From: Ivan Tuckwell <Ivan.C.Tuckwell <at> TSY <dot> TREASURY <dot> GOVT <dot> NZ>
Date: 20 mar 1997
Subject: Re: origin of Shogi

>The following is forwarded on behalf of Sibylle Banaschak
><banasch <at> uni-muenster <dot> de>.

>-------------------------------------------------------------------------

>I'm presently doing some research on the Chess variants in East Asia (for
>a PhD dissertation), so I'm interested in the origins and evolution of
>Xianqi, Changgi and Shogi as well. The only fairly recent book on Xiangqi
>history in English seems to be by Dennis Leventhal, The Chess of China,
>Taipei 1978. I haven't seen anything good (and book-sized) apart from that
>yet. Most books published on Chess in East Asia either deal with
>introducing the Game or include only shorter (and mostly superficial or
>misleading) introductions to the history of the game. Among those are e.g
>David Wurman, Chinesisches Schach-Koreanisches Schach, Frankfurt / Main
>1991 and
>Vladimir Budde  Thomas Bandholtz, Chinesisches Schach: Spiel, Mythos,
>Kultur, Hollfeld 1985.
>Greetings,
>Peter
I would recommend looking at Sam Sloan's discussion of the origins of chess
found at http://www.ishipress.com/origin.htm. It critiques the India, 7th
century
hypothesis and to my eye looked pretty convincing.

Ivan