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Chaturanga. The first known variant of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]
George Duke wrote on Sun, Jan 16, 2005 10:16 PM UTC:
Yes, I should have noted Ralph Betza's CVP comments too are signed 'ghohmon', when quoting his (Chat. 11.May.02) statement 'the average of my chess skill and variant skill is far higher than...divine Parton or superhuman Fischer.' The very same Comment here begins, '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...' Lots more insight in just that one comment.

Mason Green wrote on Tue, Feb 15, 2005 09:33 PM UTC:Good ★★★★
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.

Mason Green wrote on Thu, Feb 17, 2005 09:09 PM UTC:
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.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Mar 19, 2005 10:24 PM UTC:
Since I don't presently have access to the books by Murray or Gollon, I can't check on the accuracy of what this page says, but I am suspicious of some details. Other accounts I've found of Chaturanga say that it is essentially the same game we know as Shatranj. For example, Pritchard says this, and so does Cazaux. Yet the rules given here differ in some respects. In Shatranj, Kings face Kings and Councellors face Councellors in the opening position, Pawns promote only to Councellors, and the player who stalemates his opponent wins. Since I'm planning to write a rule enforcing Game Courier preset for use in the tournament soon, I'm hoping someone with access to Gollon or Murray would check up on these details and report back whether this page accurately states the initial position, the Pawn promotion rules, and the rule that delivering stalemate is a loss.

Jared McComb wrote on Sun, Mar 20, 2005 01:16 PM UTC:
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.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 20, 2005 06:30 PM UTC:
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?

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 20, 2005 06:41 PM UTC:
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.

David Paulowich wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 12:39 AM UTC:

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)


John Ayer wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 04:12 AM UTC:
According to Murray on page 57, al-'Adli, in the ninth Christian century, reported that in India a stalemated player won, which he contrasted with the rule with which he and his readers were familiar. According to that same account, the elephants stood in the corner squares, and had the move of the dabbabah rather than the alfil; the rooks stood on the c and f files. A player who bared his opponent's king won, even if the opponent could return the compliment on the next move--a rule that was also current in the Hejaz, although the rest of the Moslem world held that if the opponent could even the score on the next move, the game was tied. <p> As for the crosswise arrangement of the kings, the arrangement shown in Hans Bodlaender's diagram is that given by Murray on page 80 as used in recent times in India in the varieties of chess that were apparently of native descent (distinguished from shatranj, introduced by the Persian conquerors, and European chess, introduced by the British, French, and Portuguese conquerors). In ancient times there may not have been a fixed rule. As for pawn promotion, the rule given in a work 'written about 1600 or 1700,' as Murray says, seems to me to say that a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the a, d, e, or h file is promoted to counsellor, and a pawn reaching the ultimate rank on the b, c, f, or g file is returned to its square of origin with the rank of counsellor (ferz). This is on page 64, and the text is as vague as the date. As for stalemate, 'When a king is imprisoned without standing in check, and no other of his pieces can move, he may slay the piece of the enemy in his vicinity which imprisons him.' So the stalemated player does not win. Just before this we read: 'It is not proper to protect another piece rather than the King. The slaying of the King is yet considered proper. Imprisonment is counted as a defeat of the King. If the King is left entirely alone it is reckoned a half-victory, if he is checked 64 times in succession he is also held to be defeated.' I think we might fairly understand that as perpetual check. The game begins with each player moving his counsellor and counsellor's pawn two squares forward, 'Also another piece which goes one square distant is advanced at the same time...' apparently another pawn. <p> On page 81 Murray describes Hindustani chess, one of the three native varieties current in the nineteenth century, when all the pieces had the moves current in Europe. In this game a pawn reaching the last rank is promoted to the master piece of that rank, except that on either central file promotion is to vizier (Q). Further, a pawn can only be promoted if the appropriate piece has already been lost; a player can never have more of any sort of piece than he started with. Murray specifies that the color restrictions of the elephant, now moving as a bishop, must be observed. This means that a pawn cannot be promoted to elephant on the c file until that player has lost his elephant that started on the f file. A pawn that cannot be promoted cannot be advanced to the eighth rank; it must remain where it is, an immobile target. Whether it can offer a threat that cannot be executed is a subtlety that seems not to be addressed. Logic suggests to me that it cannot. On page 82 Murray describes various conclusions to the game. Checkmate is a win. Stalemate is not allowed; a move that inflicts stalemate must be retracted, and another move played. Capture of all of a player's pieces (pawns are ignored) is a half-win. When both players are reduced to a king and a single companion, the game is drawn. Perpetual check is a draw. It is in this game, not the earlier ones described above, that the king has the privilege of making one knight-leap, provided he has not been checked. According to one questionable source, the king cannot capture on that leap. Conclusion: John Gollon, sitting in the Cleveland Public Library, reading its copy of Murray's _History of Chess_ and taking handwritten notes, confused three sets of rules. Fergus, I hope you're not too disappointed. This page, with its seventy comments, should probably be scrapped.

David Paulowich wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 03:09 PM UTC:

'... 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.


Greg Strong wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 03:17 PM UTC:
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.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Mar 21, 2005 06:57 PM UTC:
Thanks, John. I gather from your comments that Gollon based his description of Chaturanga on descriptions of three other Indian variants, none of which were Chaturanga. Would it be fair to say that Murray identified Chaturanga with Shatranj and didn't make any distinctions between their rules? This is what Pritchard does. He gives only a short entry on Chaturanga, saying that it is 'essentially the same as SHATRANJ', and then he gives detailed rules only under his entry for Shatranj. Also, back when I lived in Rochester and had access to Murray's books, I wrote in my Alfil article, 'Chaturanga was an Indian Contempory of Shatranj, and it is Shatranj, the Muslim form of Chess, that we actually have the earliest documentation for.' Some sites I've found on the web are claiming that there is no physical evidence for the existence of Chaturanga. It would seem that Shatranj is the earliest Chess variant for which we actually have historic documentation of its rules, and Chaturanga is a hypothetical construct that is presumed to be the ancestor of Shatranj, but for which we have no clear historical record. In the absence of a legitimate historical record, it may be fair to assume that the rules of Shatranj are the closest thing we have to any account of the rules for Chaturanga, and for all practical purposes, it would make sense to play Chaturanga by the same rules as Shatranj, or to just play Shatranj and consign the rules of Chaturanga to the unknown.

John Ayer wrote on Tue, Mar 22, 2005 01:08 AM UTC:
There are literary references to chaturanga in India apparently of about the same age as the Persian references to chatrang, but there is no description of the rules, so chaturanga, chatrang, and shatranj must all be treated as the same game. Anything before this is conjecture (and conjecture is active). There is no physical (by which I understand 'archeological') evidence of chess in India at that time, nor for centuries afterward, and I think the same is true of Iran; the earliest definite chessmen are from Uzbekistan, and the eighth Christian century. <p>Greg Strong's remark about the required opening leaps implying that the counsellors faced each other in one file is valid for the seventeenth-century(?) rules. The cross-wise arrangement is specified for Hindustani chess in the nineteenth century. Cross-wise arrangements were formerly quite widespread. <p>After scrapping this page (sorry, Hans and all), we will probably want to put up others for these other historical variants.

Greg Strong wrote on Wed, Mar 23, 2005 08:06 PM UTC:
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!

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Mar 24, 2005 01:24 AM UTC:
I think the one with the Elephants in the corners, etc., was another game, not Chaturanga. We don't have the rules for Chaturanga. So whatever game you chose to call Chaturanga might well not be Chaturanga, and you might not be able to do any better than to have Chaturanga support in name only. I plan to get rid of the Chaturanga Game Courier preset, because I have no guarantee that is is authentic Chaturanga, and for all I know, Chaturanga was the same as Shatranj, which I already have available. But if you wanted to keep this game, you could call it something like Gollon's Chaturanga to distinguish it from the real thing.

Greg Strong wrote on Fri, Mar 25, 2005 09:28 PM UTC:
Say, should Chaturanga still be a Recognized Variant?

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Mar 26, 2005 12:34 AM UTC:
I'm thinking it shouldn't be. Given that we don't know what its actual rules were, it's a bit hard, if not impossible, for us to recognize it. And if it is the same as Shatranj, which is the most likely candidate we have for the rules of Chaturanga, then recognition of Shatranj will suffice.

Greg Strong wrote on Sat, Mar 26, 2005 01:27 AM UTC:
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.

DM wrote on Wed, Apr 6, 2005 03:57 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sun, Jul 17, 2005 04:35 AM UTC:
even if the rules are unclear, so what, how can you make chaturanga unrecognized!!.. taking it off game courier is ok, but making it not recognized?!

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Mon, Jul 18, 2005 02:40 AM UTC:
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.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Jul 18, 2005 04:00 AM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
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

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Mon, Jul 18, 2005 04:06 AM UTC:
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.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Jul 19, 2005 12:12 AM UTC:
<P>Christine Bagley-Jones wrote:</P> <BLOCKQUOTE> that just doesn't look professional to me </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>That comment amounts to saying that it doesn't look like what it is not, which is fine. This is not a professional site. If it were professional, we would be getting paid to focus on it full time. But instead it is run by unpaid volunteers who too often have other things to do.</P>

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Tue, Jul 19, 2005 02:03 PM UTC:
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.

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Tue, Jul 19, 2005 08:38 PM UTC:
Christine, your kind comments go to all that contribute to this great site.

David Paulowich wrote on Sun, Aug 7, 2005 02:53 PM UTC:
On 2005-04-04 Fergus Duniho wrote: 'I've removed Chaturanga from the list of recognized variants, because it has recently come to light that we don't know enough about Chaturanga to actually recognize it. The best candidate for the rules of Chaturanga is Shatranj, which remains on this list.' <p>I agree with Christine Bagley-Jones and Tony Quintanilla that Chaturanga should stay on the list of recognized variants (FAMOUS section). After all, both Dragonchess (E. Gary Gygax) and Tridimensional Chess (Star Trek) were famous before complete and consistent rules were published.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Tue, Aug 9, 2005 04:16 AM UTC:
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 :)

Anonymous wrote on Sun, Oct 16, 2005 06:43 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★

Anonymous wrote on Mon, Nov 7, 2005 07:30 PM UTC:Excellent ★★★★★
great game to play with a regular chess borad use bishops for elephants and the queen for the chanssler(ferz)

Tony Quintanilla wrote on Sun, Dec 4, 2005 06:15 PM UTC:
Celine Roos writes:
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


Anonymous wrote on Thu, Jan 19, 2006 03:50 PM UTC:Poor ★
There is almost no detalils about where chaturanga/chess came from, where it orginated.

Aniket Basu wrote on Fri, Mar 24, 2006 09:31 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
The version of the Indian game we play and call 'National' to distinguish it from 'International' (meaning FIDE) is as follows: 1. King moves as usual, except for any number of possible knight moves before it was checked once. No castling move, the knight move can be used to take the king to safety. 2. Queen (Mantri/Minister), Bishop (Gaj/Elephant), Knight (Ghora/Horse), and Rook (Nouka/Boat) - all move as usual in the FIDE rules, but there is no castling move. 3. Pawns move just one square. (Naturally then, no en passant.) 4. Each sides are allowed two moves to begin the game.

Anonymous wrote on Fri, Dec 1, 2006 08:19 PM UTC:
what exactly is the difference from shatranj?

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Dec 2, 2006 12:19 PM UTC:
king starts on different square, and also the king, just once in the game, can make a knight move ... there may be something else about the pawns and promotion, but it is all unclear, i think, bit like me, answering this question :))

Jose Carrillo wrote on Tue, Jun 10, 2008 07:07 AM UTC:
Anyone interested in a game of Chaturanga?

This preset has regular pieces:
/play/pbm/play.php?game%3DChaturanga%26settings%3DAlfaerie

matthew wrote on Sun, Sep 28, 2008 07:54 AM UTC:Poor ★
How do I play chaturanga ??  I once played the game verses the computer.
Your page seems to have changed since I visited last. Any information on
this topic whould be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance for you
help.
matt

Sledge290 wrote on Tue, Mar 10, 2009 09:34 AM UTC:Good ★★★★
I like the depth of the article. It is a short article to be sure. I like the subject of chess. I like the game of chess.

Nuno Cruz wrote on Fri, Mar 13, 2009 02:30 PM UTC:Poor ★

John Ayer's very complete and acute comments our remarks are so true. This form of chess never existed. At least with this set of rules that is just an erroneous conception of John Gollon. So this page should have already been at least corrected if you do not want to scrap it, which would be preferable; to end the discussion and stop people, especially the new ones to this site, to believe in a 'Lord of the Rings' kind of world -beautiful but non-existing.

Of course you would have to rewrite the very front page of chessvariants pages. I believe that for the sake of truth it is worth it.

The same goes to both Shatranj Kamil. All it is needed to do is to read carefully the pages on Murray's book the source of - good intentioned but in his case wrong - Gollon.


John Smith wrote on Sat, Mar 14, 2009 06:02 AM UTC:Poor ★
I agree that it is strange that an unscrupulous variant be recognized. What game exactly is this? We should recognize also 'Chootooroonkoo', which is the truly original form of Chess from ancient Goobleland, which is played on a board with squares and with pieces that move, other details unknown.

optional wrote on Sat, Mar 14, 2009 06:13 AM UTC:
Does that apply for Star Trek 3D and Jetan, also?

Imagine Martians landing on Earth, and excavating our vanished 20th
century civilization. They could, without being able to read anything,
reconstruct the basic rules of chess from all the pictures. But could they
possibly know about 'touch rules'? And how long would they argue over the
details of castling and en passant vs passar battaglia? Yet, they would
have, and probably be playing, chess, in spite of their not officially
knowing the rules, or even being able to determine all the nuances of the
rules. We are currently in the same position vis a vis chaturanga that our
Martians are with chess. We know dice games, race games, the 4-sided and
later 2-sided setups, and we know the rules to its child shatranj. I
suggest that is enough to give the game legitimacy. We don't know the
rules, but we still have the game, especially in the wider sense of chess
variations. Ignoring it is the bigger sin.

George Duke wrote on Thu, Feb 18, 2010 05:37 PM UTC:
Flowerman's at http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=25071 is where we get the theory that Chess mutates every 500 years out of control. Roughly, 500 - 1000 Chaturanga, 1000 - 1500 Shatranj, 1500 - 2000 Strong mad Queen Shatranj. 500 year Comet Caissa is long period:
http://www.chessvariants.org/fiction.dir/poems/falconpoem4.html.
Then the Next Chesses from the top down this time, because CVers are far the more informed. Bodlaender may find here promotion differences too between Chaturanga and Shatranj, to the same Flowerman inquiry.  The five hundred years, 
http://www.chessvariants.org/index/displaycomment.php?commentid=22850, accord with Phoenix.

Daniil Frolov wrote on Wed, Jul 28, 2010 02:11 PM UTC:BelowAverage ★★
This page describes chturanga rules as if somewhere was official documents, that states that 'in 7th century chess was played for 100% sure in this way...' and describes these rules. I think, page must state that exact rules of first form of chess are unknown and mentoin some alternative rules, wich also could be in the first chess. Maybe, it's ok that it did'nt mentoided other possible rules of promotion, stalemate, bare king, king's special knight's leap, but it's horrible that it did'nt mentoided another possible elephant's move: silver general's move, 1 square diagonally or 1 forward (elephant's 4 legs and trunk)!! All other souces tells that no one knows, wich move came first! And the earliest game with silver general, described on CV pages is makruk, as if this move was invented in Thailand! While CV pages is probbably one of main source for these, who want to know more about history of rules of chess (most of encyclopedias don't mentoin anything further than 'first form of chess was played by four players and with dice')!

