Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

If a reader says 'give me more history', then there should be a prominent
paragraph with links to: history, shatranj, xiang qi, shogi.

Skip if you've heard this story. When I was 14 years old or so, I used to
go to the library every week to read some more of HJR Murray's thousand
page history of chess, week after week until I finished. And when I
finished, I knew that Chess was not just this one little game with one
specific set of rules that I strived to master (and since I'm a national
master and an FM, I guess you can say that I did so), no, Chess was not
just one game with one set of rules, but rather Chess was a big thing, with
billions and billious of games with a wide range of rules.

Therefore, according to my own experience, one of the best ways to promote
chess variants is to teach the history of chess.

Chess variant people often like to make new rules more than they like to
play the games; and often also they are less skillful at playing the games
than they are at making the rules. Rarely one finds the Chess Variant
inventor who is superhuman at chess but totally naive at variants (the two
prime examples are Fischer and Capablanca).

During my lifetime, the field of chess variants has advanced to an
incredible degree. To a large extent I have been able to lead because the
average of my chess skill and my variant skill is far higher than anybody
else -- and I am not ashamed to claim that my average of the two skills is
higher than the divine Parton or the superhuman Fischer -- and if you
spread the word about chess history can you imagine what will happen in the
future?

Imagine an era when chessmasters routinely know about Shatranj and Shogi
and Xiang Qi and the Colorbound Clobberers! In such a utopia, the very best
ideas that you or I have had will be seen as mere fumblings in the dark by
ignorant savages -- and the perception will be correct.

Have you met any Grandmasters? Have you played? Do you truly understand how
both their knowledge and their wisdom of Chess is far beyond what a mere
mortal can hope to achieve? I have; as a mere master, I have what's needed
to appreciate the greatness of grandmasters.

Imagine an era when Grandmasters of Chess are also routinely Grandmasters
of Chess Variants. ((Emanuel Lasker imagined it although he never proposed
any variants.)) ... and the one thing you can do to facilitate this vision
is to make it easier for people to learn about the history of Chess!

At first glance, I assumed that the 'rating' was of the
person, not of the site.

Well, I had to go view the complainant's cited page, to give him his due,
and it might appear that he, or at least someone, has a modest commercial
interest in this issue.

I might be more inclined to give his views some thought...especially since
I once held them...but for his utter lack of politeness.

The preponderance of the evidence in 2002 argues for the 2-handed game
being first, possibly by centuries, but the question is surely not
settled.

I can nowhere find in your site the chess game called 'Indian Style Chess'
which is played by many orthodox families especially in Delhi (India). 
The features different from the international style are: (1) Instead of
castling, king moves 'horsefully' once in the game before check (once
check given, loses privilege); (2) Kings & Queens not aligned (each king
faces opp queen); (3) Pawn moving once forward only;  (4) Promotion only
on rank piece (rook, bishop, knight, queen) [not clear about exact rule re
this]; (5) King cannot be left alone on board: must have at least a piece
or two pawns i.e. if Black has only king & queen, then White cannot kill
the queen.  Please tell me where I can find the rules of Indian Style
Chess?  Please email me at [email protected] or
[email protected]

Wonderful research done here.
Please keep up the good work.
How could we be of help to you?
I hope to start playing soon.
Could you give me websites?
I'm at [email protected].

IT DIDN'T GIVE ANY INFO I NEEDED ABOUT CHESS!!!!!!!

LOVED it thankyou thankyou thankyou. i want to start a board games club at
my school, where people can play not just the ordinary games but also
games like chaturanga and also ancient viking games i've been researching.
your site was an awesome help. if it all works i'll DEFINITELY be teaching
them all chaturanga. if anyone thinks of any other usual or rare games we
should play please email the name, (and rules if you can ;))...
[email protected]

i love your site so much... i can't wait to teach my sister the original
of all chess. wow.

