caturanga

[Nozawa Masanobu]

>
>What is the connection between Indian caturanga and chinese chess (xiangqi)?
>

Chinese chess is said to be one of offspring of Indian chess as well as the western chess.
It is also the case with Korean and Japanese ones, although the way of spread is not clear.

The largest Japanese dictionary, "Nihon Kokugo Dai Jiten" (Shougakkan 1976) explains that
"xiangqi" is a transliteration of "caturanga". (q.v. "shougi" --- "xiangqi" is pronounced as
"shougi" in Japanese and  the character "jiang", which means a general or commander in chief,
has taken place of "xiang", which means an elephant. By the way "qi" means "go", a board game
of Chinese origin, or something like that. )
This explanation is based on Kindaichi Kyousuke's "Shougi Meigi Kou" (On the name and meaning
of shougi) published in 1910 (in Japanese).

Prof. Itoh Tomoatu of Sinology at Hokkaido University denies the 'transliteration' theory on the
ground of phonetical difference between the two words, and has it that the name "xiangqi" derives
from the pieces of  'elephant (xiang)' in the game. See Itoh Tomoatu, 'Shougi Tangen' (The
Tracing of Origin of Japanese Chess), "Shougi Journal", 1984 (in Japanese).

----
Nozawa Masanobu
E-mail: nozawa at la.numazu-ct.ac.jp