⚔️The True Power of the Elephant 🛡️ 📜 History V/S Modernity 🐘
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⚔️The True Power of the Elephant 🛡️ 📜 History V/S Modernity 🐘

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The True Power of the Elephant

What is the original movement of the elephant?

The origin of this incredible piece begins in India where it has the name of hasty or gaja. This piece should be one of the originals in the game, as it is found in the oldest known forms of chess, and for some reason has disappeared from the board today.

I have always considered that in Chaturanga the movement of the elephant is somewhat limited, it even gives the feeling that the pawns are more valuable, it should have a superior virtue, as reported by some historians on Wikipedia, who propose a different movement.

In addition to all the information that we have found in relation to this matter, we will rely on what appears on Wikipedia, and I also want to highlight this book, that for me became like the bible of chess:

"Averbakh, Yuri - A History of Chess from Chaturanga to the Present Day"

Book was published by the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology 2012, Project that was started in the new Chess Culture Center and Information 2006.

We will review each detail in depth, from the history, positioning concepts and distribution of the piece according to its value, to later have an exhaustive analysis, to finally discuss the results in a forum, but mainly what we are looking for with this is that you can share your historical knowledge and if you have any new sources that we should have, please let me know.

Next we will know in depth the history of this piece, the types of movements proposed that exist, which are different from how it is played today, and it is also different from what is indicated in other historical legends.

INDEX

  • Uncertainty of 3 different movements
  • Current Chaturanga Activity and Game Analysis and its playability
  • Guides which show the elephant's forward movements
  • Positioning concepts
  • History of the elephant in the war
  • Chaturanga and Chaturaji
  • Catholic Christian Church
  • Conclusion
  • New proposal for the movement of the elephant 
     





Uncertainty of 3 different movements


Here in this historical quote they propose 3 different types of movements for the elephant. Among them is also mentioned a forward movement. 


1.- Current movement Elephant

Diagram of all possible squares that can be reached by an elephant that starts the game in position c1.



Conflict:
This is the version we are currently using, where it is highly contested and there is a lot of uncertainty regarding this version of movement for the elephant in the chaturanga game. Later we will talk more about the positional concept on the board for the most representative piece of this game.

2.- This second movement option is analyzed according to historians.

Diagram of the second hypothetical movement of the elephant in antiquity. The piece that has this movement is usually called Dabbaba.



Discard: 
We discard this type of movement, for the simple reason that a piece with that movement already exists, called Dabbaba and is currently in use in variants, see image.



However, according to some studies, it is very similar to the descriptions of historians, therefore we must learn to interpret the hypotheses that arise in this matter.

3.- Diagram of the third hypothetical movement of the elephant.

 It is equal to the Silver General or Khon in Thai chess.




Discard:
Here it also imitates the movement of another active piece, but again it is assimilated to the historical accounts that we will name later, since we must remember that the elephant is a piece that can jump and in this image it only reflects that it can move one square, which is not 100% accurate.

All these movements are proposed for a reason, which we will see below.



Current Chaturanga Activity and Game Analysis and its Playability

I consider myself a fan of this game for 2 years, I enjoy playing chaturanga on the platform and variants in general of chess'com, if we review the current activity of the game, clearly this game does not have much activity from its fans.




Activity on Chaturanga is totally non-existent on the platform, only 40 active players and a few months ago it was even lower. I remember that 1 year ago, I saw many comments saying that the elephant was very weak and inefficient, from many players, probably that is one of the reasons why it is not a very massive game to play. Anyway, happy to participate and be part of the top of the leaderboard.

Regarding the Analysis and Playability of the Elephant:

I want to comment on another anecdote from a while ago, where I was able to play against the strongest Chaturanga player, who is number 1 in the world when he is active.

I remember a game with him, where he surprised me with a move, it is that he literally decided to exchange his elephant for my pawn, to open a column, if we want to have an open column we can also do it with an exchange of pawns, Simple, even the position it stays the same after the changes, I don't feel like I have an advantage after that action. I must admit that this caught my attention and I wanted to understand the reasons, so I wanted to study the depth of that movement and try to do it myself.



Finally, in that first game, he prevailed with great solvency, since his playing strength exceeds me a lot, however, I had the opportunity for a rematch, where I could play better.

