements that can jump three squares "orthodiagonally", the
horses.

We can easy visualize this perfect simmetry by picturing the movement
diagrams of these four kinds of pieces superimposed: if it were possible to
put all four pieces in one same square, this would be the center of a set
with 4x4 squares, and each one of these 16 squares would be reachable via a
single movement of at least one of the four pieces put in the center! That
would not be any "falted" square, one that could not be reached by at
least one kind of piece put in the center of any 4x4 set of squares. This
doesn't happen in the original Shatranj game.

Thus, the Modern Shatranj D allow the players to charge *full power* in the
"battle front" of the game, not worrying about any "missile" coming
from beyond the horizon. It seems to be the perfect balance between
mobility and elegance, dynamics and aesthetics, power and race in a
Shatranj-like game!