Sam Sloan's website shows a strong perference for a Chinese origin, but I
find an Indian origin more likely. Horses and chariots were established in
Indian armies by the time Chaturanga was invented, hence the name meaning
an army that included them. Chariots as pieces were derived with the board
from the older game of Ashtapada. Elephants must surely have been a piece
in India first, and a feature added in India to a Chinese game would be
unlikerly to find its way into the original. It is more plausible that the
Chinese invented a game on square corners with undifferentiated pieces,
discovered that the Indians had one on square centres with varied pieces,
and adapted the Indian pieces for the Chinese board.
	An interesting way to combine ancient and modern would be what I term
Recapitulative Chess: a 9rx8f Chaturanga variant allowing promotion (on
the 9th rank) of Elephants to Bishops, Ferzes to Queens, and Pawns to any
modern piece. The extra rank is required because Elephants cannot reach
the 8th!

Amazing work! I got all the information i needed from this sight

not excellent because you not specified a free game.
i think ocidental chess is better. i think the idea of promotion in
chaturanga is nice, but not filosophic.

i love the passage. the chess we play in ocident is perfect. like
partenon.

All right, I did not know that war elephants were used in China, nor do I
yet know to what extent. They were used intermittently around the
Mediterranean (Rome v Carthage might be an interesting Chess with
Different Armies) but were hardly the norm there, and I suspect that this
may also have been true in China. They were worthy enough of remark for
the Chinese game to be named after them. In India they were familiar in
both military and civilian life. The tale of the red and black flags is
evocative enough but how much truth there is in it is another matter.
There are plenty of legends of the origins of Chess, both prose and verse,
and many of them are singularly unconvincing.
	Incidentally Hemp's comment uses an old-fashioned definition of the
Orient-Occident divide. A century ago India and even the Middle East were
described as Oriental because culture there was exotic to Europeans.
However increasing ethnic awareness has led to humans in most of those
parts being recognised as ethnically far closer to Europeans than to East
Asians and therefore included as Occidentals. It is this modern divide
that is used in the Oriental Variants index, which covers only variants
from, or based on those from, East Asia. Another example is my describing
the Knight as Occidental when contrasting it with its nearest Shogi and
Xiang Qi equivalents; I am not neglecting India but including it.

needs more info for me 2 write my research paper for history. i am writing
about the significance of the pieces. post more information on it.
i will be back fri. to check it out.

For historical research, may I recommend Murray's classic, 'A History of
Chess'. It should be in print or available at a good library:

http://www.chessvariants.com/books.html#bookmurray

Murry's book is an excellent source of games though historically speaking
it now appears out of date. At this moment the evidence supporting
Shatranj & even Chinese chess as being older than Chatarunga is
overwhelming. Even on this page the words 'what could be chess pieces'
'doubted by some' are used.

All thats missing on this brilliant site is an history section. I'm sure
your presentation would be much more interesting than some sites, where
opinions are expressed rather than facts.

I am confused about pawn promotion.  It says 'A pawn may only promote on
b8 to a knight, and only if a player has already lost a knight' ... What
if the player has lost no Knight?  can the pawn still more there?  If so,
what happens if a Knight is captured later?

Thanks!

May be you find something interesting on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_chess or
http://history.chess.free.fr/variety.htm

For the most part, this is a good page on Chaturanga. However, it doesn't
say what happens when a pawn reaches the King's starting square. Does it
promote to a prince, as in Tamerlane's Chess? That doesn't seem likely,
because princes are mentioned nowhere on the page. Maybe the pawn just
stays there without promoting. Or does it promote to a Counsellor?

Another thing--some earlier comments discussed whether 2 or 4 player
chaturanga was older, with the theory that 4-players was the first
version
being 'refuted' almost immediately. However, I have some evidence which
seems to suggest that the four player game was older. It's the name of
the game--literally!

According to this site, Chaturanga means 'quadripartite'. The
'official' theory is that it refers to the four types of pieces. Pawns
(soldiers), elephants, rooks (chariots), and horses. However, I find that
hard to believe. It seems to me that the armies are actually
'pentapartite', because wouldn't the Counsellor count as a fifth part
of the army? Or am I missing something important?

I see no reason why the name Chaturanga (quadripartite) couldn't have
originally referred to the four players playing the game, and then when
the four was reduced to two, someone came up with an explanation ('four
types of pieces') to justify keeping the same name.

I'm only an amateur chess-variantist right now (I don't have access to
Murray, Gollon, or any of those books) so any replies would be
appreciated.

