Comments by JohnAyer

2: I agree that a rose, like a reflecting bishop, should not be permitted to return to its square of origin.

3: Considering how many pieces comprise a nightrider, I am puzzled that no one seems to have fused the rose with anything else. The bishop, the rook, the queen, the alfil-rider, the dabbabah-rider, the dayrider, the nightrider, the Mann, the alibaba, the dragon king, and the dragon horse all occur as obvious possibilities.

Blue Queen Chess: A third queen, painted blue (or otherwise uniquely marked), starts on one of the central squares, and can be moved by whichever player has the move.  According to the novel in which I first heard of this, it is also possible to capture the blue queen.  Finally, confirmation that the game was not a fiction of the novel: http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/006433.html

'Anyway, Li's book presents all the Western arguments which are always based on the indisputable assumption that India is first or else the white man loses face...' It seems to me that the British might have felt (not that I can discuss this with any nineteenth-century British) that they would lose face if they had chess from their own Indian subjects. I get the impression that they thought China more civilized and respectable than India.

As for Dr. Li's assertion that chess survived underground at the Imperial Court for eight hundred years, this is as completely unsupported as everything else he says about chess before the Tang Dynasty.

The two supposed chess pieces from Russia from the second century are actually from Uzbekistan (Dalverzin Tepe). They are an elephant and a bull, so they are not generally accepted as chess pieces. The earliest generally accepted chess pieces are also from Uzbekistan (Afrasiab, right by Samarkand), from the eighth (Christian) century. There are seven of them, covering all six ranks.

As for the Chinese naval expeditions of exploration some six centuries ago, I accept that they happened; they left archeological evidence here and there. We wicked westerners didn't destroy the records, the Chinese did. I have already stated that the Chinese originated gunpowder, rockets, and printing with movable type, and we have them from China. By the way, I have a Chihuahua. According to sources including the Wikipedia, archeology has found remains of dogs of this type, but larger, in Mexico in the centuries before the Spanish Conquest. Our small Chihuahuas are supposed to be derived from the pre-Conquest dogs crossed with Chinese miniatures brought by the Conquistadors. I asked for any evidence that the Conquistadors, or for that matter the Spanish of that period, had Chinese miniature dogs. Profound silence. I suggested that the Chinese miniature dogs had more likely been brought by the Chinese in the generations before the Spanish Conquest. Continued profound silence.

Jason, the rest of us have disclaimed any investment in whether chess originated in China, India, Iran, Bactria, or Antarctica. You are the only one--the only one!--who has suggested that pinning down the location where chess originated would say anything about the superiority of one nation over another.

Congratulations on your partial recovery!

I think it is adequately established that both the ashtapada and the Chinese chess board were taken from previous uses, so trying to derive either from the other is pointless.

You say that 'the Spring and Autumn period is the most agreed upon period of time that Xiangqi was originally developed. One of the reasons was because the pieces and the palace concept is from the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. That is 5th-2nd century B.C. That means Xiangqi's believed timeline among Chinese historians who study Xiangqi's history or supposed history, believe the game was first developed around 700-1000 years before Tang dynasty.' This is new to me. Please explain how the pieces and the palace concept are specific to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.

More later.

http://www.sirlingames.com/products/chess-2-print-and-play

To be perfectly clear, I am thinking of a piece that bears the same
relationship to the gold that Peter Aronson's great elephant bears to the
silver.

I finally took a look, and, yes, the height seems to be about a quarter
greater than the width.  I am using Firefox.

This makes me wonder: have the combinations rook+ferz+alfil, bishop+dabbabah, rook+alfil been invented and tried?