In the next game, I identically imitated his way of playing from the first game and attacked him with his same technique, but he decided not to capture my elephant, even on several subsequent occasions, a total indifference to the elephant!



Please look at this, the number of subsequent movements we made is incredible, and in no case did we capture the elephants.



This clearly shows that the elephant is not such an important piece during the game.

There are many historical accounts or stories that indicate that the elephant could move forward, for example:

- Can advance one square or two squares forward in other cases.
- Has the ability to jump over other pieces.
- It is also often compared to the movement of a rook.
- Moves diagonally and can jump to other pieces.
- The elephant is related to the word Alfil, or Pil

Well, we will talk about this precisely below.



Guides which show the elephant's forward movements

1.- According to H. J. R. Murray, writer for History of Chess, there are two suggested moves besides this one. One of the suggestions was that the piece could jump one square orthogonally, and the other was the same as the move of the Silver General in Shōgi: one square diagonally in any direction, or one, two square forward.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elefante_(ajedrez)

2.- In Burmese chess, the elephant moves one square diagonally, or one square forward, like the Silver General in Japanese chess.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajedrez_birmano

The elephant moves one step in either diagonal or forward direction (like the silver general in Shōgi).

3.- Makruk : The Alfil (Khon, mask) moves one square forward or diagonally in any direction (like the silver general in shōgi)
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makruk
this same movement that H. J. R. Murray recounts in his writings.

4.- Janggi: The elephant in the janggi moves one orthogonal square and then moves two squares in any diagonal following the direction of the first move.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janggi

5.- Chaturaji historical: In this game, the Alfil is called the ship. It moves diagonally, skipping one square (see the diagram with the movement of the alfil in Shatranj). Can capture even 3 ships diagonally.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturaji

The dice were used at that time in the turns of each player, to be able to make a type of movement on the board. please see the value of the pieces, clearly the elephant has greater power and value on this scale:

According to the following scale, this is the value of the pieces:

pawn - 1 pts
Sailboat - 2 pts
Knight - 3 pts
elephant - 4 pts
king - 5 pts

Here they interpret the elephant with the movement of the rook. Strictly in rigor, chaturaji's elephant could move forward but it could only advance 2 squares, it was advancing according to the turns of the dice results, it does not mean that it could move through the entire column in 1 single turn.

In the historical chaturaji it indicates that the elephant moves frontally forward, in reference to a modern rook and it also moves diagonally just as it does today. This piece can advance two squares forward after rolling the dice, when a number 4 or a number 6 came up with 6-sided dice. 

Current conflict:
The problem is that nowadays modern chaturaji are played, it is that they are not played with elephants, they have been replaced by bishops.




6.- Chaturanga: The chaturanga is the direct ancestor of the shatranj, which was the way chess came to medieval Europe. We can also say that it is the predecessor of all the other games mentioned above, With the exception of chaturaji, which apparently is from the same era or even the predecessor of chaturanga, for many reasons that I am going to mention:

The oldest reference to the chaturanga is found in the Majábharata (religious epic text from the 3rd century BC). The modern version of chaturanga is believed to have been played since around the year 600, so it is considered the oldest version of chess.

In simple terms, Chaturanga has always been considered the first type of Chess or board game with war pieces.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga

Other data or historical reference:

In historical chaturaji, an elephant was played originally, and it moved 2 squares forward. The game later first reaches Persia via the silk road which was a trade route, the board game reaching Persia, the game's Persian name was Chatrang (very similar to Chaturanga). Later the game became more popular in the Islamic culture, then the elephant in chaturanga diagonal movement would be granted by the Islamic culture, which called it Shatranj or shatranji (very similar to Chaturaji), but the original name is Chaturanga.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj

The chaturanga is the direct ancestor of the shatranj, which was the way chess came to medieval Europe.



https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga 

7.- Shatranj: Shatranj or shatranji is the name of an ancient form of chess, from which modern chess has gradually developed. The game came to Persia from the Indian game of chaturanga around the sixth century AD. C. The Persian name of the game was Chatrang. The rules of chaturanga are not known for sure. The chatrang and chaturanga are believed to have the same or very similar rules. After the game spread throughout the Islamic world, its name changed to Shatranj.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shatranj

Conflict, The movement of the elephant is modified: 

So we can interpret that the word shatranj and shatranji are variations according to the language of each nation, they are very similar to chaturanga and chaturaji.