I just re-read the rules, and a pawn reaching the King's square simply
stays there (it doesn't promote.) I guess I just missed that when I read
the rules the first time. Sorry!

I played Chaturanga with a friend a few days ago, and it's really
slow-moving. It's also very hard to get a checkmate on your opponent
especially if you don't have a Rook. I don't like the elephants the way
they are, but the pawn promotion rule is interesting (I like it better
than the promotion rule in orthodox chess).

But the stalemate rule is weird. To me, stalemate should be a victory for
the player who immobilizes his opponent, not a loss. After all, that's
what a real war probably would be like.

I have a copy of Gollon's book.  I can check this out later today.

EDIT: Checked it.  The book I'm using is Gollon's Chess Variants Ancient,
Regional, and Modern, first edition.  According to this book, the starting
position and stalemate rules are correct.

However, the promotion rule listed here is inaccurate.  First of all,
pawns do not promote to the piece which started on the promotion space,
but to the 'master piece' of that file.  In other words, the piece of
yours that started in that file is the one that determines promotion, not
the one of the opposing army.  This only has ramifications in the central
two files.

Gollon's rules also require the actual piece that started in the file to
which the pawn will be moving to have been lost, not just a piece of the
type.  (The example given is that a pawn cannot promote in the C file
until his elephant which started in the C file has been lost.)
Additionally, according to Gollon, a pawn may not even move to the last
rank unless it is able to promote, which is not stated here.

I've thought of one more question concerning the rules stated on this
page. Assuming that the Pawn promotion rules here stated are correct, they
aren't fully specified. Can a Pawn move to the last rank even when there
is nothing for it to promote to? If so, does it wait around until there is
a piece for it to promote to? If not, can it still check a King when it
can't move to the last rank? This gives four possibilities. 1) The Pawn
can advance even when it can't promote, and it just remains on the last
rank unable to ever do anything more. 2) The Pawn can advance even when it
can't promote, and when an available piece is captured, it promotes to it.
3) The Pawn can neither advance nor check when there is nothing for it to
promote to. 4) The Pawn can't advance when there is nothing to promote
to, but it can still check. Does anyone know if Murray or Gollon addresses
this issue?

Or does this rule only come from a more recent Indian variant, making the
matter moot concerning Chaturanga? In The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants,
Pritchard mentions this rule in connection with more recent Indian
variants under his INDIAN C entry, but he does not mention it under his
CHATURANGA and SHATRANJ entries. Could Gollon have confused what Murray
wrote about Chaturanga with what he wrote about more recent Indian
variants and so have misreported its rules?

Thanks for reporting what Gollon says, Jared. My last comment got posted
before I saw the update to your post. Your comments partially answered the
questions I raised, namely by narrowing down the possibilities to #3 and
#4. Would you know if Gollon has specified which is correct?

Also, I still have concerns about whether Gollon has accurately reported
on what Murray wrote. Murray wrote a large scholarly text whose focus is
more on history than on clearly laying out the rules to specific games,
and I expect Gollon used Murray as his primary source. So if anyone has
access to what Murray wrote, reporting on it will still be very helpful.

I wish you all good luck in tracking down references. Sad to say, we have no record of the reasoning behind the rules of historical chess variants. For example, I read that in Chaturanga the player who stalemates his opponent loses the game. This might have resulted from a combination of the following two rules:

'A move that gives stalemate to the opponent is not allowed.' - Sittuyin (Burmese Chess)

'The game is finished if one player makes an illegal move; This player loses the game.' - my 2005-03-09 comment on Shogi (Japanese Chess)

'... a move that inflicts stalemate must be retracted, and another move played.' - Sounds reasonable. Apparently only SHOGI has a forfeit rule for illegal moves.

'The game begins with each player moving his counsellor and counsellor's pawn two squares forward...' Compare the mandatory opening moves in Courier Chess.

As for the 'the color restrictions of the elephant, now moving as a bishop' - that must be a modern rule. Alfils can be regarded as moving on an 8-color board, forever limited to either the odd-numbered ranks or the even-numbered ranks. See Leaping/Missing Bat Chess for some diagrams.

If the counsellor and counsellor's pawns both move forward two, I assume
that the Kings did face each other; otherwise White's councellor's pawn
would promptly be taken.

