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I'm going to share my speculations on the origin of Chinese Chess here, and since it is speculation, I am adding it here instead of adding it as part of the page content. First, I'm certain that Chinese Chess is related to Chaturanga or Shatranj in some way. Their pieces and rules are too similar for me to buy into the idea that Chinese Chess arose completely independently of the Indo-European Chess tradition. Besides that, there was trade between India and China along the silk road. So it makes sense that word of a game that had become popular in one place would spread to the other.

From my experience playing Chess, Chinese Chess, and Shatranj, it seems to me that both Chess and Chinese Chess are better games than Shatranj, and the idea arises that both may be improvements on Chaturanga or some game like it. The main problem with Chaturanga/Shatranj is that the pieces are too weak and slow, making the game long and tedious. Chess fixes this by replacing the weakest pieces with stronger pieces and by giving Pawns a double move. Chinese Chess fixes this by confining its royal piece to the palace, using the weakest pieces only for defense, and adding the Cannon, which is a fairly fast and powerful piece. The result is that Chinese Chess tends to be fast and decisive, much moreso than Chaturanga/Shatranj. Given this, it seems likely to me that Chaturanga is closer to the original game than Chinese Chess is.

Besides this, it seems more likely to me that Chinese Chess was a transformation of Chaturanga than vice versa. Consider this. Chinese Chess could be described as being played on a board of 90 points, while Chaturanga could be described as being played on a board of 64 squares. If someone in India heard the 90 points description and tried to recreate the game, he wouldn't likely make the 64 square ashtapada, but if someone in China heard about a game played on a 64 square ashtapada, he may assume from his experience with Go that pieces go on the intersections instead of inside the squares. This might immediately lead him to thinking that the game has two Counselors instead of just the one in Chaturanga. If he also heard that the game had 16 pieces to each side, he might have thought that 7 Pawns didn't seem right, settle on 5 as the more natural number for a rank of 9 points, and then assuming that his information on Chaturanga had been garbled, set to work trying to think of what the two remaining pieces might be. Splitting the board in two, thereby adding an extra rank, and the other changes may have followed from attempts to improve the game.

One last point concerns the names Chaturanga and Xiangqi. The former, meaning the four branches of the military, seems like a name the original creator might naturally give to a war game. The latter, meaning elephant strategy board game, seems to have been named for one feature that perhaps struck someone as unusual or significant. This example of synecdoche in naming is the sort of name I might expect from people who adopted a game from another culture. Even the English name of Chess is an example of synecdoche, for it goes back to the Persian Shah, meaning King.

My speculations have been based on an analysis of the games and their names. If it were contradicted by historical or archaeological evidence, that evidence would be more relevant. Although there are those who would disagree with my conclusions, my conclusions are in line with the received opinion that the origins of Chess and Chinese Chess go back to Chaturanga.