Check out Balbo's Chess, our featured variant for October, 2024.

Enter Your Reply

The Comment You're Replying To
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. <br><br> 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. <br><br> 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). <br><br> 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. <br><br> 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.' <br><br> The idea is to imply that the side of the army that the inventor was commanding was superior.

Edit Form

Comment on the page Chaturanga

Conduct Guidelines
This is a Chess variants website, not a general forum.
Please limit your comments to Chess variants or the operation of this site.
Keep this website a safe space for Chess variant hobbyists of all stripes.
Because we want people to feel comfortable here no matter what their political or religious beliefs might be, we ask you to avoid discussing politics, religion, or other controversial subjects here. No matter how passionately you feel about any of these subjects, just take it someplace else.
Avoid Inflammatory Comments
If you are feeling anger, keep it to yourself until you calm down. Avoid insulting, blaming, or attacking someone you are angry with. Focus criticisms on ideas rather than people, and understand that criticisms of your ideas are not personal attacks and do not justify an inflammatory response.
Quick Markdown Guide

By default, new comments may be entered as Markdown, simple markup syntax designed to be readable and not look like markup. Comments stored as Markdown will be converted to HTML by Parsedown before displaying them. This follows the Github Flavored Markdown Spec with support for Markdown Extra. For a good overview of Markdown in general, check out the Markdown Guide. Here is a quick comparison of some commonly used Markdown with the rendered result:

Top level header: <H1>

Block quote

Second paragraph in block quote

First Paragraph of response. Italics, bold, and bold italics.

Second Paragraph after blank line. Here is some HTML code mixed in with the Markdown, and here is the same <U>HTML code</U> enclosed by backticks.

Secondary Header: <H2>

  • Unordered list item
  • Second unordered list item
  • New unordered list
    • Nested list item

Third Level header <H3>

  1. An ordered list item.
  2. A second ordered list item with the same number.
  3. A third ordered list item.
Here is some preformatted text.
  This line begins with some indentation.
    This begins with even more indentation.
And this line has no indentation.

Alt text for a graphic image

A definition list
A list of terms, each with one or more definitions following it.
An HTML construct using the tags <DL>, <DT> and <DD>.
A term
Its definition after a colon.
A second definition.
A third definition.
Another term following a blank line
The definition of that term.