Jason L. wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 06:40 AM UTC:
It's widely assumed by Western scholars that Indian chess was the first
form of chess, but it is also widely assumed that Asian forms of chess were
derived from it although there is no direct evidence of it other than the
fact that the pieces move in a similar fashion.

But what if there are historical documents or artifacts in China that
suggest that Xiangqi has been around since 2nd century B.C.? What if the
similarities between the early Indian version and Xiangqi were the result
of influence from the other way around?

Just because European scholars had no access to Chinese documents but did
with Indian archives, that does not mean it can be assumed that the first
game was from India. It seems since China was not a part of the British
empire, then its archives can be ignored and only regions of the world
which are a part of Britain's sphere of influence can be deemed as
inventing anything.

I have not done the research myself, but it is generally considered by
chess historians with access to Chinese archives that Xiangqi came much
earlier than the Indian version, so no scholar who can read Chinese would
think that the Indian version came first. This does not prove that the
Indian version came from China, but the similarities in the boards would
suggest that one is taken from the other but with a different board.

The 8x8 chess board used for the India/Western version is simply the 9x10
board for Xiangqi with the river removed. This removes a row, and results
in an 8x8 board if you play in the squares and not on the intersection
points. Therefore, in a way, the 2 boards are almost the same board.

What can be objectively pointed out is that the pieces for Xiangqi move in
a way that fit its board that has survived up to its modern form while the
moves for the counselor/Queen and elephant/bishop do not fit the gameplay
of the 8x8 board. That's why the pieces were logically improved or adapted
to fit the gameplay of an 8x8 board later on.

If we assume that one game influenced the other and was the first version
of it known to man, then it is more reasonable to assume things went from
China to India based on the fact that the 9x10 board actually fits that
movement and the 8x8 board does not suggesting the initial movement of
those pieces was borrowed and does not fit the 8x8 board.

Also if one assumes it went from India to China, it is unlikely that pieces
would become more restricted. 

This is a misnomer. The main reason why the pieces can jump over pieces in
the Indian version is because the board is smaller and the pawns are right
in front of the horse/knight and elephant/bishop requiring the rules to be
adapted so they could move right away rather being blocked right off the
bat.

Western researchers conclude that pieces become more restricted when going
East and more free when moving West. But does that really make any logical
sense?

Are our cultures so different that Asians like to restrict, and Indians,
Persians, and Europeans like to make things more free?

That makes it sound like Westerners or countries colonized and/or
influenced by the West like to make things better while the people in the
Far East like to make things 'worse'.

It's more reasonable just to look at the different boards and notice that
a major difference between the 9x10 board and 8x8 board (other than the
size difference) is that the pawns are not blocking the main pieces in the
9x10 board so the pieces can move right away.

The fact that the knight and elephant can be blocked in Xiangqi is
reminiscent of Weiqi where the 2 sides are 'blocking' each other from
going to further territory albeit with stones rather than pieces.

How come no Westerner or scientist has noticed the similarities between
Weiqi and Xiangqi?

Also, let's not forget the bigger picture in terms of board games in
China.

If Weiqi was first recorded in the 4th century B.C. and now there are
claims that Xiangqi was first played in 2nd century B.C. and has
similarities in the blocking concept, why is that so hard to believe for
Western Chess historians?

Because it has already been stated and stressed in European literature that
Chaturanga was the first game, so why would an entire continent of people
want to revise their thinking and basically admit that they did not
consider an entire region's documents simply because that would be
tantamount to admitting either ignorance or basically a condescending
attitude towards 'yellow people' who could not have possibly invented
anything first.

So 2nd century B.C. is not that much of a stretch for board games in China.
Actually, the origin of chess in China makes a lot more sense because the
cannon was not added until much later when that kind of technology was
invented, so that's a more probable reason why the cannon has no
corresponding piece in Indian/Western chess. A version without the cannon
was brought over earlier before it was recorded in India first.

And its the version with the cannon that seems to have been brought over to
Korea and Japan. i.e. It went to those regions later on.

Why does the origin of those games have to be from India also when they
resemble the modern Chinese game more than the original Indian game?

It goes back to the original assumption that not enough Western
writers/scientists or whatever you want to call a person with a right to
have an authority on this subject, said that India was first and that is
the end of the conversation.

One would think that if there was a different version of Go that is widely
played in Europe and India, Western scholars would also insist the origin
was India by only looking at Indian documents that support their thesis
without bothering to look at any records in Chinese.

So when the Chinese come forward with so called records, they are refuted
by European chess historians as being inaccurate! So Europeans also know
Chinese history better than Chinese people. Well, that is something I had
not thought could happen.

Or is it just Western arrogance as we have all become accustomed to in this
world?

In no way, am I attacking this website or anyone in particular. I am just
frustrated with why even things that can be viewed objectively, are not
being viewed objectively like the awkward movement of certain pieces in the
Indian version and fluid movements of those same pieces in Xiangqi.

That is an objective observation anyone could make but instead other
theories that do not seem reasonable are put forward without the converse
ever being considered.

If the question is which chess game was first and therefore could have been
the father of all others, then shouldn't archives and other related
evidence from all over the world be considered before declaring any one
country or region as the first game?

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 03:20 PM UTC:

The possibility of a Chinese origin is mentioned on the Xiangqi page.


George Duke wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 04:51 PM UTC:
At Goddesschess John Ayer rejects also the received genealogy, 
http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/johnayer.html.
Http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/chessaystoc.html, afore index of many historical chess articles.
___________And another specific one of those from their Goddesschess history index:
http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/needham1.html.
________________The Silk Road: 
http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/remus.html.

John Ayer wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 07:45 PM UTC:
Jason L. asks, 'But what if there are historical documents or artifacts in China that suggest that Xiangqi has been around since 2nd century B.C.? What if the similarities between the early Indian version and Xiangqi were the result of influence from the other way around?

Are there any such documents? Last fall someone argued in the English Wikipedia that Chinese chess is the earliest and original version, but the only substantial source offered was a Chinese document at http://ent.veryeast.cn/ent/26/2006-4/23/0642309574393496.htm . Can you translate this for us?

Prof. David Li stated that Xiangqi was invented about 200 B.C., but in the first section of his book, in which he described this invention, he adduced not a single source of any type.

'Just because European scholars had no access to Chinese documents but did with Indian archives, that does not mean it can be assumed that the first game was from India. It seems since China was not a part of the British empire, then its archives can be ignored and only regions of the world which are a part of Britain's sphere of influence can be deemed as inventing anything.' Britain was heavily involved in China in the nineteenth century, and quite influential, and British savants could probably have gotten access to Chinese documents. We are aware that China invented many things, including gunpowder and rockets.

'How come no Westerner or scientist has noticed the similarities between Weiqi and Xiangqi?' I don't know about Weiqi, but Gerhard Josten, of the Initiative Group Koenigstein, argued in his essay 'Chess--A Living Fossil' that the ancient Chinese pastime of Liubo was one of the ingredients that went into chaturanga.

'Also if one assumes it went from India to China, it is unlikely that pieces would become more restricted. This is a misnomer.' A misnomer is an inaccurate name. Probably 'This is a fallacy' was meant.

'So when the Chinese come forward with so called records, they are refuted by European chess historians as being inaccurate!' What records?


(zzo38) A. Black wrote on Sat, Feb 5, 2011 09:15 PM UTC:

To John Ayer: Weiqi is the Chinese name for Go. The similarities are that players take turns and that there is no chance or hidden information involved.

There is also possibility that both of these games have been invented independently, or that they both took ideas from an earlier game (which might be a Chinese game). But I don't know these things, and I am not Chinese or Indian.


Jason L. wrote on Sun, Feb 6, 2011 06:10 AM UTC:
Please read that book yourself and not rely on just the wiki site. It's
very persuasive, but I cannot vouch for any of his so-called sources. Also,
his book does not talk just about the 2 B.C. thing, but others which are
not mentioned on the wiki site for the origin of chess. Wikipedia on the
chess games and their origin fit in line with the common Western thinking.

The Li book looks at the arguments of writers in the West and in general,
they say they can't really give good arguments for how it could have gone
from India to China, but they say that India was the first is not
refutable. i.e. basically using their authority to say they are right.

When other writers or scientists proclaim that might not be so because of
such and such reasons long before 7th century in India, the next writer
just says, well, then India did it before that whether we have reason to
believe so or not.

The reasons to believe Xiangqi was developed well before 7th century A.D.
are numerous and not just that little story during the civil war.

I'm not a chess historian, so I'm not the person to talk to.

The main point of my post was that it shouldn't be assumed that chess went
from India to China just for the sake of it because that's what seems to
be going on. We should consider the entire world and not what Europeans
want the world to be.

Also, it shouldn't be assumed that there were no elephants in China. Yes,
elephants are big in India as we all know, but one has to be pretty
knowledgable of Chinese history for thousands of years to make that kind of
statement.

I saw the posts on the Xiangqi page, and I don't agree with the 64 to 90
comment on the squares. That poster is basically saying that in order to
make the awkward moving pieces move right, the Chinese developed a 90 point
board from the 64 one. The boards are essentially the same, with the river
removed and played in the middle of the squares instead of on the
intersection points.

90 to 64 is reasonable and so it 64 to 90 depending on how you think about
it.

Since I have not examined the so-called documents, artifacts, and whatever
else you want to call evidence of chess being in China like 700 to 1000
years before India, I can only look at the earlier version of the Indian
game and as soon as I did that, it was obvious to me which game came from
which.

1) If the Indian game came first, they wouldn't put the kings on opposite
sides of each other. That looks like the configuration of the pieces was
borrowed from Xiangqi and they changed it later to make it symmetric. 

2) The counselor/queen piece is useless on the 64 square board and the
elephant/bishop is also. The other poster thinks these problems were fixed
in 2 ways. The Europeans made the pieces move more spaces, and the Chinese
built a different board that fit those pieces and added a palace.

Well, I can't say that that is definitely not what happened, but I don't
think that it is that reasonable that the Chinese built a different board
and added a palace to fit the awkward movement of those pieces.

The counselors and elephant pieces move like that because that is how
Xiangqi was originally designed. To protect the king that can't leave the
palace.

Taking awkward moving pieces to a new board is a rather difficult
transition.

The fact that those pieces move right in Xiangqi is because they were
probably designed that way to fit the board, and that's why they still fit
in the modern game.

Making pieces move better on the same board is a much more logical
development for a game. An elephant becomes a bishop. A counselor or
whatever they call it, becomes a queen.

Li's book mentions that chess pieces were found in Russia in the 2nd
century along a trade route. That's an archeological find. This results in
a writer proclaiming that no matter how old findings of whatever nature
are, the Indian invention automatically predates is because we said so.

That's 4 centuries before the so-called Indian invention, but Western
writers don't care to question their thinking nor is trying to learn
Chinese or at least consult with Chinese historians let alone other Asian
countries is a priority to them.

In fact one writer said that research in multiple languages is important
for this topic. But then he says that only sources from India should be
considered.

In fairness to some writers and scientists from the West on this matter,
Li's book also cites a few that don't think the Indian version came first
but the other way around and they cite pretty logical reasons which of
course just get shot down by the next guy writing an article or book.

But those thinkers are in the minority. But its the points they make that
count.

If you want to debate with someone who has done the research who can at
least read English and Chinese, read Li's book on Amazon.

I don't agree with everything in his book, but if there is any merit to a
lot of the points in it, it is highly unlikely that Indian version traveled
to China.

I live in Taiwan and travel to Hong Kong and mainland China sometimes. No
Chinese person who plays Xiangqi thinks the Western version influenced
their game through India via trade routes. Of course, they haven't done
the research, but this is not common thinking among the Chinese crowd with
any knowledge of Xiangqi and Western Chess.

From a cultural standpoint, most Chinese people would think the game
developed just before the Han dynasty was founded because of the names of
the armies on the board. Those are the 2 armies that battled it out before
the Han won out. Of course, they can be named that well after that civil
war was fought, but considering that Weiqi or Go was developed a few
centuries before that, it isn't much of a stretch for a Chinese person to
think Xiangqi was developed around that time.

But thanks for the tip on 'misnomer'. I won't forget that mistake.

John Ayer wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2011 03:51 AM UTC:
I have read Prof. Li's book. In fact, I own it, and have taken it off the shelf and am looking through it again. I am still not persuaded. As I have explained elsewhere, I don't think Chinese chess developed from chaturanga, I think it developed from Shatranj al-Kamil v.1. While the king (governor, general)'s and aide-de-camp's moves were restricted, because they landed in the nine-castle, the dabbabah's move was greatly increased, and the pawn's move was slightly increased, and simplified. I can't imagine how that weird rule about the pawn capturing diagonally forward would ever have been introduced after the game had been established.

I understand that there were elephants in China, too.

There are different kinds of symmetry. FIDE chess has reflective symmetry: symmetry with respect to a line, as I think of it. The crossover pattern has rotational symmetry: symmetry with respect to a point, as I think of it.

I don't recall about the names of the armies. That could be suggestive.

I live in America, and it is no matter to me whether chess originated in India, China, Bactria, Iran, or Albania. I am simply trying to make the best sense I can of fragmentary evidence.


Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2011 05:33 AM UTC:
Viswanathan Anand talks about the origin of chess. He says chess, chaturanga is mentioned in the Ramayana, which is much older than the Mahabharata. He also mentions another writing, Arthashastra (3rd century B.C.) where chaturanga is mentioned. These other guys (murray and so forth) just plain missed these writings. See here ... http://www.chess.com/article/view/where-was-chess-invented

John Ayer wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2011 04:17 PM UTC:
Murray was aware of the Ramayana. It contains references to the ashtapada, which we know antedated the game of chaturanga, and to the chaturanga, in the sense of an army of four branches; none to the game of chaturanga. Murray does not mention the Arthashastra as far as I see. I find on line a commentary by Group Captain S. M. Hali on the military portion of this work, in which, I gather, 'chaturanga' means an army of four branches. If the Arthashastra really does mention chaturanga as a war game on an eight-by-eight-square board, I would very much like to see the text.

Jason L. wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2011 05:21 PM UTC:
I think that anytime we say that one thing came from another, the converse
also needs to be considered because there is usually another line of
thinking the person has not considered just like I would have never have
thought anyone would think that Xiangqi could have come from Chauturanga
because the pieces in that game just don't move right. Shatranj is just a
better version of that game, but I am mostly looking at things from a
common sense standpoint.

I don't know anything about how games in different places influencing each
other or any of that because it doesn't appear there is any definite way
of confirming that in history, but it's just logical to me that Xiangqi
developed after Weiqi in China and that the Chinese are strong in
boardgames.

To say that Xiangqi developed Tang dynasty which is quite late in history
seems like this was stated just to be after the 6th century 'invention'
in India.

From a Chinese point of view, if Weiqi developed 5xx B.C. or much earlier,
it is not much of a stretch to think Xiangqi developed a few hundred years
later.

Also, both games are played on intersection points and have similar tactics
with blocking pieces in so they can't flee.

It's easy for a Chinese person to believe that Xiangqi (without the
cannon) was developed around the Qin/Han dynasty. The pieces, the cultural
aspects, and the tactics seem to be from that period.

Whether we are overseas Chinese growing up in N. America or in Asia
somewhere, the Qin and Han dynasty period are very clear to us as far as
what was going on in China and what kind of warfare was used.

Xiangqi shows a civil war between 2 Chinese armies. Since Qin and Han
dynasty was all about civil war, we would think the game developed around
that time or a little after to represent what was going on at that time.

