Chapter 38 Section 8 Mongolian Chess
At the end of the Tang Dynasty and the Five Dynasties, the Liao Kingdom in the north rose up. At that time, most of the Mongolian tribes were under the jurisdiction of the Liao Kingdom.At this time, the eight-eight chess of the late Tang Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty may have spread in this area.In the Northern Song Dynasty, Song and Liao confronted each other. After continuous innovation, the ancient eight-eight chess was finalized as a modern chess board, using a chessboard with nine vertical and ten horizontal lines with river boundaries and nine palaces, but the ancient chess in Mongolia and my country's frontier areas may not be Carry out reform at the same time, just as Japan's current shogi still retains the appearance of the nine-nine chess in the Northern Song Dynasty of my country. At the end of the 12th century, Temujin was promoted as Genghis Khan and established the Mongolian State.Mongolian chess has been passed down from generation to generation.
According to Ye Mingli's "Qiaoxi Miscellaneous Notes" in the early Qing Dynasty, the shape of Mongolian chess is similar to that of my country's eight-eight chess in Tang and Song Dynasties, and it is similar to modern chess.In addition, in the 27th year of Emperor Kangxi of the Qing Dynasty (AD 1688), Xu Lan from Changshu visited Inner Mongolia and wrote a volume of "Exiting the Frontier Poems". "Qiaoxi Miscellaneous Notes" is the same.The descriptions of the two are transcribed as follows:
There are nine vertical and horizontal lines in the game, sixty-four, and sixteen chess pieces each: eight pawns, two rooks, two horses, two bishops, one cannon, and one general.The general is on the right of the center, the cannon is on the left of the center, above the general is a yu, chariots, horses, and elephants line up on the left and right, and the pawns are in the front. This difference is similar to that of the Chinese.Its chess shape does not have characters: if you carve a tower, you worship elephants; if you carve camels or bears on elephants, there are no elephants in the north; if there are many soldiers, people think they are strong;Chess is not listed on the line but on the Yu, and the utensils are placed in Anye; the horse is on the six Yu, the camel is on the Nine, and the camel is sicker than the horse; the game is feasible, there is no river as the boundary, and the animals are raised according to the water and grass. ; The pawn goes straight to the bottom, eats the enemy at an oblique angle, goes back and forth, uses the same as a chariot, and has meritorious service.All the chess fight back against one tower, there is no way out, and it begins as a defeat.
According to this, Mongolian chess in the early Qing Dynasty is indeed similar to modern chess. The chessboard is composed of 64 squares. The chess pieces are divided into red and black. The same, except that "back" is changed to "cannon", and "elephant" is changed to "camel".In addition, the arrangement of chess pieces at the original position is a little different from that of chess, that is, the original positions of the generals and the cannons on both sides are not the generals and the cannons, but the cannons and the cannons.Regarding the movement of the chess pieces, the horizontal movement of the horse means that the horse curves from one corner to the opposite corner in the six grids of the Japanese character, and the horizontal movement of the camel in the nine grids means that the camel moves obliquely from one corner in the nine grids of the Tian character. To the opposite corner, which is different from modern chess, but the same as ancient chess.In addition, pawns go straight to the end...going and returning, it is the same as a chariot.This is also different from modern chess. After Mengzhan chess pawns reach the bottom line, they are promoted to rooks, not to queens.
The chess pieces of Mongolian chess are three-dimensional pictograms, and the carts and horses have their own shapes. It is equivalent to the camel of an elephant carved into the appearance of a camel, which is equivalent to the latter carved into the appearance of a lion or tiger. In addition to sitting and standing horses and other attendants, there are also small lions and tigers carved, but the king is carved as a Mongolian prince wearing a full-style official hat with feathers, riding a horse, riding a sedan chair, or sitting in a hall.
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