An Illustrated History of Chess

 Contents:
  1 Origins
  2 Early Chess
  3 Thailand
  4 China
  5 From China?
  6 Korea
  7 Japan
  8 Evolution
  9 Europe
  10 Variants


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An Illustrated History of Chess_________________3____

makruk (Thai chess)
Compare these pieces to the ones we were just examining. The board is the same, and you can still recognize the horse...but the other pieces have been replaced by neatly lathed abstractions.
Throughout the history of chess, this desire to make lathed pieces has shaped the form of chessmen in many cultures. The pieces here are so similar to each other that you might, at first, have trouble telling them apart.
This is makruk, the national chess of Thailand, still played avidly throughout that country. All pieces, except one, retain the same moves they had in ancient chess, but the former chariot is considered to be a boat, the elephant is now a nobleman, the king's assistant is a seed and the foot soldier is a cowry shell. An interesting mix of changes that fits the local realities of transportation and politics, and the shapes and materials of the playing pieces.
makruk (Thai chess) all set up and ready to play
makruk, ready for a first move
the move of the makruk (Thai chess) nobleman, the traditional move of the elephant in south-east Asian chess variants
move of the nobleman, the typical "elephant's" move
in Southeast Asia

Note also that the pawns are placed on the third row, something this form of chess shares with Japanese chess — as we shall see later.

The one piece that moves differently from its ancient counterpart is the elephant/nobleman. Here we have an interesting story:
It is said that the elephant's move which caught on in Southeast Asia represented the "five appendages" of the elephant. He moved to the four diagonal directions for each of his legs, plus straight forward — for the trunk.
The Thai "elephant" retains this centuries old interpretation, but the specific image of the move is lost, as the piece has now become a nobleman.


So, we've seen that the ancient Persian chess moved westward, where it became the Arabian game, and eventually evolved into our modern western "international" chess. And it moved east and south, where it became the modern Thai game of makruk...but wait!

There is another lineage of chess which may pre-date these games altogether!
Let's take a look at chess in China...

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