We would not think that just because several British/European thinkers
proclaimed that India was the origin in the 7th century or so and we wanted
to be some 800 years earlier to be superior.

We would think that Qiangqi was from Han/Qin,  independently of what the
Western world would think.

So to us, its not even a debate. We are not proclaiming that the
Indian/Persian versions were influenced by Xiangqi for sure, we just think
Xiangqi came from around that period of civil war.

If one says it was developed in the Tang dynasty, we would think it was
strange because the Tang dynasty was well organized and expansive. The Tang
dynasty was invading other regions of Asia and was not a period of civil
war. Or at least, that's what our impression of that period is. It's the
golden age of expansion and not Chinese fighting amongst Chinese as it
always is.

I know I gave a lot of reasons why I think the Indian version was developed
from Xiangqi, but my main point is that among a very large population of
Chinese people, if you were to ask them when Xiangqi most likely developed
whether it was an original invention or borrowed from India like Buddhism,
they would not say Tang dynasty. They would think Qin/Han dynasty. Problem
is, the Indian version only traces back to the 7th century, so there's a
discrepancy of 800 years or so implying that it might be the other way
around if the 2 are related.

I feel like this argument was really started by the West and Chinese people
are getting sensitive about it because we don't appreciate Westerners
assuming everything originated from there and nothing Chinese is really
Chinese. That may be true of nuclear and stealth technology, or a great
deal of technology developed from the 17th century and afterwards, but
China was technologically advanced up until the end of the Ming dynasty, so
we wouldn't automatically assume anything worth a grain of salt must have
come from the West before that period.

Plus, in regards to the issue at hand, China happens to be strong in board
games while India is strong in divinity and Chinese people acknowledge
that.

I haven't read through all of Li's book, but I think this issue is worth
delving further into on my own.

Of course, even if I found some kind of historical document that appears to
be dated like several hundred years before 600 A.D., that seems to be
referring to something like Xiangqi, I am sure that it would be
automatically refuted by the West because the exact word 'Chess' wasn't
written there. Of course, it wouldn't be. Chess is an English word, and
Chinese would just write 'qi', which means chess or a board game of some
sort, but that requires a translation into English and it isn't a precise
translation.

It seems that because there isn't a precise word in Chinese that means
'Chess' therefore, no document or historical etc., can be counted as
evidence because its a matter of semantics. If anything, the summary of
logic from the Western writers shows a definite bias towards Indian
documentation and not anywhere else.

If we want to say Int'l. or Western Chess is clearly derived from these
earlier Indian versions, that is fine with me, but it isn't necessary to
automatically proclaim that other forms of chess in other parts of the
world are all derived from that same version also.

I feel this debate that has been going on for centuries or whatever isn't
even totally necessary. Why can't we just look at how chess was developed
in different parts of the world instead of proclaiming that any one version
was the mother of them all?

That's like making comments on another country's history and culture and
making judgments for the sake of making a world claim on a board game in
another country as being the true one and all others are modified from it.

We should just leave Chinese history to the people who can read the
language and study it. There's no reason to tell another group of people
that they are 'incorrect' about their own estimations to when their board
game was developed.

If the Chinese don't make assertions about Indian history or any other
country or region's history, then why can't the same be done for the
Chinese or Han region too?

George Duke wrote on Mon, Feb 7, 2011 08:01 PM UTC:
The 3 commenters are not mentioning yet 96 squares and 100 squares in pre-modern chesses.  John Ayer's revised genealogical timeline changes Courierspiel(96) as contributing to Modern Chess of 64 squares, rather than traditional thought of its being dead-end branch.  Is that only for the Bishop?  Then more importantly and maybe radically, Ayer's article posits I think something like 8 -> 10 -> 8 in the very early going, with Shatranj al-Kamil v.1 being the large size 100 10x10.

John Ayer wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 01:38 AM UTC:
Jason L., even if you found a very early reference to Xiangqi, we still wouldn't be satisfied. There seem to have been two other games by the same name, so we would need a sufficient description to make clear that Chinese chess is meant. Names can be casually misapplied. The same problem occurs in Europe. The household cashbook of one medieval English king records an expenditure for 'two silver-gilt foxes and twenty-six geese for merels.' Merels is a boardgame in which the two players have the same number of playing pieces, all alike. The pieces mentioned are for Fox and Geese, an asymmetrical hunt game.

No one has suggested that Xiangqi was invented in China under the Tang Dynasty.

Yes, I am also aware that the Chinese developed printing with movable type, and that the idea likely reached Europe through a Chinese trade mission. Really, we are not enemies of China, and I wish you would stop imputing improper motives to us. The fact remains that the earliest definite reference to chess in China is later than the earliest definite references in India and Iran. You say you want to do further research on this subject. We will be delighted to hear what you find.


Joe Joyce wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 01:20 PM UTC:
The study of chess, its origins and evolution, can be considered from many
angles. Let me offer an argument for the game of Chaturanga having
primacy:
http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/Alex$20Kraaijeveld.pdf

Dr A Kraaijeveld has developed a phylogenetic approach to the origins and
relationships questions that uses internal evidence to set up a series of
evolutionary trees, each radiating from a different ancestor, to illuminate
the relationships among games. His findings strongly indicate Chaturanga is
much more likely the ancestor of all chess forms than any other game,
including proto-Xiangqi. 
Prof. Kraaijeveld has written 3 papers on various aspects of chess
phylogeny. SOmewhere, I hve an email with links. Should anyone be
interested, I'll try to find that email. The key paper [in my estimation]
however, is this one.

John Ayer wrote on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 10:56 PM UTC:
As for what the Courier Game may have contributed, on the comments page for that game H.-G. Muller suggests that, in addition to the modern bishop, the Courier Game may have given us the optional double first move of the pawn. In the Courier Game the queen's pawn and the two rooks' pawns on each side (and the queen) must each make a double step forward at the start of the game. Now, when the optional double first move of the pawn was introduced, it was limited to the king's, queen's, and rooks' pawns. It was then extended to the bishops' pawns, and lastly to the knights' pawns.

Jason L. wrote on Wed, Feb 9, 2011 02:50 PM UTC:
Have you guys looked at this site suggesting Egypt as an earlier place
where 'chess' like games have been played?

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Timeline_of_chess

http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Origin_of_chess

I'm not insistent that Xiangqi is the first board game that has 'chess'
merits in the world myself, but am mostly annoyed that there is a Western
claim that the early Indian version is the first and only one and that all
others must have come from it when the reverse could easily be true.

I don't know the details about literary references in Chinese potentially
meaning different games and that was not my point about the gameplay
between Xiangqi and Chaturanga. I was saying that the pieces move in a very
similar fashion but they happen to fit the Xiangqi board naturally as if
that kind of movement was designed for a 9x10 board with a palace for the
king.

I think that is a very common sense observation of the counselor and
elephant. They fit in that game and they protect the king. Moving 1 space
for the counselor and 2 spaces for the elephant is all that is needed to
protect the king, but in the 8x8 board, the queen moving 1 space and the
elephant moving 2 spaces don't really seem to do anything defensively or
offensively, suggesting that those moves were not designed for that board
and set up. i.e. possibly taken from a different game.

Meanwhile, in most of the Western analysis of the game play differences,
the observation that there are stark similarities are there, but its
assumed that China copied India and therefore copied the West once again
because India is a part of the British empire. Of course those words are
not spoken directly, but the author's bias is clear.

If there were other board games representing war developed all over the
ancient world, then our discussion gets even more complicated, but I feel
that the Chaturanga vs. Xiangqi argument is really just head butting
between Western Europe and China.

That's why in the Li book you see the authors making very strange
statements like Chess pieces become better or more liberated moving West,
but become more constrained when moving East. That's not the only
explanation and its not necessarily even logical from a cultural
standpoint. I can't believe no one until now has noticed that 2 boards are
just the same thing with the river removed and the pieces being played
within the squares or on intersection points.

But anyone is entitled to their own opinion as far as which game influenced
the other. But I do think that reasons given by Western writers for how it
could have gone from India to China, don't seem logical to me from any
standpoint and that they never thought about it happening the other way
around which does in fact make sense to me from the standpoint that the
original game would have pieces that move better on its board.

Is that assumption too much to make? If you were developing a game, you
would make the pieces move with a sense of purpose.

John Ayer wrote on Wed, Feb 9, 2011 03:13 PM UTC:
I see that I didn't quite write what I meant. I meant that no one has suggested that chess was invented in Tang-dynasty China. I cannot evaluate Jason L.'s apparent meaning that if chess had been adapted to Chinese use in that period, it would not look like the Chinese chess that we know.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Feb 9, 2011 06:13 PM UTC:

Jason L. wrote:

I can't believe no one until now has noticed that 2 boards are just the same thing with the river removed and the pieces being played within the squares or on intersection points.

I can't believe it either, mainly because I know it to be false. This has been noticed before. For example, I pointed it out in my How to Play Xiangqi (Chinese Chess) video, posted to Youtube on October 13, 2010. On December 21, 2008, I made the same observation in this comment, which addresses the same topic as you've been addressing here but takes the Chaturanga-first position.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 12:36 AM UTC:
If we look at the cultural transmission of religion, we see that the transmission goes from India to China, not in the reverse direction. Buddhism spread from India to China, Japan, and Korea. Taoism and Confucianism, which began around the same time as Buddhism, did not migrate to India. If this is due to a general direction of cultural transmission, it adds to the likelihood that Xiangqi is of Indian origin rather than Chaturanga of Chinese origin.

H. G. Muller wrote on Thu, Feb 10, 2011 08:45 AM UTC:
> I can't believe no one until now has noticed that 2 boards are just 
> the same thing with the river removed and the pieces being played 
> within the squares or on intersection points.

In fact this is exactly how I use the board in my multi-cultural min Chess set. Just slip in the River between the two board halves when playing Xianhqi.


Jason L. wrote on Mon, Feb 28, 2011 07:54 PM UTC:
Yes, and Chinese people are willing to acknowledge that the religions they
look to are from India. 

But does that mean we should ignore the fact that the Chinese were strong
at board games and that Xiangqi as we know it today and not that other game
(Xiangxi) which is not a war board game apparently is just the 19x19 Weiqi
(Go) board divided into 4 pieces for a 9x10 board?

What is more likely? That the Chinese invent Weiqi as late as the 6th
Century B.C. or whenever it was and then invent another game using 1/4 of
the board that is also played on the intersection points as Weiqi is and
includes some of the same principals such as being blocked.

Or rather, the Indians who are not into board games culturally invented a
game played on the squares rather than intersection points with the same
moves as Xiangqi as it was during the Tang Dynasty but the minister and
counselor's movements are essentially updated into the modern day bishop
and queen in Europe later on because those movements do not fit the game to
begin with. Why? Because the soldiers or pawns are right in front of the
major pieces so a counselor moving up one diagonal square is hardly
interesting at all and the minister (not elephant) is also rather dull in
the game because it has nothing to defend really.

If the Indian version was really invented by them, you would think that
India would have a long history of playing the game, but they don't. Anand
is not proof of India's long history of playing the game since 600 A.D. or
so.

Europeans starting around the 1400's or a little later have a long history
of making the pieces move right on the 8x8 board and producing tons of
talented players. In fact, the real improvements were made by the
Europeans. The pawns can move 2 spaces on its first move because it is on
the 2nd row instead of the 4th. The rule en passant (French word) has to be
added to prevent players from illegally advancing pawns without a fight
against another pawn. Castling is added to the game. We call it castling
since there were castles in Europe! Seems like the game wasn't really
playable by modern standards until it got to Europe.

How come there isn't a single modern opening named after anything Indian?
Did the Indians invent a game with awkward moving pieces and then abandon
it only to find it again like 1,000 years later with all these openings
named after European people and countries?

Or maybe a board game with pieces that moved right on a 9x10 board had the
pieces put in the squares on an 8x8 board and the pawns were moved back the
2nd rank and filled in for aesthetic reasons, but no other necessary
changes were made to the counselor and minister (elephant) so the game is
not really playable and its slow also.

If the modern Chinese version was already basically done by 800 or so
during the Tang Dynasty and the queen piece was added during the Middle
Ages in Europe, which game probably came first? A game with pieces that
have not changed in their design but only their position on the board and
the number of pieces there, or a game with pieces in the middle of the
board that don't fit there until it gets a makeover like 600 years later
in a different part of the world?

So I am proposing to people that in terms of board game design which all of
us can think about on paper and pencil, that when a game reaches its modern
form like 600-800 years before another game that looks quite similar to it,
then that game most likely came first. It's not absolute proof, but it's
a bit like common sense.

As I have mentioned before, don't forget archeological findings found
before 600 or so.

The transmission of religion and spirituality from a country strong in
those aspects does not have any direct relationship with a board game based
on war. That's also ignoring the fact that Weiqi came from China. That
statement suggests a superiority of Indian culture in every respect instead
of looking at all the factors involved.

How come no one ever talks about Weiqi when discussing the origin of chess
if certain principals are similar? It's like the world's oldest board
game that is still played today must be ignored in order to make the
assertion without much good reason that a game made famous in Europe is the
original chess game in the ENTIRE world.

Regarding the document that Dr. Li quotes in his book. It was apparently
written in 1793, and it's about how General Han Xin invented the game 379
years after Confucius and you can see in Chinese the actual character Xiang
Qi in the document. If the document was written in 1793, no Chinese person
would put out the possibility that Xiang Qi could have meant another board
game that was not played any longer for like over a thousand years.

It's true the document does not have a description of how the game is
played but describes the condition of the camp during winter.

So I don't think the document proves that the game was first started in
203 B.C. or whenever, but to say that the document might be referring to
another game with the same name even though such a misunderstanding could
not occur in 1793, is like the Western cure all thinking to discredit the
Chinese assertion that the game was invented in China without any foreign
influence.

In the Western world, when we say 'Chess' we do not mean any other
version of Chess other than the Western version of it which we presume to
be an original game as the name 'Chess' suggests. Therefore, if someone
writes a document in the Western world after it has been played for at
least a few hundred years, then it is not that reasonable to say that the
word 'Chess' does not mean Chess as we know it today.

Does anyone ask anyone what do they mean by 'Chess' in the Western world?
Like is it Japanese chess, Chinese Chess, or Korean Chess?

So in the Chinese world after playing Xiangqi in its modern form for like
1,000 years, an author would not quote a different game with the same exact
2 characters if it was not in play anymore. That would be causing a very
illogical misunderstanding and there isn't a single Chinese person today
that would think that that document from 1793 would be referring to
anything else. In fact, if you ask your average Chinese person that there
was a game named Xiangxi or Xiangqi that has nothing to do with Xiangqi as
we know it today, they would probably not know what you are talking about
unless they were a board game historian.

But it appears that Westerners who believe Chess comes from India because
the English have said so over and over again, seem to know how to interpret
Chinese documents better.

Anyway, Dr. Li's books lacks cites, but the process he suggests in the
book of how Xiangqi was developed and the charts of how the game was
developed are reasonable. The game has always been well designed and they
just kept adding pieces to it until the back row was totally filled up.

At first, the general was one space up on the 5th column with the adjutant
(counselor) behind it. Interestingly enough, the Korean version of Xiangqi
has the general in that position till today. The Japanese and Koreans who
borrow from the Chinese and then make it their own have a tendency to
preserve a great deal of Chinese culture in many ways.

There was no minister at first and there were always 5 foot soldiers spaced
apart like that in the 4th row with the chariot and horse placed where they
still are on the first row. After Han Xin is executed for treason and his
writings destroyed, his game which is apparently named after the Prince of
Chu (Xiang qi) and not an elephant piece, is lost among the common people
until it gets revived again in 600 or so where it adds more pieces.

