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Chaturanga. The first known variant of chess. (8x8, Cells: 64) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

Anonymous wrote on Tue, May 27, 2003 01:59 PM UTC:Good ★★★★

1. Elephants were indeed present in China at the time of invention of Chinese Chess (203BC), as were horsemen and chariots, as demonstrated in David Li's book The Origins of Chess (<a href='http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0963785222/104-4808093-237594 3?vi=glance'>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0963785222/104-4808093-237594 3?vi=glance</a>). For example, Sun Tzu's The Art of War mentions chariots and recommends that they be positioned at the sides for a real army, hence their positions in the game that mimicks a real army. As a side note, Murray's research is incomplete because he did not have proficiency in the Chinese language and did his best with documents of Indian origin. 2. It is more likely that the Chinese had the pieces on the points in the tradition of Wei Qi (Go), also invented in China even earlier than Chinese Chess, and that their Indian discoverers, not knowing that the pieces belong on the points, decided to put them within the squares instead. It is equally likely that the Indian discoverers gave the game a name that they were more familiar with (Chaturanga, for example) since they did not understand the Chinese name for it (Xiang Qi, pronounced Shang chi). 3. For the differentiated pieces in Chinese Chess, David Li's response: 'As noted in my book, proto-chess (the earliest form of chess of any kind, the forerunner of Xiangqi) was invented in 203 BCE by Han Xin, the commander-in-chief of Han, during the period of Chu-Han Conflict, where Chu was a border-state whose language was different from Han's. Incidentally, the color of Han's flag was red; that of Chu, black. Thus, in Xiangqi, the color of the two sides are red and black, with red considered the superior force. The reason for the slight differences in characters is, again, to convey the superiority of red pieces. Generally, as to the chariot, the red piece has 'man' as the radical, while the black piece has none -- this is to suggest that the black chariot is unmanned (the man/men occupying the chariot had fled); ditto for the horse (manned in red and unmanned in black). The word for the black pawn has, as one of its many meanings, dead, thereby conveying similar meanings of red's superiority.' The idea is to imply that the side of the army that the inventor was commanding was superior.