Finally concluding that this is the conflict that exists, the movement of the elephant was modified later when it became a game called Shatranj, the name was changed to Pil (Alfil), from the Persian fil, elephant, and they eliminated the possibility of being able to move this piece forward in a frontal way.



Positioning concepts

If we use the modern bishop as an example, we will see how important it is to control the center of the board.

The bishop in its first movement can already control the great diagonal that in total would be 8 squares, but in his second movement towards the center he manages to control 14 squares.



The elephant, if its movement is considered to be jumping one square diagonally, is hardly more valuable than a pawn, since it can only move on eight different squares on an 8x8 board. According to Murray, given the weakness of this piece, experiments were carried out when chess evolved, attributing different moves to the elephant, to increase its potential.



So for example, if you play with the elephant on g5, and your opponent advances a pawn to attack it, he loses a forced time to return the elephant to e3 and not lose the piece.

So in conclusion we have that the current elephant in chaturanga has a lower value than a pawn, during the game the pawn is more important than an elephant. With this is born the imperative need that The Elephant deserves to have more power on the board since its value indicates so.

According to the following scale, this is the value of the pieces:

pawn - 1 pts
Sailboat - 2 pts
Knight - 3 pts
elephant - 4 pts
king - 5 pts

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga

It is important and necessary to update this, to improve the quality of the game.
Precisely that happened with the passage of time, it evolved with multiple modifications. It is for this reason and with the passage of time, an effort was made to improve the movement of the elephant, due to how limited it was on the board, and it was replaced by the new piece, which is the bishop in modern chess.

In chaturanga, its main and most representative piece (Elephant), cannot be less valuable than a pawn, in terms of strategy. In relation to its type of movement, there is another famous phrase like this:

"Think of the elephant's four legs and trunk"

They propose that the piece can move forward or diagonally in any direction and that it can jump over other pieces similar to the knight. 

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga



The elephant in the war


The industry of man and the rage to harm his enemies led him to use this enormous quadruped in war, arming it in different ways, including some wooden towers or towers, from which a number of warriors fired throwing weapons. Heliodorus sets the number of soldiers mounting the tower at six. In any case, the damage that this kind of mobile fortification would do can be judged, since in addition to the arrows and darts fired by its defenders, the elephant also made use of its trunk, since according to some historians, this animal was very fond of war exercises.



Helianus says that the Greeks militarily organized the group of elephants into an army:

the phalanx was the main body, that is, 64 elephants
the calerarchy had 32
the elephantarchy, 16
the epitarchy, 4
thearchia, 2
the zoarquia was a single elephant, whether or not it carried the tower on top.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephantidae

Multiples of 4

All these are multiples of 4, this will have been the inspiration for the 64 chess squares, 32 pieces, 16 on each side, to create a game with 4 players and then be able to divide it to play with 2 players. Everything is interpretation.

The phalanx was a tactical organization for war created in Ancient Greece and later imitated by various Mediterranean civilizations.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falange#:~:text=La%20falange%20fue%20una%20organizaci%C3%B3n,imitada%20por%20varias%20civilizaciones%20mediterr%C3%A1neas.

Below we can understand why towers or rooks are used in modern chess, when these are not part of infantry or cavalry, or royalty, or war chariots, I always imagined that it was related to a giant castle or fortification that protects the king At least that's what I thought but none of that was, since it meant something very different, since its symbolic value was because of how it was used in war.
It is still directly related to the elephant and its type of movement the use of a tower, which for some reason has been forgotten.

In a book review "Averbakh, Yuri - A History of Chess from Chaturanga to the Present Day"

He also talks about this, it is for this reason that rooks exist in chess, This makes a lot of sense and would be the best explanation for the incorporation of this piece, as we know it today.


Lower left and right: Rooks from Germany and Italy, 16th century.
as you can see, the tower, which became the rook, used to stand atop an elephant, and its
name lived on in Western Europe: "torre" in Italian, "turm" in German, and
to Russia, chess brought back the almost-forgotten word "tura."




But again we find another modification to this piece as such, if not also its way of moving on the board. 