The minister is added in front of the general on the 3rd row. Then the 2
cannon pieces are added on the 3rd row prompting the need for more defense.
Another counselor is added as well as another minister and everything is
moved to the back row.

The back row is a bit crowded and the horse can only move up the 3rd row on
its first move instead of the 2nd row because the minister piece is now
blocking it.

So whether you believe these alleged Chinese sources Li is referring to
discuss the making of Xiangqi into its original form is your own choice,
but I am just referring to board game design. It's a lot more reasonable
to believe that the game developed on its own from Weiqi and the teachings
of Sun Tze's Art of War than it is to think the Chinese took an awkward
game from India and made it better by changing the positions of the pieces
so their movements have a purpose.

So if you guys would like to discuss the evolution of board game design,
then we can discuss it. I am not a chess historian, so please don't give
me the task of producing what the Western world considers to be hard
evidence of Xiangqi being invented in China and not a borrowed Indian game
as Europe likes to believe.

But I hope that by putting down the apparent evolution of Xiangqi here,
that I am discussing the development of the board game and coming to
probable conclusions based on how board games can change over time. If 2
board games are apparently very similar, one can make reasonable judgments
based on how the pieces developed over time and 'when' they developed
into its modern form. Like I said, there's a difference of about 800 years
or so between Western Chess' modern form and Xiangqi's modern form. Yes,
there is still room for argument, but I am just stating what is more
likely.

What is that rule called? Occam's Razor. The theory that is the most
simple one is most likely correct.

In this case, a game that comes to its modern form about 800 years before
its apparent cousin played on squares instead of intersection points comes
to its modern form, most likely came first and not the other way around.

A culture that wants all cultured people to play board games develops a
board game exactly 1/4 the size of an existing board game at least a few
hundred years after the former board game is invented. The board game is
revived 800 years later or so and the current dynasty (Tang) promotes the
game and it goes out to the rest of the world in places like India, Korea,
Japan, and Persia.

Or the opposite train of thought, a culture strong in board games, borrows
an awkward board game from a culture that does not promote board games and
then develops it into its modern form just 200 years later while the
supposed original game does not obtain its modern form until it is shipped
off to another continent before it reaches its modern form.

The early Indian game has a 'queen' that moves one space diagonally only
and has an elephant that moves exactly 2 spaces diagonally are both
suspiciously the same to the adjutant/counselor piece and minister piece
(minus the ability to jump over a piece) in Xiangqi. The early queen and
bishop do very little in the Indian game, while they perform a very
specific defensive purpose in Xiangqi which is to defend the general on all
4 sides by moving diagonally either 1 space or 2 spaces. The general is on
the 2nd rank in Xiangqi so the adjutant can go around all 4 sides without
the general moving.

The adjutant/queen and minister/bishop work well in one game and doesn't
work well in the other. Which pieces were designed for its board and setup
and which one was most likely just borrowed from the other game because the
pieces don't fit the game? Occam's Razor again.

A group of scholars in Europe state only sources from India as evidence
that the first chess game in the world is from India because the game they
play is from it. The scholars have no interest in looking at sources in
other languages as it does not support their argument.

Later on, scholars from that other large Asian country suggest a much
earlier date and the European scholars can't take it and don't want to
take back what they have been saying for like 300-400 years because that
would look silly. Besides the whole world speaks English and not Chinese so
information has been monopolized world's most influential empire. Occam's
Razor.

A minister piece is developed called Xiang much later the initial game was
developed. It is a homonym and one of them is 'elephant' even though
nothing suggests that that piece literally means elephant but everything
does in fact suggest it is a minister of the kingdom with swifter movement
than the adjutant. A 3 person game is also developed later in the Song
Dyansty that has 3 different pieces pronounced Xiang. 1 of them is elephant
and the 2 others are not. On the other hand, the chariot, cannon, and horse
all mean the same thing for all 3 sides. They do not use homonyms.

The same piece is found in the Indian game and is literally an elephant and
that culture happens to love elephants and the Chinese did not use
elephants in war as far as I know.

Oh boy, the European scholars have won some points here. Too bad many
Chinese characters have the same sound and this so-called proof is actually
a lack of understanding of the Chinese language.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Tue, Mar 1, 2011 02:46 AM UTC:

Well, that was a long response. First of all, it is not unheard of that something created in one place becomes far more popular someplace else. Check out the article 7 Things From America That Are Insanely Popular Overseas, and also note that the author is Chinese. So, the relative unpopularity of any Chess ancestors in India does not rule out the the possibility that Chess has its origins there. Although there isn't much Indian literature on any possible ancestors of Chess, I do know that Chatrang became popular in Persia, and the Persians attributed the game's origins to India, not to themselves. Since India is between Persia and China, it certainly remains possible that the Persians picked up a Chinese game from Indian sources without knowing of its Chinese origins. But I am not convinced that this happened.

It seems likely that the common ancestor of Chess and Xiang Qi did not have a Cannon in it. The remaining question is whether that common ancestor is more like Xiang Qi or more like Shatranj, such as whether it was played on points or spaces, whether Knights and Elephants could be blocked, and whether there was a river and a palace. If we look at the other regional Chess variants of Asia, we find that Korea's Janggi is the only other one resembling Xiang Qi in any of these respects, and Xiang Qi remains the only regional variant that has a river. Since Janggi has Cannons, it is safe to assume that Janggi is based on a later form of the game, not on the original game. I know China and Korea have had close ties for over two millennia. I am currently watching Jumong, a Korean drama which shows relations between the Korean nation of Puyo and the Chinese Han dynasty before the time of Christ. Since you mentioned the Tang, I'll also mention that I know from The Great Queen Seondeok that the Tang were allies with the Korean kingdom of Silla, and Seondeok's nephew Chun Chu, who became King Muyeol of Silla, lived for a time with the Tang in China. Given such close relations between China and Korea, I would expect earlier forms of Chess to have made their way into Korea if indeed Chess was of Chinese origin. But, as far as I can tell, Korea only got a later version of the game. The other regional Chess variants of continental Asia -- Burmese Chess, Thai Chess, and Malay Chess -- were all played on the spaces of an 8x8 board with the same pieces as Shatranj, and they are all more like Shatranj than they are like Xiang Qi. Shogi is also played on the spaces of the board despite the popularity of Go in Japan. In general, if the original form of Chess was closer to Xiang Qi than to Shatranj, I would expect more similarity to Xiang Qi among Asia's other regional Chess variants, and I don't see that.

As a game designer, I have witnessed the evolution of my own games from inferior games. I am not always likely to invent a great game right off the bat. My best games are refinements of ideas that first came to life in inferior games. For example, Eurasian Chess is superior to the earlier Yang Qi, and Kamikaze Mortal Shogi is superior to the earlier Mortal Chessgi. Given that Chess and Xiang Qi are both superior to Shatranj, it seems likely that both are improvements upon an original game, and the evidence suggests that this game is more like Shatranj than it is like Xiang Qi.

The fact that Xiang Qi reached its current form before Chess did speaks more to the differences between China and Europe than it does to the origins of Chess. China has had a larger, more homogeneous culture than Europe has ever had for many centuries. Reasons for this are described in Jared Diamond's book Guns, Germs and Steel, which I am currently reading. With greater political stability, greater size, and greater homogeneity of culture, it would be natural for the seed of Chaturanga to grow more quickly in the soil of China than in Europe. Besides that, Europe picked up the game from the Muslims, who got it from Persia, who got it from India, whereas China and India share a common border. So, even if the game is of Indian origin, it is natural that China would have a headstart over Europe.

I cannot say for sure whether Chess is of Indian origin. But what I am fairly sure of is that the common ancestor of Chess and Xiang Qi was closer to Shatranj than it was to Xiang Qi.


Jason L. wrote on Tue, Mar 1, 2011 11:53 AM UTC:
Yes, you make good points about how other variants in Asia are closer to
the Shatranj game, but that does not make me think that that was the
original game because of the thought historical chronology of the game
suggested by Dr. Li.

As the book points out, early on the 9x10 intersection board was not
accepted by the Persians and the 8x8 board played in the squares was also
developed by the Chinese as an experiment. This version was accepted by
other cultures and that is why other countries which are quite close to
China like Thailand are close to Shatranj.

Shogi seems to be a mix of Xiangqi and Shatranj so its possible it was
influenced by both and over a long period of time. The pawns in that game
move forward and capture the same way which suggests influence from
Xiangqi, but many other aspects of that game are either Japanese
developments or influence from Shatranj.

So while I think your point is true that most chess variations in the world
are closer to Shatranj with Korean chess being the exception, coming from
my Chinese point of view, it doesn't really matter because 1st century
B.C. which is at least 400 years after Weiqi is invented seems more
reasonable to me and I am not stuck on intersection points or squares
because they are basically the same thing.

The logical points brought forth in Dr. Li's book is enough for me and I
look forward to one day looking at supposedly supporting evidence either in
Chinese literature or artifacts being found in China that support the
existence of Xiangqi as we know it today.

If this debate didn't exist between China and the West, Chinese scholars
would say Xiangqi started around 1 B.C. or around the beginning of the Han
dynasty. They did not make that time period up just to be 800 years before
the start of Chaturanga in India.

The Chinese did not proclaim their game as the first one, but just think
it's their own game from around that time. It was the West that proclaimed
that Chaturanga was first and that automatically all other forms of chess
are derived from it without looking into other sources from other
countries.

It seems that the Chinese are confident of their own history while the West
has to make proclamations about other cultures in order to boost the
superiority of their own culture. If you look at some of the quotes from
the British writers, they want to equate all inventions that Chinese
believe they had to the Indians. It's not about Chess. It's about putting
down China because the Brits seemed to hate them for the last 300-400
years. Or rather, China wasn't a British colony so its history needed to
be ignored.

I'm sure the Dr. Li book won't have much of an influence on anyone who is
so sure of the Chaturanga theory that is known as fact in the Western
world.

Even if several artifacts dated well before 600 A.D. were found throughout
Asia, it wouldn't budge a single Westerner's assumption that Chaturanga
was the origin of all chess games out there.

Playing chess within squares is more popular throughout all the world's
chess variants. Does that make it the original game or could that just be
the version that was exported out of China that was accepted by other
cultures?

Regarding the diagrams on the supposed evolution of Xiangqi in Li's book,
the original version did not have any ministers but just one adjutant.

If Chaturanga is the original game and the Chinese copied it from India,
that means they took out 2 ministers/bishops and 3 pawns and rearranged
them on the 4th rank so they'd be split.

That seems unlikely that a culture would delete pieces it borrowed.

In the Chinese chronology, 1 minister was added later, and then later on
there was 2 ministers and 2 adjutants as well as 2 cannon.

But obviously, the game had already been transplanted to other parts of
Asia and the Middle East where the cannon was not included.

I gave most of my reasons in the last post so this one will be a bit
shorter.

We need to look at sources from all over the world and their possible dates
to make solid conclusions about chess origins.

However, I don't see a single shred of influence in Xiangqi from any other
game from its original form to its modern form 1,000 years later. And I can
say that because the first version of Chaturanga looks like a late version
of Xiangqi without the cannon pieces.

The original version of Xiangqi had a very open board. Only 11 pieces for
each side. 5 foot soldiers, 2 chariots, 2 horseman, 1 adjutant placed
behind the general, and the general on the 2nd rank by himself.

Now assuming that a chess game starting from scratch would have less pieces
and not more, which game looks like it is the more likely predecessor
assuming they really are related cousins?

A game like Chaturanga with 16 pieces on it with the back row filled up and
the soldiers/pawns fully filled, or a fairly empty board with only 5 pieces
on the back row and a lone general on the 2nd row.

Which board looks like an earlier development?

If you have the book, its illustration 20 on page 173.

If I were designing a chess game, I would start with the basics and then
add more later on to spice up the game. Since all variants of Chess were
being experimented on by various cultures throughout the world as things
were adjusted and added on, the earliest game would most likely be the one
with the least number of pieces on its original board which is 22 for
Xiangqi as opposed to 32 for Chaturanga which has 2 ministers/bishops in it
that did not exist in Xiangqi at first.

If one assumes Xiangqi is taken from Chaturanga, that means the Chinese
deleted pieces and then put them back at some later point in the Tang
dynasty. That doesn't seem very logical. If pieces get deleted, that means
they don't work right, but the Chinese supposedly deleted pieces and then
put them back if you follow the Indian chess origin theory.

On the other hand, most board games start with less and then later
developments generally add more to the game and fix up some rules to make
it run smoother.

So I hate to repeat that old adage Occam's Razor, but the more I look at
diagrams in that Li book of early Xiangqi boards, the more brian-twisting I
need to do in order to find some kind of logical justification for things
being the other way around.

The West always compares the original Chaturanga board to the modern
version of Xiangqi and sees how similar they are in terms of pieces and
movement, so that's all the proof that is needed without considering if
the converse could be true.

Then the Chinese look into their own records and produce boards with less
pieces which look more like an early version of Chess, but the West hasn't
looked at those early designs and has tried to reverse engineer history in
its own way by only looking at the modern version of Chinese Chess.

A Chinese person (not me) really needs to bring all the relevant and
credible documents towards so-called early designs of Xiangqi to the world
so the rest of us don't have to get into these discussions over whose
culture is superior or whatever.

Unfortunately, the Chinese have a habit of destroying each other's things
because they are always fighting amongst themselves given that they think
there is nothing else worth fighting for except what we know as China
today.

John Ayer wrote on Tue, Mar 1, 2011 11:49 PM UTC:
Jason L. writes, 'A Chinese person (not me) really needs to bring all the relevant and credible documents towards so-called early designs of Xiangqi to the world so the rest of us don't have to get into these discussions over whose culture is superior or whatever.'

I have no notion that the question of when or where chess originated in Asia will prove anyone's culture superior. Bringing relevant and credible documents forward would indeed do a good deal toward settling this question. According to Dr. Li, General Xan died in political disfavor, and his papers were destroyed, and his game fell into disuse for eight hundred years. How, please, was it then restored to use and favor?


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Wed, Mar 2, 2011 02:41 AM UTC:
Okay, first I don't own a copy of David Li's book. So I can't follow your references to it.

Since you keep invoking Occam's Razor, I will point out that it favors my theory, not yours. To account for why other regional Chess variants are more like Shatranj, your theory supposes that they are descended from a descendant of the original game that lost its similarities to Weiqi. My theory is simpler than this, and it goes like this. (1) Shatranj, Malay Chess, Thai Chess, Burmese Chess, and Xiang Qi all share a common ancestor. (2) This common ancestor was played on an 8x8 board with 16 pieces per side, these being 8 Pawns, 1 King, 1 Counselor, 2 Elephants, 2 Horses, and 2 Chariots. (3) This game was probably invented in southwest Asia, spreading to China and southeast Asia through trade routes. (4) In China, someone familiar with Weiqi modified the game to take on a very different form, whereas in southeast Asia, the game stayed closer to its original form. (5) Since Korea is in northeast Asia, and its only neighbor by land is China, it got only the Chinese version instead of the original. (6) Japan, relying more on sea travel due to being an island nation, may have picked up versions from southeast Asia, as well as Korea. The Korean influence on Shogi is seen mainly in the name, which is identical when written with Chinese characters.

Let me add that we are not arguing about whose culture is superior. When it comes to India vs. China, both cultures are renowned, and it matters little which is the birthplace of Chess. Even if India is the birthplace of Chess, China still has much in its favor. It is the birthplace of Go, and more importantly, its culture has been much more egalitarian than India's. Indian culture has been dominated by the caste system of Hinduism, whereas China accepted Buddhism, a reform of Hinduism that rejected the caste system, and its promotion of Confucianism led to an egalitarian society in which education mattered more than birth.

