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