Single Comment

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