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.