Single Comment

Recently I was reading R. Pozzi's monograph on shatar, I giocchi mongoli, and wondered if the description of circumstances why shatar has two movements for the bers that correspond to the players mourning or not (like orthoqueen=not mourning, like shogi dragon king=mourning) could also apply in the seemingly divergent moves described for the hia, that is, the move described by Kisliouk following Okano, I suppose, and that recorded by Pozzi, based in part on detail from the Italian anthropologist, David Bellatalla. I wonder if anyone knows whether the stronger (Kisliouk version, to give it a name) or weaker (Pozzi version) may be analogous to the circumstances for the stronger and weaker versions of the bers. I wonder further if the use of 'supplementary' moves describe by A. Popova for the mor' and noyon has similar conventions. I have to admit variations by time and region seemed intelligible to me, but variations in play based upon social circumstance is a bit more remote. Mongolian chess culture is very interesting to consider, indeed.