Chaturanga and Chaturaji


Chaturanga and Chaturaji are the earliest known 2-piece and 4-piece ancestral board games in history documented.

The term chaturanga was coined from chatur (meaning 'four' in Sanskrit) and anga (meaning 'members'), that is, the four members that make up an army: infantry, cavalry, elephants and carriages.

The term chaturaji was coined from chatur (which means 'four' in Sanskrit) and Raji (which means 'Kings'), that is, the four Kings that make up an army of each color.




There is even a debate, where it is indicated that even chaturaji would be the predecessor of chaturanga, since both games are on an 8x8 board, and with the same number of pieces, and in both there were elephants, knights, rooks, kings and pawns. In the absence of 4 players, they only divided it into 2 armies, so it can be played by 2 players, later a Alferza (Ferz) was incorporated in chaturanga and Shatranj, since it would not make sense to play with 4 kings in a game of 2 players (1 versus 1), it is for this reason that a guardian or minister was invented, it was the predecessor of Dama in Shatranj of Arab origin, being called with the meaning of councilor or counsellor.


Another interesting fact:

In this enlarged image you can clearly see the initial arrangement of the pieces in Chaturanga, in the position of a modern rook there is an elephant in its place, as well as the king and his guardians. Chariots were incorporated in Shatranj, in Chaturanga sailboat or elephants were used when it was played in the Ashtāpada. 

Ashtāpada in Sanskrit it means as follows:
Ashtā or Ashtan is it's number 8 and pada is foot in Sanskrit, to which it alludes to an 8x8 board specifically.




In this enlarged image you can clearly see the initial arrangement of the pieces in Chaturanga, in the position of a modern rook there is an elephant in its place, as well as the king and his guardians. Chariots were incorporated in Shatranj, in Chaturanga sailboat or elephants were used when it was played in the Ashtāpada. 
Ashtāpada in Sanskrit it means as follows:
Ashtā or Ashtan is it's number 8 and pada is foot in Sanskrit, to which it alludes to an 8x8 board specifically.

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferz

Similarities and modifications:

- Chaturaji y Chaturanga both were played on an 8x8 board.
- Chaturaji y Chaturanga both with the same number of pieces of 32 units on a board, which are only divided according to the number of players, which would be 2 or 4 players.
- Chaturaji y Chaturanga both games with kings, elephants, knights, infantry, a difference between cars and boats. and the presence of a guardian of the king that is the ferz, which later in modern chess would be replaced by the queen.

It would look something like this, imagining that they wanted to play between 2 players and not 4 players. Therefore, discussing which game was invented first would be irrelevant since apparently we would be talking about the same game with minimal modification.



So, they would decide to replace a king by a guardian (ferz), and they would replace sailboats  by chariots.



Finally we would arrive at this final hypothesis, which is how it is played today:



How was the transformation of both games?
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga 



In his work The Book of Kings, the Persian poet Ferdusi (935-1020) tells about the origin of chaturanga, where he states that the game was created due to a controversy that arose after a war of succession to the throne between two brothers. To resolve it, a group of sages used this battle by placing, on a floor made of good dark teak wood and white ivory squares, statuettes that represented: two groups of infants in a row, behind the group of infants they placed orderly, the king, his general, two elephants, two carriages and two gentlemen with their respective Knights. Each statuette was assigned the role they had played in the battle and they represented it by moving over the squares as follows: the general could not stay away from his king more than one square, the elephant moved three squares vertically, the knight stood moved three squares diagonally and foot soldiers moved one square forward.




Note: I insist that we must know how to interpret each description regarding the movement of the elephant, when it says that: "The elephant moved three squares vertically", we can also think that it means that the elephant can advance to row number 3 with a jump over the square of row 2 and with this we achieve the same description of the chaturaji game.
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga 

Due to the antiquity of Ferdusi's writings, the question arises if they were based on real events or not, what matters is that many centuries ago in India a game was played that represented a war on a board. 

Chess

Later the last final modification would arrive, which would be the replacement of the chariots by Rooks, elephant Alfil by bishop, and the ferz by the most powerful chess piece, the queen, and with the modification of the initial position of the king.





