Where is the origin of Chinese chess?

The crystallization theory of Chinese and Indian culture confirms that the ultimate roots of chess and Chinese chess are in China, but it holds that there was communication and influence between the two chess in the process of creation and evolution. It holds that India's square chess had an influence in the process of creation of ancient chess, and ancient chess also had an important influence on the formation and evolution of primitive chess. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why these two chess games have many similarities in terms of shape, style, rules and so on.

Dr. Cherevko, a former researcher of the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, holds a similar view to the famous British scholar Dr. Joseph, that the ultimate origin of chess is in China: in his article "On the Origin of Chess" published in the first issue of Soviet Chess in 1984, he pointed out: It is no accident that the division of chess pieces into white and black and their possible various combinations are formed on a board of 64 squares. They appear to be symbols of the 4th century BC Chinese classic book of Changes. White and black represent two cosmic forces, corresponding to the light, positive and good elements and the dark, negative and evil elements. All objective circumstances synthesized in the Book of Changes are the number 64, each of which corresponds to its own symbol, the hexagram, which is composed of six complete or discontinuous horizontal lines (referring to lines), the various combinations of which represent the characteristic ideas of the interrelation of circumstances."

Yao Yin Yao, is the length of the eight diagrams, "one" is Yang Yao. "--" is the Yin line.

Dr. Cherevkau concludes: "The modern type of Far Eastern chess (in Japan it is shogi), the form of the pieces was formed in 569 AD. Emperor Wu (560-578 AD), the Xianbei ruler of the Northern Zhou Dynasty in the Southern and Northern Dynasties, recorded this invention in official documents." He said, "As the historians have proved, Indian square chess entered China at the beginning of the 3rd century AD. At first, it supplemented the simple Chinese chess, and then, due to inheritance, adapted the Xianbei Chinese chess with new pieces such as' Xiang '." "A further development was the integration of the functions of chess in the Northern Zhou Dynasty with Indian square chess, which evolved into modern Chinese chess in China, into Zhiqi in Japan, into Persian chess in some parts of the Middle East, most likely during the Third Hellenistic Bactrian Dynasty, and then into modern chess."
Mr. Permanent Xia, a famous scholar of Indian culture in China, as early as the middle of the 1950s, in his book "Oriental Art Series", he also had a more in-depth discussion on the origin of the two chess.
Mr. Permanent Xia has studied the situation in India. In that work he spoke of the ancient Indian Sanskrit text on the "square chess" (Chaturanga), and of the ancient Indian ivory carved chess pieces that now exist in the Louvre Museum in Paris. It was a commander on an elephant, with a horse drawn up by its trunk, and four soldiers on horseback, armed and armed, gathered about them. Under the seat of this chess piece, there are ancient inscriptions, indicating that it is a cultural relic of the late 8th century and early 9th century AD. From the point that the types and numbers of the two chess pieces are roughly the same, Mr. Permanent Xia believes that the two "should be from the same source of the relationship, I think it is not even the same." The crystallization theory of Chinese and Indian culture confirms that the ultimate roots of chess and Chinese chess are in China, but it holds that there was communication and influence between the two chess in the process of creation and evolution. It holds that India's square chess had an influence in the process of creation of ancient chess, and ancient chess also had an important influence on the formation and evolution of primitive chess. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why these two chess games have many similarities in terms of shape, style, rules and so on.