On a personal note, I am neither Chinese nor Indian, but I'm close to some Chinese people, and I don't currently have any Indian friends. So, if anything, I have a slight preference in favor of China being the birthplace of Chess. For me, this is about facts and evidence, and what I know tends to favor the Indian origin of Chess. What I've read of David Li's theory hasn't convinced me.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2011 04:46 AM UTC:
Hey, H.G., i came across this webpage the other day, i'd like to know if you have ever seen this and what you think.

http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenberg/dirs/1/5/4/7/15475/15475.htm

The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 Books 4, 5, 6 and 7 / Optic, Oliver, 1822-1897

the intersting part is where Yudhishthira says ...

Yudhishthira replied, 'Ye sons of the Kuru race, ye bulls among men, hear
what I shall do on appearing before king Virata. Presenting myself as a
Brahmana, Kanka by name, skilled in dice and fond of play, I shall become
a courtier of that high-souled king. And moving upon chess-boards
beautiful pawns made of ivory, of blue and yellow and red and white hue,
by throws of black and red dice.

Mark Thompson wrote on Thu, Mar 3, 2011 04:51 AM UTC:
I do have David Li's book, which I bought years ago. I had read a favorable review of it that led me to expect that he had interesting new evidence on the origin of chess, but I was disappointed to find that the book merely piled up a tower of unsupported speculations. 

The closest thing to evidence was an anecdotal account of Xiang-Qi's being invented by a figure from ancient Chinese history, who as I recall lived a few centuries before Christ, the anecdote being attributed to a Chinese document only a few centuries old. This is valueless as evidence of such a theory: it means only that someone about the time of Newton or Voltaire wrote down a legend about something that had happened about the time of Alexander the Great. Without earlier documents, how could the late author know anything about events so far in his own past? Maybe the 18th century Chinese author got the story from an earlier period, but there were plenty of earlier periods between the supposed events and our document when such a legend could have been composed.

Besides this legend, everything I could find in Li's book was a seemingly endless parade of descriptions of how it MIGHT HAVE happened that way, and how it's really not so implausible that it COULD HAVE happened that way. Well, of course, it MIGHT have, as I didn't need Li's book to know. But that's what we call 'idle speculation', not evidence. Someone needs to find some much older documents, or dig up some very old equipment, or something, or this theory will remain negligible.

Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2011 07:06 AM UTC:
India as well as China had a tradition of board games before the earliest recognisable proto-Chesses. The name for the board on which Chaturanga was played, Ashtapada, was also the name for an earlier game, probably a race-game, played on that board. The name means 'eight-footed' (cognate with octopus) and refers to the size of each dimension. People in the China camp could argue that Chaturanga was an adaptation of pre-Cannon Xiang Qi for an Ashtapada board, but in that case it seems equally likely that Xiang Qi is an adaptation of Chaturanga for Chinese ways of playing games.

John Ayer wrote on Fri, Mar 4, 2011 06:01 PM UTC:
Christine, I'm butting in here. Murray commented on that passage on page 36. The word rendered 'chess-board' is not 'ashtapada' as you expect but 'phalaka' which is a general term for a game-board. The word rendered 'pawn' is also much less specific. So we have a gameboard, dice, and pieces of four specified colors but NO MENTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES. Not chess, probably pachisi.

M Winther wrote on Sat, Mar 5, 2011 08:11 AM UTC:
It is this 4 colour chess variant: 4-handed Chaturanga with dice.
http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/4chaturanga.htm
Please try my implementation. It plays rather well. It is also quite fun. This variant could possibly be popularized.
/Mats

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Mar 6, 2011 07:50 AM UTC:
Ashtapada is not at all chesslike, but neither is Wei Qi. Whichever was the original version of Chess was a big change from anything that went before.

John Ayer wrote on Sun, Mar 6, 2011 02:15 PM UTC:
Charles, if you were replying to me, 'ashtapada' is not only the name of a race game, it is (primarily) the name of the 8x8 board on which it was played, and on which chaturanga was also played.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Mon, Mar 7, 2011 05:49 AM UTC:
hey John, of course your not butting in, haha, sorry, i really meant that question to be for everyone too.

Jason L. wrote on Sat, Mar 26, 2011 06:31 PM UTC:
I'm not here to defend David Li's book because I too found the lack cites
disappointing because we don't know if he's just making up a convenient
story to date Xiangqi back 800 years before the first Indian version or if
the research he did really does suggest this. The document written in the
late 1700's of course does not count as evidence because it's just a
story.

I have already written most of my points in earlier posts so there's no
need to keep repeating them.

It can be argued both ways which game influenced the other because they are
so similar except one is played on the squares and one is played on the
intersection points and it can go both ways.

However, why is it more reasonable to assume the Indian version came first?
I don't see a reason to assume that that's the case.

I will try to reiterate my basic point here again. If the diagram on pg.
173 showing the early design of Xiangqi is legitimate and he didn't just
make it up, the development process of Xiangqi is not derived from Shatranj
because there are less pieces on the original Xiangqi board. There is no
minister in the game at first. Just one counselor. If you bring another
game over, you generally don't delete pieces from the board, but you might
modify the pieces or the board.

Therefore, it's common sense that the earlier game would have less pieces
on it and then more pieces get added later on. This is, a 2nd minister and
a 2nd counselor were added in later only when the 2 cannons were added.

So my key point which I am repeating again, is that to make a logical
comparison between Shatranj and the Xiangqi, you have to look at the
earliest version of Xiangqi and not the modern version of it which has the
board full of pieces.

Does this make sense to everyone? We don't need to agree on whether the
diagrams in the Li book are legit or not, but we should be able to agree on
the fact that an earlier game would have less pieces on the board than a
later game.

Shatranj and modern Xiangqi look similar so either could have influenced
the other, but the diagram on pg. 173 in that book shows us 1 counselor
sitting behind the general in the palace and that does not look like
Shatranj at all. Later on, 1 minister was added in front of the general.
That also does not look like Shatranj.

Only in the Tang-Song dynasty diagrams of Xiangqi was a 2nd minister
(bishop) added and a 2nd counselor and the general was pushed back to the
1st rank where the game finally looks like Shatranj.

In fact, modern setup of Janggi is more similar to the original Xinagqi
setup with the General on the 2nd row and not the first, and there are many
instances where Korea and Japan preserved an earlier Chinese version of
something and made it their own while the Chinese changed their ways and
their language. It's common to find Japanese usage of Han characters to
have a Tang dynasty meaning which modern Chinese is not similar to creating
confusion nowadays.

What can I say, living in Asia over here, I have learned to look at things
from the other way around as opposed to the way I looked at things in the
States where we assumed all good things must have come from Europe and
therefore India which later became a part of the British pride.

I was only saying the Weqi board divided into 4 parts is 10x9 which is
either an interesting coincidence or an explanation for where the 10x9
board came from in the first place. If we want to view things from the
Western superiority point of view, then we can believe the Chinese took the
8x8 board and put the pieces on the intersection points just to be
different or to be similar to Weiqi.

Xiangqi was not a direct predecessor of Weiqi. That is a connection game
and not a war game. I was just saying the board seems to be taken from it.

So just look at the earlier diagrams from the book because I am tired of
typing here. It's so obvious from the Chinese point of view that the game
was not copied from Shatranj which looks like a more modern version of
Xiangqi, it's not even funny.

When I discuss the topic with my Chinese friends either in Taiwan or
mainland China, people view the game as being from the Warring States
period or the Spring and Autumn period because of the emphasis on the
chariot. Chariots were supposedly not used starting with the Qin dynasty so
its a rather old piece.

So since this topic is about who thinks what, I am pointing out to you guys
that there's quite a few Chinese people out there who think its their game
and this is not something they copied from India. And Warring States period
and Spring and Autumn period are like 1000 years before 600 A.D.

But it is true that there's gap in the history Li is suggesting. A
convenient gap. His book claims the game was not revived among the general
public until the Tang dynasty which just at the same time the the Indian
version appears on the scene. Therefore, if you believe the Indian theory
which is also based on really nothing but Western arrogance and
superiority, then Li's story sounds like a convenient story to explain why
the game didn't game popularity among the public until around the same
time as the emergence of the first Indian game.

I would need to learn more about this from Chinese sources directly and not
just depend on Li's book for why the game was allegedly not played among
the public but only the royalty for a very long time.

But I did make an objective observation here. If Janggi was really taken
from Shatranj, then why did they put the King or General up on the 2nd row
when the so-called original or 2nd one after the original one in India does
not? Did the Koreans just get funny with their placement or is that just
because the original Xiangqi designs have the general up on the 2nd row.

Korea is so close to China that its reasonable the modern day version of
Janggi kept that older setup of the General.

Anyway, Li's book presents all the Western arguments which are always
based on the indisputable assumption that India is first or else the white
man loses face and the Chinese thinking has like several logical reasons
why the game was developed independently of Chaturanga.

And also, someone needs to confirm if the archeology discovery of so-called
chess pieces in Russia dated to 2nd century is really true or not. How come
no one is discussing this very obvious and important event? We are talking
about a difference of 4 centuries if those were really chess pieces
discovered along the Silk Road.

So once again the bigger picture. The Chinese think their game is about a
few hundred years older or around Qin dynasty and do NOT claim that
Chaturanga and every other version of chess in the world came from theirs
and don't care very much how those other chess games came about, but yet a
few mostly British authors INSIST to the entire world that chess in its
original form comes from India and not that nation called China because
they play a modern version of the Indian one.

The Chinese only care about the issue when they start getting accused of
copying things they feel are their own.

Anyway, from a player's standpoint, it's very obvious Xiangqi is older.
It's a more restricted game with less movement granted to the general.
When a game evolves, more movement is generally granted to pieces and not
less.

If we assume Chaturanga was first, that means the Chinese decreased the
movement of the pieces just so they could fit into a palace and get trapped
there. From a game design standpoint, this seems silly to think that the
Chinese would make pieces more restricted.

Also, it doesn't seem that reasonable that if you saw a game where the
pieces are placed in the middle of squares, that you would place them on
intersections instead and thereby increasing the number of spaces on the
board to 90 from 64.

And if you saw a game where there were 8 foot soldiers on the 2nd row, it
also seems very unlikely that you would not use that design and instead put
them on the 4th row but staggered instead of occupying every file.

It seems much more likely that in India and/or Persia the 8x8 in the square
version of the game was more acceptable culturally and the pawns were moved
back to the 2nd row and the horse was granted the power of jumping because
otherwise it can't move on its first move.

The Xiangqi horse or knight is obviously the older one. In terms of
gameplay, almost everything about Xinagqi feels older.

I'm not here to insist the Indian and Persians copied the Chinese. That's
their own business. I just think its wrong to make assertions about where a
civilization got their game from without even looking into that
civilization's history.

I've already said this before. That so-called Western Chess historians
don't feel the need to read one word of Chinese before they make their
bold assertion that the game travelled to China from India. That seems
rather ignorant and convenient and this mode of thinking seems to
continue.

That's like me saying India must have copied everything from the great
Chinese civilization but yet I don't care about reading one word their
language or looking into their history at all.

So out of respect for 1 billion plus people and their history, it would
really help people get along better in the world if others did not make
assertions about other's history without studying their history first. If
the Chinese don't say anything about where Chaturanga is from, then why do
Westerners have to say Xiangqi comes from Chaturanga? In fact the Chinese
probably don't even know what Chaturanga or Shatranj are.

Do you guys realize how arrogant this comes off as?

My Japanese friend saw the wiki site for Shogi and it also says it comes
from India. She was like... 'That's rather presumptuous.' On what basis
do we make this assumption?

And I know not all of you are anti-Chinese in general. I am just saying
this Chess invention assumption that exists in the Western world is really
without any real basis and we shouldn't keep saying 'something is
something' just because its been said in the language of English and other
Western languages for the past few hundred years.

I told you guys how silly the Encyclopedia Britannica supposedly is with
the invention of dominoes right? They say its from the 1700's yet the
Italians don't even play the game it seems and yet the Chinese are hard
core gamblers with dominoes in Pai Gow?

So yes, you can quote the great Encyclopedia Britannica if you like but it
should be noted that the authors who write these sources are Europeans and
would naturally know mostly when things popped up in Europe and they do not
have a vast knowledge of the entire world but just see things mostly from a
Western European view.

If this wasn't a chess site, we could debate about the Ming Dynasty's
navy and how it supposedly went to Mexico, Australia, East Africa, and
Italy before Columbus made his journey to America much later but already
had a map to go there.

That whole issue really gets the Western superiority people all riled up.
:)

And by the way, my friend has been to a Mexican village where the local
people have artwork showing the Chinese coming to visit them in the 1400's
and introducing how to raise chickens to them apparently. Good god, we need
to destroy any evidence all over the world of China having a navy in the
1400's that can reach as far as North America because it would destroy the
whole Western superiority complex! ;)

I'm pointing these things out, because I feel we are not even talking
about chess but just a mindset that we've been educated to believe in the
Western world. I read the Encyclopedia when I was a kid and I know things
are not as simple as it is laid out there.

You can find in the Oxford dictionary that Mao Zedong fought of the
Japanese invaders when in fact Russian and Japanese forces do not have much
mention of him ordering battles against them. Also, like every Chinese
person whether they are pro-CCP or pro-KMT knows that wasn't the case and
Mao was happy the Japanese were invading so he could build up his power
base for a final conflict which he still really lost if he didn't get
saved by America who didn't want Chiang to unite the country and make
China (gasp) strong.

But yet, the great Oxford dictionary is a legit source right? The
dictionary on my Mac Book Pro says for Mao:

'A cofounder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 and its effective
leader from the time of the Long March (1934–35), he eventually defeated
both the occupying Japanese and rival Kuomintang nationalist forces to
create the People's Republic of China in 1949.'

Are you going to believe that just because it comes from a Western
dictionary? According to interviews with people close to Mao like his
personal doctor, Mao was livid anytime CCP forces fought the Japanese. Why
help the enemy (KMT) like that? It's about taking over China, not helping
the Chinese people for heaven's sake!

I am getting off topic, but that's my point about chess history. Because
Murray says so everyone believes it because of his standing. But what
legitimate reasons does he give? Does he know Chinese or is he just saying
this is what it is because that's what he want to believe?

Does anyone wondering about this history of chess even want to know more
about Chinese history in regards to chess or if I happen to find something
that suggests it came from China, you guys will just say it's not
legitimate because of this that and the other? 'We have a book written by
Murray as well as numerous Western sources that say so otherwise.'

I must becoming David Li. This Western habit of assuming everything comes
from them is driving me nuts. I have too many Western friends in Asia that
walk around thinking like this and apparently this kind of thinking is much
too common.

🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Mar 26, 2011 09:43 PM UTC:

Jason, You're sounding like a broken record. You keep repeating the same insubstantial and fallacious arguments. If the Chinese historical record shows that Xiangqi is not of Indian origin, show us this. Don't complain that westerners will not read Chinese sources when you cannot even produce one single Chinese source to back up what you're saying. Peter Banaschak has carefully looked into the Chinese sources on Xiangqi, as described in this article on his website, and he has not found adequate evidence that Xiangqi is earlier than Chaturanga.

Also, let me reiterate that the white man has no stake in whether the brown man or the yellow man created the original version of Chess. It is true that India was part of the British Empire. But so was Hong Kong. If it is at all prestigious for the British for them to think that Chess comes from India, it would be just as prestigious for them to think that it came from China, which Hong Kong is a part of. And if the British were really so motivated by racism to dishonestly claim an Indian origin for Chess, why didn't they just claim a European origin or a British origin for Chess? You keep trying to frame this as a racial issue, but it is not one.