Catholic Christian Church 

By the 10th century in the year 1000 the Chaturanga had spread to Russia and Western Europe. The Moors of North Africa pronounced "Shatranj" as "Shatranji" or "shaṭerej", and this word gave rise to the Spanish word: "Acedrex, Axedrez or Ajedrez". The game was widely developed in Europe and by the 15th century it had managed to survive countless bans from the Christian churches, whose dominance ended up affecting the game in a great way, helping to transform it into the modern version we all know. The dominance of the Christian church had great influence on modern chess.



In Northern Europe, chess became popular when figure-shaped pieces began to appear. Although the sides of the board are conventionally called Black and White, in ancient Europe they were often referred to as Red and Black as they were the commonly available ink colors when drawing a board by hand, and the pieces were represented by abbreviated names. Between the 12th and 15th century, the popularity of chess in Europe reached its peak, and the game was considered the pastime of the nobility and high society. Chess was even incorporated into the lifestyle of all the knights in the army and was considered one of the seven skills that they had to acquire in their lives.

The game became so popular that when word of incidents involving men killing each other over a game of chess spread in London in the 12th century, the church raised alarm bells. It had become customary to play chess for money, and King Louis IX of France forbade gambling. Of course the forbidden game continued to be played illegally in underground tournaments.

Under Christian rule the shapes of the pieces changed:

Raja or Raji became replaced by King,
Mantri or Visir or Ferz replaced by Queen
Gaja or elephant Pil (Alfil) replaced by Bishop ( Obispo in Spanish )
Ashva replaced by Knight,
Chariots or Ratha replaced by Rook, ( tower , Torre in Spanish )
Padati replaced by Pawn.

Obispo or Bishop 

Christian priest who has received the order of the episcopate (highest degree of the Christian priesthood) and whose functions are to govern a diocese, ordain priests, confirm the faithful, consecrate churches, etc.
"In the Catholic Church, the Pope chooses the bishops", 
"a bishop is a faithful who receives the leadership of overseeing a congregation".

Isabel I of Castile and its legend | Isabel the catholic

The current queen, as we have already mentioned, was originally the "counselor or vizier" (as it is still called in countries like Turkey), and could only move one space diagonally. Around the year 1300 his moves were improved allowing him to move two spaces and jump to a space of the same color on the first move. The piece became the queen over time, in Europe mainly simply because it was the piece that lay next to the king. However, the first mention of this piece as "regina" "Reina (Queen)"or similar dates back to the year 997 in Switzerland.

Shortly after Baza's surrender the rules of chess changed and the queen became the most powerful piece. There is a story, probably a fable spread by troubadours, that when the game of chess appeared to Queen Isabella I of Castile, she was annoyed as she found the little power that the queen's piece had insulting and demanded that this be changed. Immediately When the game appeared to him again, the figure of the queen had changed to become the most powerful piece on the board with unlimited movement in all directions. After all, in 1495 Elizabeth was the most powerful woman in all of Europe. Coincidentally, at that time the new rules of chess were produced.



Now, a story with more sense and even romantic value has to do with the events of Baza's surrender. The city had been surrounded or fenced for a long time, but the population did not want to surrender and the Christian soldiers began to lose morale due to the long siege. King Ferdinand asked Isabella to appear on the battlefield to raise the morale of the troops. Isabel was accompanied by several ladies and her eldest daughter Isabel, causing an immediate impact with her presence, not only for the Christian troops, but also for the besieged population of Baza who began their surrender, but not before King Fernando, but they did surrender and show respect to the brave Queen on the battlefield.

After the events in Gaza the chess queen became the most powerful piece and around that time the first chess books began to appear.

Much is said about the analogy between Fernando and Isabel and the king and queen of chess. During the reign of the Catholic kings, Isabel was more powerful than Fernando, but he was the King and therefore the most important piece in the game, even though he was not the most powerful.


This new style of chess started in Spain caused a lot of controversy and in different circles of players, angry men began to complain and call it in Spanish "ajedrez de la reina loca" "madwoman's chess" - scacchi alla rabiosa. Thanks to the advent of the printing press and the popularity of chess books at the time, the "Queen's Chess" quickly spread throughout Europe.

This generated a lot of anxiety at the time to know and play this new game, because a female figure part of royalty and very powerful is represented on the board.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_(chess)



Conclusion

To conclude we can appreciate how there are a number of important modifications in the movement of the elephant, passing the game through different cultures and nations. It would have been interesting to keep the figure of the elephant on the board and that, being a very representative piece, it does not have real power on a board and, what is worse, that it has been replaced by a totally different piece. 