Mr. Permanent also examines the spread of chess around the world, especially in India and China.
It introduces in detail the description of a story about Cen Shun's dream of an elephant play in the first year of Baoying (AD 762) in Xuanstrange Record, a famous statesman, writer and prime minister of the Tang Dynasty.
According to his analysis, Mr. Permanxia believes: "At that time, the chess of the Tang Dynasty was exported to the East, and some researchers say that it was exported to the West at the same time, spreading from Persia to Europe, and European chess originated from China." However, there are historical data to be examined for eastward transmission, while there are few literatures for westward transmission. However, since the Song Dynasty, Western chess has been influenced by China, and quite a clue can be found. Modern Indian chess began in the 8th century. Modern European chess appeared in the middle of the 11th century AD, and there are cannon towers in the chess game, which is different from Indian ancient chess. Artillery was invented and created in China, and it was used in chess to enrich the content of chess. As the Mongols conquered the West and spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe and India, this tactic was reflected as a new feature in chess."
Mr. Permanent Xia concluded that the two chess games are "products of the ancient cultural cooperation between the Chinese and Indian people."
He said: "According to the records of the literature, from the third century between the Wei and Huang dynasties, the ancient Chinese chess had a relationship with India, which is probably credible. Chess in China, due to the love of the society, in the Tang and Song dynasties enriched its content, carefully studied, has a great development. It has been different from ancient chess, adding new fighting forces. Along with Chinese culture, it spread to the East and West."
It can be seen from the above that Dr. Cherevkau, the orientalist of the former Soviet Union, and Mr. Ren Xia, the general culture of India in China, both affirmed that the source of the two chess games was in China, and talked about the certain influence of India's "square chess" in the evolution of ancient chess to different degrees.
If the ancient Indian "square chess" is the distant ancestor of the original chess, then the ancient Chinese Liubo chess is not only the distant ancestor of Chinese chess, but also the ancestor of all kinds of chess games in the world, including various types of chess. Because the appearance of six games is much earlier than "square games". According to the Biography of the Son of Mu Tianzi, an ancient novel, King Mu of Zhou in 970 BC was a fan of Liubo chess. Liubo has a history of at least 3,000 years. The Indian game was not recorded in the Indian sutras until at least 1600.
This can be concluded from the Indian Buddhist sutra, the Dharma Nirvana Sutra. The Mahaparinirvana, translated by Dharmaraksa (385-433 AD) in Zhongtianzhu County, is recognized as the Buddha's statement before the extinction. In the text of "Present Disease Sixth", the rules of the play are: "Bopu, Weiqi, Balosai play, teacher Zi like fighting, playing chess six Bo, beating a thousand stones, throwing a pot, eight ways, all the play laugh, know not to see the work." Among the various boplays listed are Weiqi, pinqi, Liubo, and Tou Pot, which are all traditional boplays of ancient China. This proves that before the 4th century AD, Weiqi and Liubo were popular in India. It should be especially pointed out that in this Buddhist sutra, which is widely circulated in ancient India, while listing Weiqi, Liubo and other chess games, there is no mention of India's own "square chess". It can be seen that the age of "square chess" was far after Go and six Bobo. Since China's Liubo chess has been confirmed in the 4th century AD that spread in India, it is impossible to have no influence on the cultural life of India at that time, so it is reasonable to further infer that in the process of India's "quadripartite chess", China's Liubo chess must have played some positive role. Otherwise, why in the Indian "square chess" play left a "six Bo chess" remains.
Therefore, Liubo is the ancestor of all chess games in the world, and China is the ultimate source of chess, which is very convincing.

In 2001, the archaeological department of the Three Gorges excavated a pottery chess piece in the old coffin mound tomb group in Wanzhou District of Chongqing. According to reports, this is the earliest chess object unearthed in China. When the archaeological team of Yunnan Institute of Archaeology excavated the old coffin mound tomb group in the Three Gorges area - the Eastern Han Dynasty tomb, they found a pottery chess piece in the tomb path. This piece has a diameter of 2.9 cm and a thickness of 1.3 cm. It is engraved with the word "car" in Yin script. This tomb belongs to the early Eastern Han Dynasty, which shows that as early as about 2000 years ago, chess became the entertainment instrument of the people in the Three Gorges area of China.

The Han-Wei pottery chess "chariot" unearthed in the Three Gorges is one of the ten important discoveries in the construction of the Three Gorges, which is of great significance to the study of the origin and circulation of Chinese chess. It pushes back the date of the earliest appearance of flat Chinese chess pieces by more than 700 years, that is to say there were flat chess pieces before the 3rd century AD. Back then, square chess had not yet been invented. It is a powerful refutation of the fallacy of the Indian origin theory that chess evolved from the Indian chess, namely square chess. People discuss the origin of chess, nothing more than legend, literature, archaeology, logic as the basis to explore the direction of further research, and make a variety of inferences and conclusions. But literature and archaeology are the best evidence. The discovery of pottery chess "che" in Han and Wei dynasties is the ironproof that chess originated in China.