I was not aware of any scholarly debate about the historical link between the national variants of chess (shogi, xiangqi, janggi, etc.) and shatranj (or its predecessor chaturanga). Would someone be so good as to provide me a reference for [...] may even come from unrelated origins. Some writers even emphasize that they are not chess.? Thanks. --Karl Juhnke
[1] is a good reference on the subject. The conclusion there is that the theory that it comes from India (which I believe is the traditional story in China, BTW) is entirely plausible, but that there is no concrete evidence for its truth.
- Thanks for the reference. It puts in perspective how scanty the evidence for common origin is. However, it is one thing to point out a lack of proof for one theory, and quite another to articulate an alternative theory. True, the evidence for a common origin is sparse and inferential, but the evidence for independent (convergent) evolution is AFAIK as non-existent as the theory is implausible. The article you link does not advance any evidence, direct or inferred, against the notion of xiangqi being descended from chaturanga; it merely points out gaps in our knowledge.
- By all means, let us be cautious about presenting a tenuous theory in the guise of fact. But if the evidence for common Indian origin (prior written references and extremely similar rules) is so much stronger than the evidence for inpendent invention (absolutely nothing), I don't see why the latter theory should get equal or greater emphasis.
- If I am still missing the point, please educate me. Peace, --Karl Juhnke
I didn't write the original paragraph, I just answered your request for a reference. Personally, I don't think any commentary either way is needed on this page, which is really just linking structure. Someone will doubtless write a separate article on the game family as a whole eventually. Matthew Woodcraft
As some of you probably already know, I don't like calling XiangQi and Shogi variants of chess, because I don't believe they are variants of Chess. AFAIK, a chess variant is a change of chess to another ruleset. XiangQi and Shogi seem so completely different to me than Chess that they should not be called variants (I think Asian players of those games would be offended by this) even though the Chess variants page lists them as variants. What do others think? --Chuck Smith
I think it depends on whether people think of 'Chess' as referring to the FIDE game, or to the family as a whole. My impression is that among English speakers, shogi is usually called 'shogi' and not 'Japanese chess', but xiang-qi is called 'Chinese chess' at least as often as it's called 'xiang-qi'. So maybe there's no way to make everyone happy. More practically, this page could usefully distinguish between games which begin with FIDE chess and make changes from there, and games of the same family where the common ancestor is much further back. Matthew Woodcraft
- Matthew seems to have grasped what I was getting at when I restructured the way that chess is treated on Wikipedia. It was completely intentional to put variants as the last major subdivision of the Chess article. In making place for variants, I had no intention to have it dependent on the history of chess. I can appreciate Chuck's position that Shogi and Xiangqi are not chess, but one cannot excape the simple fact that they are chess-like. If someone were to ask me "What's shogi?" I would be hard put to avoid saying that it's like chess. Maybe I'll just add the words "chess-like" to "National variants". Eclecticology
I too think Matthew has hit the nail on the head. When I edited the page, I didn't call Shogi and Xiangqi "National variants", I called them "Chess-like games derived from Shatranj". I was reserving the word chess for the game that standardized in Europe by the 1500's, and xiangqi et al are not variants of that chess. I know that whatever convetion we adopt here won't be universal, but that shouldn't prevent us from adopting a convention. Let's respect Chuck's point and reserve "chess variants" for games derived from chess, and call games with a common ancestor to chess "chess relatives", or "chess cousins", or something that emphasizes the actual genetic relationship. Chess is not a shogi variant, and shogi is not a chess variant, they are both (in all probability) chaturanga variants.
I understand that's the trend in modern biology too. Don't we group species based on how long ago the split occurred, rather than on how similar species superficially appear to be? Traditionally we would love to group all the other apes together and split ourselves off as being special, but actually chimps, gorillas, and humans are all more closely related to each other than any of us to the orangutan. Something like:
common ancestor ______________organutan
\____________gorilla
\________chimp
\____human
OK, that was a wild tangent, but the point is that the error of viewing "our" chess as primal is somehow akin to viewing our genes as privileged, and miscategorizing other species as a result. --Karl Juhnke
I removed the following from Chess variant because they are not chess variants, but simply different ways to play Chess. ...and what is situs? --Chuck Smith
Variants by situs
- Postal chess
- Chess on the internet