And where did you pick up the idea that Americans believe all good things come from Europe, or by extension regions of the British Empire? It's ridiculous. I'm an American, and I've never met any other American who has claimed such a thing.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sat, Mar 26, 2011 10:11 PM UTC:

Chess was created by King Arthur, originally in the form we have it in now. When Queen Guinevere slept with Lancelot, Arthur decided the Queen was too powerful and reduced her power in the game. The game reached India through one of the knights of the round table who went there looking for the holy grail. In the meantime, the game became lost in Britain, because Arthur was killed by his own son Mordred, who never had a close enough bond with his father to learn the game from him. Since the Indians were savage heathens who worshiped animals instead of the one true God, they replaced the Bishops with Elephants. They also didn't understand rules like castling, because they had no castles, and en passant, because they didn't speak French. So they left those rules out. From there, the game spread to China and Persia. Because the Chinese were also heathens, their form of the game became even more corrupted. But since Islam had some affinity with the one true religion, even if it was a heresy, the Muslims preserved the Indian form without corruption. When the game came to Europe, where the one true religion had made its home, white Christians, with the help of God, were able to discern the true form of the game and return it to the ideal form originally created by King Arthur. So all hail Britannia. Britannia rules the waves. Uber alles Britannia. Oh, and speaking of how wonderful the British are, why did we ever overthrow them in this country? It just makes no sense. We should be putting Queen Elizabeth II on all our money, or better yet, King Arthur. And isn't it about time that we made English the official language of the United States? Does anyone really need another language? Wouldn't this more easily facilitate the spread of British culture to the rest of the world, which, of course, would be good for everyone, seeing as how all good things stem from Britain?


John Ayer wrote on Sun, Mar 27, 2011 02:23 AM UTC:
Jason, you say that chariots were not used in Chinese warfare beginning with the Chin Dynasty, about twenty-two centuries ago, and that this suggests that chess in China is older than that. Interestingly, chariots seem to have been disused in Indian warfare since the invasion by Alexander of Macedon and his mixed army twenty-three centuries ago, and some have used that fact to argue that chess in India dates from before Alexander.

'Anyway, Li's book presents all the Western arguments which are always based on the indisputable assumption that India is first or else the white man loses face...' It seems to me that the British might have felt (not that I can discuss this with any nineteenth-century British) that they would lose face if they had chess from their own Indian subjects. I get the impression that they thought China more civilized and respectable than India.

As for Dr. Li's assertion that chess survived underground at the Imperial Court for eight hundred years, this is as completely unsupported as everything else he says about chess before the Tang Dynasty.

The two supposed chess pieces from Russia from the second century are actually from Uzbekistan (Dalverzin Tepe). They are an elephant and a bull, so they are not generally accepted as chess pieces. The earliest generally accepted chess pieces are also from Uzbekistan (Afrasiab, right by Samarkand), from the eighth (Christian) century. There are seven of them, covering all six ranks.

As for the Chinese naval expeditions of exploration some six centuries ago, I accept that they happened; they left archeological evidence here and there. We wicked westerners didn't destroy the records, the Chinese did. I have already stated that the Chinese originated gunpowder, rockets, and printing with movable type, and we have them from China. By the way, I have a Chihuahua. According to sources including the Wikipedia, archeology has found remains of dogs of this type, but larger, in Mexico in the centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Our small Chihuahuas are supposed to be derived from the pre-Conquest dogs crossed with Chinese miniatures brought by the Conquistadors. I asked for any evidence that the Conquistadors, or for that matter the Spanish of that period, had Chinese miniature dogs. Profound silence. I suggested that the Chinese miniature dogs had more likely been brought by the Chinese in the generations before the Spanish Conquest. Continued profound silence.

Jason, the rest of us have disclaimed any investment in whether chess originated in China, India, Iran, Bactria, or Antarctica. You are the only one--the only one!--who has suggested that pinning down the location where chess originated would say anything about the superiority of one nation over another.


🕸📝Fergus Duniho wrote on Sun, Mar 27, 2011 03:42 AM UTC:
Looking at the map of Bactria, I see a place northeast of it called Ferghana. It seems obvious to me, without any further analysis or study, that this is where Chess was invented.

Jason L. wrote on Fri, Jun 17, 2011 01:40 PM UTC:
EDITORIAL NOTE: Jason, I have excised a small part of your otherwise
well-written discussion. What I have done is remove opinions on a non-chess
topic. I understand people have strong opinions on many topics, but we get
heated up enough about chess here, and site rules specifically state
non-chess topics may be removed. I will do so when I feel it is in the best
interests of the site. Should you or anyone wish an explanation of my
decisions, please contact me at the email address listed on my person ID
page. Joe Joyce, editor, TCVP
******************************************
I believe that Xiangqi originates from China, but I did not come here to
say that the Persian and Indian versions are definitely copied from it.
It's assumed in Western chess origin discussions, that Chess originates
from India and that Far East Asian countries like China, Korea, and Japan
all copied it. That's the assumption I am pointing out here as being a
superiority thing.

The truth is that Westerners play Western chess on an 8x8 board. Therefore,
most would rather believe that the original game was the 8x8 game and not
some 9x10 intersection game played in dirty Chinatowns all over the world.

It's the same thing with Chinese people. They would rather believe that
their game came first. Gives them a sense of pride. I talk to a lot of
Chinese people about this, and they definitely prefer to believe their game
is an original design.

In more objective analyses on chess origin, documentation seems to support
India, archeology seems to support Persian, and game design seems to
support China.

The game design aspects I have been repeating like a broken record because
no one is acknowledging the really common sense things I am pointing out,
support a Chinese theory but do not prove a Chinese origin.

The British controlled all of India and Hong Kong is just a small part of
China. India was Britain's crown colony. So it's not the same situation.

The whole Xiangqi vs. Western Chess debate also extends into which game is
more complex and well designed. I have met many Westerners who immediately
bash Xiangqi as being a more simple game where the pieces don't move as
far as the bishop and queen. Xiangqi also has an incompetent horse that
can't even jump.

Well, the average number of moves to finish a Chess game is around 40 and
Xiangqi is around 47. The game tree complexity of Xiangqi is also about 20%
higher, but these facts are not considered of course. It's because of the
no-perptual check rule in Xiangqi that the game tree complexity is 20%
higher which artificially inflates the complexity! Not because of the
larger board of course. 

I don't know that much about archeology and documentation and what is
considered legitimate, but I do have common sense, and anyone who plays
these 2 games will feel that the Western chess game is more modern and
evolved. That means newer!

When teaching Xiangqi to Westerners over here, they feel that Xiangqi feels
more archaic because the pieces are more limited. That implies that the
game is older, and not newer.

I am talking about the game design aspect of course. If 2 games are
obviously related, the one with pieces that feels more archaic is probably
the older game. If you look at Courier Chess (the German 12x8 game) it is
obviously older than the modern version of the 8x8 game because of the
limited movement of many of the pieces. Without knowing the history of
Courier Chess and 8x8 Modern Chess, one can tell that Courier Chess is
older.

Why don't these common sense things apply to Xiangqi as well?

Forgive me for repeating a broken record, but it is fairly well recognized
that the best version of the 8x8 game was not finalized until the late
1400's when the modern queen and bishop were both used at the same time,
and the final version of Xiangqi came about in the Song Dynasty which is
about 500 years earlier.

Based on this game development timeline of the 2 games, which game most
likely came first? A game that finished its development 500 years after
another one or the one that finished its development 500 years before?

This is not rock solid proof, but it certainly suggests that the commonly
accepted India origin may be suspect based on a game design point of view.

So does anyone want to discuss the origin issue from a game design
standpoint, or are you guys going to attack me personally for suggesting
that this is a racist issue?

Let's take the minister/bishop/elephant piece for example. There was a
great deal of experimentation with this piece for around 1,000 years. There
was the Silver General move, which exists in Shogi and Thai Chess, there
was the 2 space diagonal jump move, and also a 2 space orthogonal jump for
this piece.

That means that between India, Persia, and Europe, it seems that we didn't
know quite what to do with this piece before settling on the long range
bishop.

Now, the Xiangqi minister or elephant if you will, has always had that same
exact movement which is 2 spaces diagonal and in the final modern version,
the 2 ministers are placed on the same diagonal so they support each other.
In Xiangqi history, the starting position and number of ministers changed,
but not the movement as far as I know.

So from a game design standpoint, if we assume the minister in Xiangqi and
bishop in 8x8 chess have a common origin, which game was it originally
designed for? A game where it did not undergo any change (movement wise) in
its entire history, or a game where there were at least 3 different
versions of it and didn't get fully developed until like almost 1,000
years later in Europe.

The jumping bishop couldn't even capture its counterpart because the 2
pieces will end up jumping over each other. That doesn't sound like good
game design to me. That seems like the piece was not designed for that
board, so the movement of the piece needed to be changed. It needed to
evolve into a piece that could move 1 or more spaces, so that bishops on
the same diagonal could capture each other and not always jump over each
other.

One more thing about elephants. Please keep in mind that Xiangqi pieces
originally did not have color, so the pieces were written with different
Han Chinese characters to distinguish them. Xiang (Prime Minister) rhymes
with Xiang (elephant), and the minister piece is supposed to simulate what
a high level gov't. official does in his own countryside. It stays near
home and doesn't go across the river to the other side.

Who would design an elephant piece that was mostly defensive? War elephants
are not defensive in real warfare. So the elephant debate does not apply to
Xiangqi.

Does anyone want to talk about game design and the evolution of pieces on
different boards?

I'm not here to try to present documentation of a Chinese source that
Xiangqi 'does not' come from India. Such documentation does not exist
probably, because no Chinese documentation would feel the need to say such
a thing literally because they probably never considered the possibility.

Just because Murray writes a big book on the Indian origin theory, doesn't
mean I need to provide a Chinese source that says it's not the case that
China copied India. I'm just looking at the bigger picture from another
point of view.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, the Chinese in general do not say that
the West copied chess from them, but just feel Xiangqi is their own game.
But the reverse is not true. The common notion in the West is that Xiangqi
comes from India as do all forms of chess.

I'm not even saying that India and Persia copied China. I'm just saying
that Xiangqi seems to be older for a lot of common sense reasons.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Jun 19, 2011 07:04 AM UTC:
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.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Tue, Aug 9, 2011 03:58 AM UTC:
Yudhishthira replied, 'Ye sons of the Kuru race, ye bulls among men, hear
what I shall do on appearing before king Virata. Presenting myself as a
Brahmana, Kanka by name, skilled in dice and fond of play, I shall become
a courtier of that high-souled king. And moving upon chess-boards
beautiful pawns made of ivory, of blue and yellow and red and white hue,
by throws of black and red dice. I shall entertain the king with his
courtiers and friends. And while I shall continue to thus delight the
king, nobody will succeed in discovering me. And should the monarch ask
me, I shall say, 'Formerly I was the bosom friend of Yudhishthira.' I
tell you that it is thus that I shall pass my days.

Now replaceing 'chess-boards' with 'boards' and 'pawns' with 'pieces', 
we still have a very interesting verse here!

It is true there is not very much detail here, about the game, but that 
is to be expected. There is a drama going on in the life of Yudhishthira 
and his brothers, and he is explaining how he will disguise himself. That 
is the main purport of his talk. So, let's look at what we have about the game.

We have a game, played with dice, on a board, with pieces of four specified colors. There is no mention of piece movements at all, but, this is to be expected isn't it, Yudhishthira is talking about how he will disguise himself, not talking really about the game, which is not the main point.

Now John, you say .. 'So we have a gameboard, dice, and pieces of four specified colors but NO MENTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES. Not chess, probably pachisi.'
I don't understand why you say 'not chess, probably pachisi', can you explain why you say this. It seems to me that a game with dice, board, and pieces of 4 different colors could be 'Chaturaji'.

John Ayer wrote on Wed, Aug 10, 2011 12:26 AM UTC:
Murray argued, and I agree, that if the chessboard had been meant, the text would name the ashtapada, rather than using the general term phalaka (gameboard). One of the most engaging facts about chess in any form is the variety of shapes and characters and names of the various pieces, and in a colorful description of the game--'of blue and yellow and red and white hue, by throws of black and red dice'--the author would, I think, have mentioned the variety of pieces, if there had been any variety, instead of using a single word that is not specific to chess at all. I agree that it is possible to apply this description to chaturaji. I think it is a very bad fit.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Thu, Aug 11, 2011 10:53 AM UTC:
hey john you don't have an exact quote from murray about this verse do you?
i'll post soon what i have concluded about this verse too, there's a couple of questions i have also about it.

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Fri, Aug 12, 2011 09:31 AM UTC:
yeah it does seem strange after a pretty detailed description of the game no info on pieces is given.
Pachisi doesn't sit too well either does it, because of the dice maybe? 
i looked on wiki about that game and it says it is played with 'shell' thingies for dice, and you use 6 or 7 of them to roll or each roll?
i'm guessing though you could play with dice?

Peter Aronson wrote on Fri, Aug 12, 2011 10:49 PM UTC:
Pachisi and a related game, Chaupar, were sometimes played with long dice. Here's a picture of a set with dice. Wikipedia isn't all that good with traditional games, alas.

John Ayer wrote on Sat, Aug 13, 2011 01:02 AM UTC:
Certainly! On page 36, in footnote 31 to Chapter 1, Murray writes, 'Careless translators have represented the game as chess.' After quoting a text very similar to yours, he continues, 'The same passage was translated by E. W. Hopkins (_Journal Amer. Or. Soc._, New-haven, 1889, xiii. 123): 'I shall become a dice-mad, play-loving courtier, and with the bejewelled holders fling out the charming beryl, gold, and ivory dice, dotted black and red.' On reference to the original Sanskrit, it is perfectly clear that there is no term that necessitates chess. The word used for _board_ is the perfectly general term _phalaka_.''

Christine Bagley-Jones wrote on Sat, Aug 27, 2011 01:14 AM UTC:
Hey, i've noticed something about this mahabharata verse, and i don't think we have been looking at it in the right context. I'll tell you why.

First of all, to understand exactly what Yudhishthira is saying in this verse, you have to know what is going on in his life at this time. He and his brothers have just spent 12 years in exile and have one more year to go, but if they are detected in this final year, they must spend another 13 years in exile. So they plan to spend the final year in disguise, living in the city of Virata. So now, each brother speaks, telling the others ....

1. how they are going to disguise themselves
2. how they will spend their time in this disguise and go undetected till the year ends.

With this in mind, let's look at what Yudhishthira says. Sentences 1 and 2 ...

(1). Yudhishthira replied, 'Ye sons of the Kuru race, ye bulls among men, hear what I shall do on appearing before king Virata.  (2). Presenting myself as a Brahmana, Kanka by name, skilled in dice and fond of play, I shall become a courtier of that high-souled king. 

ok, this is clear, Yudhishthira tells his brothers how he plans to disguise himself as a pro-gamer, so to speak. Now sentences 3 and 4.

(3). And moving upon boards beautiful pieces made of ivory, of blue and 
yellow and red and white hue, by throws of black and red dice. (4). I shall entertain the king with his courtiers and friends. 

Now the 3rd sentence here is the one we are always told Yudhisthira describes a game, however, this is not true, Yudhisthira is actually describing HIMSELF PLAYING A GAME. He is telling his brothers how he will be passing his days in the king's court playing games. It is one thing to describe a game, but it is another thing to describe yourself playing a game, they are two different things. And look at the 4th sentence, it follows on from the 3rd, it shows the outcome of his playing games, he shall entertain the king.