Oh, boy ... I see the ChessV implementation of this game will require
several changes.  Bleh.

So, any opinions on what I should do with Chaturanga support for ChessV?
John Ayer has posted that Murray said that the elephants were in the
corners, with Dababbah move, and pawns promote to firzan ... That's easy
enough.  Should I implement it in this way, leave it as-is, or erase the
whole thing?  Any opinions are welcome!

Yes, I also think recognition of Shatranj should suffice.

Also, based on feedback received here and in e-mail, Chaturanga support
will be removed from ChessV, since not only are the rules unclear, but the
present implementation is really just Shatranj with rotational symmetry and
lousy pawn-promotion rules.  But, I will probably add support for the other
historical games described in Murray's text if they are described here, or
if I can find a copy in a local library.

This decision is based on the fundamental meaning of recognized. It is
impossible to recognize the unrecognizable. And that's what Chaturanga
is. No one has adequate information on Chaturanga to be able to recognize
it.

Furthermore, the best candidate for Chaturanga is Shatranj, and Shatranj
remains recognized. If, as I think is likely, Chaturanga and Shatranj are
the same, then Chaturanga remains recognized, though under the name
Shatranj rather than Chaturanga, and it would be redundant to recognize as
two separate games what are just the same game under different names.

yes, i can see what you mean, but, the 'unrecognizable' is at the moment
being played on game courier, and also has this page, and others pages
also yes?, if you make it 'unrecognized' but keep this page and others
.. that just doesn't look professional to me, this great site, having
info about chaturanga but deeming it 'unrecognized'.. a game which i see
as the 'mother' of chess. i can't see how it hurts keeping it
'recognized', i think 'recognized' means more than just being able to
see all the rules etc

See Jean-Louis Cazaux's excellent page on this topic,

http://history.chess.free.fr/enigma.htm

Shatranj and Chaturanga would seem to be the same game, although,
generally speaking, one thinks of Shatranj as the Persian game and of
Chaturanga as the Indian game. The two can't be differenciated, it seems.
There are also possible influences from China.

As far as 'recognized' goes, I would tend to think that both
'Chaturanga' and 'Shatranj' should be recognized, if for no other
reason that the CVP articles on these games suggest that the Indian game
migrated to Persia. Not 'recognizing' Chaturanga would seem to ignore
this root. 

Perhaps the uncertainty in the history should be reflected in the
'Recognized' variants list.

you guys have made this site better than professionals ever could, because
you do it out of love for chess, not love for money.
surely this is the best chess/chessvariants site in the world.

oh that is pretty sad, i didn't know it was removed.
was there a vote taken to remove it?
may the chess gods have mercy on this site lol :)
i don't understand the comment .. 'we don't know enough about
chaturanga to actually recognize it' .. isn't it the game that is
generally accepted as the mother of chess, isn't it the game that inspired
'shatranj' .. the game where the king starts on e1, and the game where
the king can move like a knight 1 time during the game etc etc ..  we can
recognize it, we just don't fully know the rules (maybe)
reading in your section 'what is a recognized variant', chaturanga looks
like one to me, i don't see anything saying that all the rules must be
known. and it is not the fault of the game that all the rules are not
known. anyway, with obviously such a huge historic ancient game, who cares if it is unclear.
Tony Quintanilla  makes a good point here with his comment, and i quote
..
'As far as 'recognized' goes, I would tend to think that both
'Chaturanga' and 'Shatranj' should be recognized, if for no other
reason that the CVP articles on these games suggest that the Indian game
migrated to Persia. Not 'recognizing' Chaturanga would seem to ignore
this root.'
anyway, i have had my say on axeing chaturanga, i will make sure i wear all
black every 4th of the 4th from now on :)

Hello,

I'm Celine Roos WIM. It was just luck that I found a page through Google search for Books which linked to a French translation of an 1805 report established by a Research Society on Bengalese studies.

The book is free of copyright, here are the libraries where it is available. http://worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/oclc/07026195

Also here you can see the whole book:
here

or just the article (starting p 207):
here

I guess the English original must be available somewhere. If I had more time, I would propose a translation into English but I'm terribly busy these days, having left the world of chess for the world of National Education in France.

Yours, Céline Roos
Strasbourg - France