Modify once again the movement of the elephant, that is currently not an easy decision, since there is extreme uncertainty of the original movement type of the elephant, there are also many communities that are fans and followers of this game, but despite the fact that it does not there is a lot of activity on the platform in terms of the number of games played daily, at least they do play from time to time.

On the other hand, he considers that normally decisions are made with exact and documented information, where precision is very necessary as a priority, so if there is no specific movement for elephant, it is difficult to improve the quality of movement of this piece, very representative of this historical game.






New proposal | Elephant Movement

After knowing so many details in the historical accounts, I am encouraged to propose a new movement for the elephant, based on all the descriptions i found.

Chaturanga and Chaturaji are the earliest known 2 and 4 piece ancestral board games in history, In all other later board games, the elephant can move vertically.

So strictly speaking, on whom does the decision of the movement of a piece depend?

In my opinion I think it would be very interesting to consider this type of movement forward and diagonally.
- It would provide greater value to the piece.
- it would change the dynamics of the game, and it would not be as limited as it is today.
- It is an absolutely original movement compared to other pieces on the platform.

Remember that in chaturanga, its main and most representative piece, cannot be less valuable than a pawn, in terms of strategy. There is another famous phrase like this:

Think of the elephant's four legs and trunk.

Specifically, the new movement that I propose for the elephant would be the fusion of 2 movement proposals that we saw previously, which would be represented in this way:



Note: In case the elephant wanted to return to the defense, it can only do so diagonally. Since the possibility of moving vertically is only to advance and carry out attacks from the front with its powerful trunk.

For me, this image represents what the story says, which strictly speaking would be to imagine the 4 legs of the elephant with its respective trunk, as the legend says. 😉 📜 
 
This is what it would look like in-game:


If you compare the Chaturaji modern VS the historical chaturaji, the modern one is far better, as it is played today, it even has the bishop incorporated which is a modern chess piece. I don't see why the chaturanga cannot be modernized and give a more efficient movement to its main piece. Consider that if the elephant would get more power on the board, the Chariots would still be more powerful in Chaturanga.

I also believe that we are giving more common sense and strength to a piece as important as the elephant. Additionally we have many historical references that indicate that the elephant can move forwards and diagonally and that it can jump over other pieces. You also have to think that the promotion is a Ferz, which is not a powerful piece like a rook or a queen, as it is in other games.





We have enough completely solid arguments to modify the presumed movement of the elephant in Chaturanga, which still exists great uncertainty of its original movement, and give it the power that this piece definitely deserves, and with this we will be able to improve the quality of the game.



In conclusion I feel that we should give more power to that piece, since historically it has more power than the rest of the pieces. Don't misunderstand this and I say it with a lot of respect, but the main criticism is that currently the elephant is completely limited on an 8x8 board during the game, even the pawn is more important than an elephant, such an important piece does not deserve this. It is the most representative piece of the Chaturanga game.

If we change the movement of that piece, we will have a really incredible game, with the main piece having the strength it deserves for its power, and for its historical value.

Therefore the movement would be absolutely correct and it would give the elephant better playability and increase the quality of the game in general.

The elephant deserves to have more power on the board since its value indicates so, it is important and necessary to update this, to improve the quality of the game.



I would have the Power of a Royal Elephant 🐘 His strength in battle was used for a reason and played an important role in historical wars!



As I said before, it is very difficult to materialize a change as significant as this, modifying the movement of a game piece is not an easy decision. However, I have the illusion, it seemed important to me to talk about this, since in my opinion I am amazed that so many modifications have been made in the past with respect to this piece, many of the other pieces kept their original movement as it is in royalty (King), the cavalry (knight), the infantry (pawns) until today.

In my opinion, I consider it important to talk about this controversy that still exists today, it is an uncertainty that could never be discovered, It is still a unknown to be deciphered., therefore the original movement of the elephant remains a mystery.



Of course I will continue to enjoy this game as it is today. I simply wanted to express my vision on this matter, if you liked the content, please let me know and if you have more sources of information regarding this, please also let me know, I will be happy to read and learn more about it.

Regards!

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