In the 5th and 6th sentences, Yudhisthira then says how he will be undetected.

(5) And while I shall continue to thus delight the king, nobody will succeed in discovering me. (6) And should the monarch ask me, I shall say, 'Formerly I was the bosom friend of Yudhishthira.' 

And look at the last sentence ....

(7) I tell you that it is thus that I shall pass my days (in the city of Virata).

He finishes telling them 'it is thus that i shall pass my days ..'.

When you understand he is describing himself playing a game, rather than the game itself, it isn't such a big deal he has used the word 'board' instead of a more specific term. How many of us today use the word 'board' instead of 'chessboard', and as far as not describing the piece movements, what is the point?  If we ask these questions, 'why not board specific word' and 'why not describe piece movements', i think we are clearly not understanding what Yudhisthira is telling his brothers.

If you read the Mahabharata after Yudhisthira finishes, all his other brothers speak, telling how they will disguise themselves and how they pass their days in this disguise. Also, looking at the 3rd sentence of Yudhisthira, note his words 'And moving upon boards' and 'by throws of black and red dice'. He is painting a picture of himself playing the game. You will note in this sentence, he describes what the pieces are made of, the colors of the pieces, even the color of the dice, all the visuals.

Also i think it is interesting he says 'beautiful pieces', though you can conclude nothing from it. It is more easily imaginable this describes chess-like pieces rather than Pachisi pieces, though as i said, this proves nothing. Oh, one more thing, i think there is also no doubt Yudhisthira's brothers knew very well the game he was talking about playing.

So i think i have to go back to what i originally thought, this game could be a pachisi type game or it could be chaturaji.

Jason L. wrote on Tue, Dec 20, 2011 04:47 PM UTC:
The addition of cannons has really nothing to do with the discussion
between whether the original game is from Persia, India, or China. It's a
well known fact that the cannon was added in the Song dynasty which is a
few hundred years after chess appeared in India. By that time there was
already 8x8 in Persia and India, and 9x10 in China and/or Korea, so the
cannons don't really address which one came first or which one came from
which.

It is a fact that Xiangqi finished its development in the Song dynasty
which is at least 500 years before 8x8 finished its development in Europe,
so in the case of chess, the development of Xiangqi finished earlier, so
development of these 2 games was faster in China.

Regarding the 2 boards, it's possible to develop either from each other,
but my main point from the beginning has always been the apparently out of
place counselor in 8x8 chess. It moves 1 space diagonally and seems out of
place. The counselor in Xiangqi has a specific role to defend either the
side or the front of the general. In Xiangqi's original setup, the
counselor or scholar was behind the general (which was in the center of the
palace like in Janggi).

My point has always been the original pieces of both games are designed for
the 9x10 board and are out of place on the 8x8 board with no palace
suggesting that 8x8 is from 9x10 and not the other way around.

If you look at the Grand Chess page, the guy who designed the game writes
about how the original 8x8 pieces don't seem to fit the board, so the long
range bishop was developed, and the counselor or queen was improved to
combine the powers of a bishop and rook.

So its not as simple an issue of whether an 8x8 board is more intuitive or
a 9x10 intersection board. We also need to look at the earliest known
version of Xiangqi with just 1 counselor and 1 minister and the earliest
known version of 8x8 chess in India which already had 2 ministers
(elephants) with the back row filled out with pieces. The earliest known
version of Xiangqi has less pieces (12 per side) than 8x8 chess in India
(16 per side). Less pieces suggest an earlier game.

I've been talking to people with some knowledge of Xiangqi in Taiwan and
there does not appear to be any definitive description of the game detailed
enough in literature to confirm its origins before chess in India or Persia
as far as I know. There are references towards people playing some sort of
qi (chess game), but that could mean any kind of board game involving
pieces.

It is believed that the game is from the Spring and Autumn period and is
around 2,000 years old and did not finish its development until the Song
dynasty. Please remember, that this is just the general Chinese belief of
their own game and was not created to dispute the European theory that
Chess is from India in the 6th century. It is an internal Chinese opinion.
I'm not saying it is necessarily correct, but I am saying that this is a
general belief because many things were invented at that time and the game
is not believed to have a foreign origin.

Another interesting thing I heard is that the xiang in Xiangqi does not
mean elephant. It is from the word qi xiang. I mean the 2 characters put
together that mean weather. qi as in air. xiang as in image. qi xiang can
mean weather as in weather report, and other words related to the weather,
but qi xiang means 'atmosphere' or 'mood' in regards to the game.

If this is correct, it is totally not correct to say that Xiangqi is the
elephant's game and that the elephant was imported from India.

If you know Chinese, it's very believable that there are a number of
interpretations possible for a single chinese characters, and the xiang
character that is used for elephant only means elephant when it is with the
character for 'large', or da xiang.

This is not evidence that Xiangqi was developed in the Spring and Autumn
period of course, but it does suggest that the origin or at least the name
of the game has nothing to do with elephants and therefore the original
version of 8x8 chess in India does not seem to have any direct influence on
Xiangqi, because the xiang piece which is written 2 different ways in a
Xiangqi set, does not mean elephant on either side. One side means zai
xiang or prime minister, and the other xiang could be from the name of the
game as it has the same sound as xiang from zai xiang.

In Chinese people's understanding of the minister, it is meant to be a
government official who stays in his own countryside and does not cross the
river to the other side. He moves exactly 2 spaces to show that he has a
high rank and can move swiftly about his own country as opposed to the
scholars who stay inside the palace only and can only move 1 space.

Therefore, for the purposes of our discussion here, the existence of an
elephant in Persian and Indian Chess should not be used a strong piece of
evidence that chess originated in India.

Anyway, I need to learn more, but so far, I have not seen much from the
history of Xiangqi that would suggest that it was derived from Indian or
Persian 8x8 chess.

Jason L. wrote on Sat, Dec 24, 2011 08:31 AM UTC:
@ Charles Gillman Have you seen the pre-cannon version of Xiangqi? It does
not resemble the earliest known version of 8x8 chess in India or Persia
which are basically the same. The earliest pre-cannon version of Xiangqi
has less pieces (12) per side with only 1 counselor and 1 minister on each
side with the general in the middle which does not resemble the first known
version of 8x8 chess anywhere.

It's assumed that the earliest known version of chess in India is the
first game and all games are derived from that, but why are there already
16 pieces in that game with 2 ministers/elephants? The game is more modern
looking than the first version of Xiangqi which suggests that it comes
after Xiangqi and not before.

If something looks older and has less pieces in its setup, it probably
predates a more modern looking formation, not the other way around.

The first version of 8x8 chess in Persia and India looks like a modern
version of Xiangqi with 2 minister and 2 counselors in it. The position of
the pieces is more similar. That suggests that the first version of 8x8
chess is derived from a more modern version of Xiangqi. That means 8x8 came
after the first known version of Xiangqi.

This assumption that the Chinese drastically changed a game that was
developed in India by moving to intersection points and putting in a
palace, river, and cannons goes against common sense if you look at the
timelines of the 2 games.

If Xiangqi's earliest known version had slow moving pieces like a 1 space
diagonal counselor (fers in 8x8 chess) and a 2 space moving minister
(elephant in 8x8 chess), then that means those pieces had to have come from
one game or the other originally. The fact that there was no improvement
needed for those 2 pieces in Xiangqi means that those pieces come from that
9x10 board to begin with.

That is not radical change. That means origin. If one is to argue that the
1 space moving counselor and 2 space moving minister came from 8x8 and were
moved to 9x10, then this a more hard pressed argument, because those pieces
never fit that game well to begin with which is why it took longer for
those pieces to evolve into the long range bishop and long range queen.

That is why Xiangqi's development ends around the year 800-900 A.D. and
Chess does not finish its development until 15th Century A.D. in Europe.

That means that those pieces were NOT developed for that 8x8 board no
matter how simple that board looks with the 64 squares. That means they
were borrowed from another game and needed to be altered to fit the new
board.

Therefore, based on the movement of the original chess pieces which had 1
or 2 counselors, and 1 minister with a 2nd being added later, the 9x10
board appears to pre-date the 8x8 board and it looks like the pieces on the
9x10 board were simply moved from the intersection points to the squares
and the river was not counted.

If you take out the river in Xiangqi and just count squares, you get 8x8.
Easy enough.

It would be harder for someone or a group of people to take the 8x8 board
and add a river in between as well as a palace.

Shogi which plays more like FIDE Chess or actually like Makruk, is
obviously a descendant of South East Asian Chess which is played in squares
on the 8x8 board, but the Japanese used a 9x9 square board instead. Shogi
finished its development in the 1600's.

Therefore, games that are based on another game, generally will finish its
development at a later date than its predecessor. This is not contrary to
common sense.

Xiangqi finished its development 500 years before 8x8 Chess in Europe, and
Shogi finished its development about 100 years after Chess in Europe.
Therefore, it is likely that 8x8 Chess comes from 9x10 Xiangqi, and 9x9
Shogi comes from 8x8 Chess or Makruk specifically.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Dec 26, 2011 07:22 AM UTC:
Who's claiming that pre-Cannon Xiang Qi closely resembles Chaturanga? Perhaps there really is a Charles Gillman and for some reason I cannot see his comments! For myself I acknowledged that the differences were (a) considerable betwen Chaturanga and any kind of Xiang Qi; (b) considerable between Chaturanga and FIDE Chess; and (c) relatively slight between pre- and post-Cannon Xiang Qi. I simply added that it didn't follow that two considerable changes going west - Xiang Qi to Chaturanga to FIDE Chess - and a slight change in China were any more likely than one considerable change going west - Chaturanga to FIDE Chess - and one going east - Chaturanga to Xiang Qi.
	Saying that the General has 'only 1 counselor and 1 minister on each side' (perhaps that's where the rogue L came from) is puzzling, as that - on the basis that 1 of a piece each side of the General means 2 of that piece in the entire army - is what Xiang Qi still has and therefore there is nothing for it to be 'only' compared to. Or are you saying that there was only one short-range piece on each side, a one-step one on one and a two-step one on the other? If so, this is not a game that appears widely known of based on previous comments.
	I would not say that Chaturanga looks more 'modern' than any kind of Xiang Qi, only that it looks simpler. Why should 8 more pieces (4 aside) be any greater a sign of a more recent game than 26 more positions for them to occupy?
	The first 8x8 game certainly did not have '2 minister and 2 counselors'. It did have two Elephants - the Elephant=Minister pun was specific to China and did not work anywhere else - but there was one Counsellor with two Ls, not two with one each. That one 1-step piece does not fit 8 files as well as two fit 9 files does indeed mean that the latter case had 'no improvement needed', but it does not follow that the game not requiring improvement is the older one. It could equally be argued that the one not requiring improvement had already been improved a lot from some predecessor, and the one still needing improvement had not - and perhaps was that predecessor.
	The point about which change of board is more likely is, as far as I understand, unaffected by any known timeline. Are you saying that there was a time when Xiang Qi was known to exist and Chaturanga known not to? Otherwise what matters is which change seems more natural. Chaturanga's board with 8x8 squares or 9x9 corners had already been long in existence for the older game of Ashtapada. It is easy to imagine versions of this being made as two half-boards, each with 8x4 squares or, as a result of repeating one boundary, 9x5 corners. This is then easy to turn into the Xiang Qi board, complete with something that could be interpreted as the River. It seems far less likely that the River would be invented spontaneously and the Indians then 'take out the river', deliberately or accidentally.
	Your conclusion that 'games that are based on another game, generally will finish its development at a later date than its predecessor' sheds no light on anything. Chess with modern long-range Queens and Bishops was already only 'based on' an 8x8 game that had been in existence for many centuries, regardless of what that earlier game was in turn based on.

Jason L. wrote on Mon, Dec 26, 2011 10:38 AM UTC:
The initial known version of Xiangqi has one minister in front of the
general at the top of the palace and one counselor or scholar behind the
general where the general is located at the start of the game in the modern
version of Xiangqi. I also pointed out that Janggi has the general in the
middle of the palace like in the initial version of Xiangqi which suggests
that having the general or king there is the actual initial placement of
the general/king. Please refer to David Li's book for the diagram for the
initial look of Xiangqi. I am not endorsing the story he tells in his book.
Just pointing out the diagram in the book.

Take the middle column of the palace in Xiangqi, and put the counselor on
the first rank, the general on the 2nd rank, and the minister on the 3rd
rank. That was the original setup. That plus 5 pawns or foot soldiers in
the initial positions and a chariot and horse in the corners of the board.
There were no other pieces on the back rank. Therefore, out of 9 possible
points on the back rank, only 5 of them were occupied.

My point is that the initial version of Xiangqi which I have just described
does NOT look like it is developed from Chaturanga because it has less
pieces and looks less developed with the back rank unfilled. A game with
its back rank filled to begin with is more developed and is probably
developed at a later date, if we assume that Chaturanga and Xiangqi are
related games with similar pieces on different boards.

Once again, a game that has 16 pieces in it to start with is probably more
modern than a game with 12 pieces that eventually became 16 a side also. In
Xiangqi's development, the 2nd counselor and 2nd minister were only added
after a period of time and perhaps at the time the cannons were added. In
Chaturanga, or Persian Chess, or any version of 8x8 chess, all have 2
ministers/bishops to start with suggesting that they appear later in the
timeline of chess. They never had more than one counselor or fers because
there is only 8 spaces on the back rank of an 8x8 board.

I didn't say the first 8x8 game had 2 counselors, but it did have 2
elephants/ministers in it which Xiangqi initially did not have.

How do you argue that a game where the pieces need development is the
earlier one and a game where the pieces do not need to be changed is a
later one? The chances of that are against game design common sense.

If the 1 step moving counselor and 2 step moving minister do not need to be
improved in Xiangqi, that means that those pieces were designed for that
board. If the original chess was from 8x8, why would anyone put those
pieces there? They don't seem to fit. It's more likely that they came
from another game and the game stayed that way for centuries because of
tradition, but the game was not a fully developed game.

You say it can be argued that a game not requiring improvement of the
movement of the pieces could have been improved from a predecessor. Where
is it then? They cannot find a version of Xiangqi earlier than the one I
have just described, and a one step moving counselor seems pretty basic to
me  as well as a 2 step moving minister. Both are about as simple as pieces
as I can think of. What could have preceded a 1 step diagonal moving
counselor? A non-moving counselor that just sits there and cannot move? If
we assume that chess pieces have always been able to move at least 1 space,
there is no piece that could have preceded a 1 step moving piece.

I am not saying that your argument cannot be true. I am just saying that it
is unlikely that the counselor and minister had any kind of movement to it
that could have been different. Only the placement of those pieces and the
number of them changed over time according to the information we have about
Xiangqi's development.

Once again, if we assume that chess games have a common origin, the
earliest known movement of the pieces would probably fit the board its been
placed on. Chaturanga and Xiangqi have similar moving pieces and 2 of them
fit in Xiangqi and do not fit in Chaturanga. That means that those 2 pieces
suggest that they were from Xiangqi and not Chaturanga.

Isn't it common sense that a civilization or person developing a game,
would design movement for pieces that fit the board they are being played
on? No one would do something illogical unless there was a matter of
tradition involved.

As in 8x8 Chess was played with a 2 space diagonal jumping bishop in Europe
for several centuries until the long range bishop was finally accepted as
the standard piece. Russia played with the 2 space moving bishop and the 1
space moving fers for about 2 centuries while Western Europe moved to the
long range bishop and long range queen in the late 15th century. This was
due to tradition that they did not want to break in Russia because chess
had already been played like that for centuries.

There's more than one way for the river to be added and the river to be
taken out. I am not insisting it happened one way or the other. It is quite
easy to look at a 9x10 intersection board with the river in it and just
play within the squares. Any trader traveling between China and Persia can
do that spontaneously and essentially create a different but related game.
It's harder to take the 8x8 board and add the river because that would
take more thinking. My argument is that there is precisely an 8x8 board of
square within a 9x10 intersection board because the river has no lines
going through it so if you count only squares on a 9x10 intersection board,
you get 64.

I am saying that in the timeline of Xiangqi within Chinese historical
circles who do not look at Western sources, there is no one who believes
that Xiangqi was developed during the Tang dynasty which is what the 6-8th
century was in China. Although the specific timeline is not agreed upon
among Chinese scholars, the Spring and Autumn period is the most agreed
upon period of time that Xiangqi was originally developed. One of the
reasons was because the pieces and the palace concept is from the Spring
and Autumn period and the Warring States period. That is 5th-2nd century
B.C. That means Xiangqi's believed timeline among Chinese historians who
study Xiangqi's history or supposed history, believe the game was first
developed around 700-1000 years before Tang dynasty.

This conclusion was not made to counter Western arguments that all forms of
chess were developed from Chaturanga in 6th century A.D. It was made
internally and with no intention of starting a war of words between the
East and West.

I do agree that the 8x8 Chess can be linked back to 6th century India or
2nd century Persia, but there is no reason either from game design
development or anything in history to suggest that Xiangqi is borrowed from
a different game. What we do know is that similar games with similar moving
pieces and slightly different boards popped up in India, Persia, and China
by the 6th century. Which game came from which is a matter of opinion as we
don't have any hard evidence of it going one way or the other.

Therefore, it shouldn't be some hard fact that chess comes from India 6th
century because similar games already appeared in Persia and China 400
years or more before chess is known to have appeared in India.

What do you mean that my argument that games finishing their development at
different points means nothing? We know when the long range bishop and long
range queen were agreed upon to be in the 8x8 game. Late 15th century in
Europe. This is not in dispute. The bishop was taken from the Courier in
Courier Chess in Germany which comes from 13th century approximately.

So what do you mean, in existence for centuries? That seems kind of
generalized.

I am only stating 2 accepted dates of the final development of modern 8x8
Chess in Europe and 9x10 Xiangqi in China.

8x8 Chess in Europe was late 15th century, and Xiangqi was Song dynasty in
China which is about 500 years or more before late 15th century. That
suggests, but does not prove that Xiangqi is an earlier game because it
finished its development much earlier than Chess and did not need to change
the movements of any of its pieces. In fact all Xiangqi did was add the 2
cannons and an extra counselor and minister to finish the game. That was an
easier development than Chess which required more changes.

Not just to the bishop and and queen, but 2 space moving pawns, en passant,
and castling. Moves like castling and en passant, and 2 space moving pawns
are definitely more modern concepts in Chess than anything in Xiangqi which
plays very much more like an archaic game.

Please be more specific when you say that the bishop and queen in their
modern form had already been around for centuries. From which point? If we
go back to the earliest known long range diagonal moving piece in Europe,
it was in Courier Chess played on a 12x8 board which also had the 2 space
moving minister in it also. All of this took place after Xiangqi was
finished in its development. This suggests but does not prove that Xiangqi
has an earlier start date because less work was needed to finish the game.
To believe the opposite is more likely is saying that a game that takes
longer in its development process and needs really special rules like en
passant and castling precedes a game that did not require much change 500
years beforehand.

It's not impossible, but it's unlikely. That's why I think it's silly
that the Western world says with absolute authority that chess comes from
India without a second thought to it and that China and Japan just copied
it. That seems like a bully kind of mentality and not a commitment to
actually studying what most likely happened in history.

John Ayer wrote on Tue, Dec 27, 2011 12:20 AM UTC:
Jason, I admire the patient courtesy with which you maintain your position toward people who still don't see things the way you do. My copy of Prof. Li's book is miles away at the moment, so I can't give a full reply this evening.

I think it is adequately established that both the ashtapada and the Chinese chess board were taken from previous uses, so trying to derive either from the other is pointless.

You say that 'the Spring and Autumn period is the most agreed upon period of time that Xiangqi was originally developed. One of the reasons was because the pieces and the palace concept is from the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. That is 5th-2nd century B.C. That means Xiangqi's believed timeline among Chinese historians who study Xiangqi's history or supposed history, believe the game was first developed around 700-1000 years before Tang dynasty.' This is new to me. Please explain how the pieces and the palace concept are specific to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.

More later.


Charles Gilman wrote on Tue, Dec 27, 2011 08:45 AM UTC:
Jason L.:

'Take the middle column of the palace in Xiangqi, and put the counselor on the first rank, the general on the 2nd rank, and the minister on the 3rd rank. That was the original setup. That plus 5 pawns or foot soldiers in the initial positions and a chariot and horse in the corners of the board. There were no other pieces on the back rank. Therefore, out of 9 possible points on the back rank, only 5 of them were occupied.'
	I was not aware of that. Nor have I seen any evidence from the comments that any other contributor was except you. That would certainly make a difference. If Xiang Qi used a pre-existing board it means that the board wasn't derived from the 8x8 one in the 'two half-boards' that so many here consider intuitive. It does not however mean that the reverse derivation happened either, as the 8x8 board too was a pre-existing one. It means that the half-boards misunderstanding never happened in either direction, and that the boards therefore have no bearing on which game came first.

'How do you argue that a game where the pieces need development is the earlier one and a game where the pieces do not need to be changed is a later one? The chances of that are against game design common sense.'
	Have you never seen an advertisement selling something as - 'new, improved!'? Think of FIDE Chess. Outside variant circles that is generally considered a game that does not need improvement. The reason is that is a product of improvements of something that did need improving. That how it works. Of course a game that needs improving is older than a game based on it but with improvements made. You are not arguining that because FIDE Chess does not need improvement for most players means that it too is older than Chaturanga, are you?

'You say it can be argued that a game not requiring improvement of the movement of the pieces could have been improved from a predecessor. Where is it then?'
	We all agree that the predecessor to Xiang Qi with Cannons was Xiang Qi without. As to what the predecessor to that was, most contributors here seem to say Chaturanga, and you yourself say this earlier middle-file-heavy Xiang Qi.

'Please be more specific when you say that the bishop and queen in their modern form had already been around for centuries.'
	That was not what I said. I was pointing out that those pieces were added to an 8x8 game without them that had, in the form of Chaturanga and Shatranj, existed for many centuries.

John Ayer wrote on Wed, Dec 28, 2011 07:42 PM UTC:
Charles has said several things that I had in mind when I was obliged to break off. I want to add that I think the concept of 'a game that has finished its development' is unsound. Shatranj/medieval chess was played for at least eight hundred years, and during that time most people probably considered it a finished game. A few restless minds kept tinkering with it, usually to no effect.

Lastly, Jason, you should stop claiming racial grievance and imputing improper motives to everyone else. We mongrels of the western world have explained repeatedly that we have nothing to gain or lose by whether chess originated in India, China, Egypt, or Antarctica. Nor is it true that we have announced a doctrine and then refused to reconsider. We have made an interpretation of the (alas! imperfect) evidence, but eagerly examine every new bit of evidence, and every new argument. This is why we consider everything you have to say, and keep asking for evidence.


Jason L. wrote on Sun, Jan 1, 2012 12:47 PM UTC:
To Charles G.: When I say 'finished in development', what I mean is that
the fact that 8x8 Chess could be improved at least 500 years after
Xiangqi's last improvement before it was 'finished', suggests that the
original 8x8 game comes after the original Xiangqi game. It's not full
proof, but generally if 2 games come from the same source, it should be
faster for the original game to finish its development first because there
should be less changes necessary.

And my point is that there were less changes needed to be made from
pre-cannon Xiangqi to cannon Xiangqi as opposed to 8x8 Chess with 1 space
moving counselor and 2 space moving minister and 1 space moving pawns and
no castling and obviously no en passant.

Chess' complexity is approximately the same as Xiangqi (state-space) and
Xiangqi would have been more complex than Chess before the bishop and queen
were made long range and the pawns 2 spaces. In Xiangqi, pawns only move 1
space, the 2 counselors only move 1 space in the palace, and the minister
still moves 2 spaces exactly. That means all they did was add an additional
minister, counselor and the 2 cannons in the only place they can fit on the
board. That's an easier development process than what happened with 8x8
Chess in Europe.

So if both games have those same moving pieces and they come from the same
game, then Xiangqi is more likely the first game because those pieces still
move the same on the board.

I'm not making a strong argument about which board comes from which. Just
that the in terms of game development, a game that does not need to change
the movements of its pieces is probably precedes another game with the same
pieces on a different board and different setup.

In order to say logically that the original moving pieces are borrowed from
8x8 Indian Chess in its first known form, the Chinese would have had to
take the one space moving counselor and 2 space moving minister and change
the board dimensions to make those pieces work properly. That is not
impossible, but it is less likely. Generally, a civilization would change
the movements of pieces and rules of the game when developing a game and
not the board.

When I say 'finished its development' I know it is a matter of opinion
what 'finished' means, but I am saying that the fact that the minister
and counselor needed improvements for 8x8 Chess to be as good as Xiangqi
with the cannons, suggests that the game came later and the movement of the
pieces are borrowed.

Logically speaking, if 8x8 Chess came first, the Indian/Persian
civilizations would have put in the long range bishop/minister to begin
with and not made a 1 space moving counselor which does not make much sense
next to the king. If the king can move to all of its 8 spaces around it,
why would you want to put a piece right next to it that can move 1 space
diagonal only? It seems out of place and not logical. And the minister or
bishop moving exactly 2 squares seems silly also because that piece can
only reach 25% of the squares on the board.

If Xiangqi came from 8x8 Persian/Indian Chess, then there would probably be
changes to the movements of the pieces and not the other way around to fit
the different 9x10 intersection board. Instead, we have the same moving
pieces on both games and they need to be changed on 8x8 and not 9x10.

The 1 space moving counselor in Xiangqi makes sense because the general or
emperor moves only 1 space orthogonal and therefore the counselor(s) moves
differently than it. The 2 compliment each other. In 8x8 Chess, the 2
pieces in the center do not compliment each other.

I am not pointing fingers at anyone on this board, but the general attitude
of most Western sources that say with authority that Chess comes from India
at a certain time without doing any research into how related chess games
were developed in other parts of Asia. That seems like the European world
wants their version of Chess to be the first one. The original one and
arguably the best.

I often read in places, that Shogi and Xiangqi are not as good and
appealing as Chess. It looks like bigotry to me or at least ethnocentric
thinking which all cultures are like to a  certain degree. However, I have
noticed that Asian cultures like Japan and China don't automatically say
that FIDE Chess is junk and should be disregarded because its just copied
from Xiangqi or Shogi. That kind of attitude is not as prevalent although
the Japanese and Chinese also have their own superiority issues.

You guys say that no one on this board has any stake in whether the game
comes from Persia, Afghan, India, China or any other place, but I think
there is something at stake. Maybe not necessarily with everyone on the
board here, but with the Western world in general.

Since the Western world plays the best and most commonly accepted form of
Chess on an 8x8 board with Staunton pieces, if it were to be said that the
birthplace of Chess comes from China and not India, it would in a way
damage the image of the game as being the original and best one. The
concept being sold is that India is the birthplace and Europe improved the
game to what it is today. If people start saying the Indian version is
borrowed from the Chinese version on a different board, then Chess loses
its mystique and 'credibility' almost.

If you love 8x8 Chess or any form of chess, you naturally do not want to
say it is just copied from another game because it hurts your pride as a
person who plays that game as well as to perhaps your culture too.

I talk to Westerners, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese people and none of them
want to say that their game was from another game. They all like saying
their game is original to their culture and they came up with it on their
own. Since we know for sure 8x8 Chess doesn't come from Europe, it has to
be linked to some where and India/Persia are the earliest known places the
game comes from which is fine.

What is not fine is to say that other related games are assumed to be
copied from the first known cases of 8x8 Chess. That's an assumption that
should not automatically be made because as in the case of the Chinese
civilization, the Western world is telling the Chinese world that they
cannot make certain conclusions or estimations based on their own history
without proper evidence.

I'm saying that its wrong for people to demand evidence from a
civilization that they have proof that their own game comes from their
region. If they want to say it comes from their region, that's their
business. You don't have to agree with it, but it seems that for Chinese
Xiangqi historians, they are automatically wrong to think Spring and Autumn
period or Warring States period without sufficient evidence.

Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Jan 4, 2012 07:39 AM UTC:
Let me see if I've got your 'pre-pre-Cannon' Xiang Qi right, on the basis that a picture paints 1000 words. If modern Xiang Qi is
and its immediate predecessor was
, was the one before that

I see what you mean that if the 'finished' version of one is later the 'original' is later too, but that pre-supposes that the two have no common 'original'. That would mean that pieces with similar moves in similar positions were created independently in India and China. Most contributors (apparently including yourself) consider this unlikely.

I have already acknowledged that FIDE Chess is a bigger change from Chaturanga than post-Cannon Xiang Qi is from pre-Cannon Xiang Qi, but I do not see it following that the game that needed more change had already been greatly changed from another game. Surely it is more likely that the game that needed less change was the one that had the most prior change.

To call Xiang Qi an improvement on Chaturanga is not to put down China compared to Europe, which also improved on Chaturanga. To call Chaturanga a worsening of Xiang Qi is to say that India cannot even improve a game, let alone create one from scratch. Why should anyone change a game to make it worse? Repositioning pieeces to 'make them work properly' seems far more likely than repositioning pieces that already work properly so that they do not.

A better argument for Chatruranga being derived from Xiang Qi is the Pawn, which does look like an improvement. I concede that this strengthens the case for Chaturanga being derived from Xiang Qi, as does your evidence of pre-pre-Cannon Xiang Qi. How did you find out about that game? On the other hand, does anyone know whether there was a pre-Pawn Chaturanga with a front rank more like Xiang Qi or Shogi? I have read discussions on the Rook having a precursor (the Dabbaba - and where would that come from in a Chinese-origin theory) but never the Pawn.


Jörg Knappen wrote on Wed, Jan 4, 2012 09:14 AM UTC:
I have seen speculations (sorry, I don't have sources ready) about a precursor of the pawn: A forward moving piece using custodian capture (as in Tablut). It may be related to the game Petteia played in ancinet greece (the rules of that game are unfortunately lost). This explains the divergent nature of move and capture of the Shatranj pawn.

John Ayer wrote on Wed, Jan 4, 2012 03:54 PM UTC:
My, my, my!

Jason, I never said that Chinese chess is derived from shatranj. I suggest that both are derived from Shatranj al-Kamil, V.1 (John Gollon's listing), which was played on a 10x10 board. My reasoning is at http://www.goddesschess.com/chessays/johnayer.html .

I think the names 'India' and 'China' are having an undue effect, making people think of the modern nation-states, which are rivals. Gerhard Josten, of the Initiative Group Koenigstein, postulates that proto-chess was invented in the Kushan Empire, fusing elements of Greek origin (from the game of poleis or petteia) brought by the Macedonian army with elements of Indian origin (taken from a race game) and elements of Chinese origin (from liubo). His essay is at http://www.mynetcologne.de/~nc-jostenge/ in a pdf. I would like to hear what you think of it. Myron J. Samsin, also of the IGK, argues for a somewhat earlier date in the same area http://www.schachquellen.de/15122.html .

I would also like to hear why you think that the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period are a particularly likely setting for the origin of chess.


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