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about Samantsy - Printable Version

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about Samantsy - Alain Busser - 04-03-2024

Hello,

Samantsy was seen by europeans at the beginning of the 20th century, in the Tanala Tribe:
  • by Ralph Linton, in a 1933 book (but relating a 1926 expedition) titled the Tanala, a hill tribe of Madagascar where page 264 is a translation from
  • Ardant du Picq who already saw this game as soon as 1912 (in the Tanala region) and described it in the bulletin de l'académie malgache (vol X, 1912, pp 267-268)

I read both articles and see differences with the included game:
  • about the end of the game, du Picq writes
    Quote:La partie est gagnée, quand le hova du camp adverse est bloqué.

(the game ends when a king - hova - can not move): this end condition is rather different from the other chess variants!



  • about the pawns, du Picq writes
    Quote:Les zaza marchent [...] droit devant eux, en sautant ou sans sauter un nombre quelconque de carrés.
(the pawns - zaza - go to the front, any number of empty cells; I infer that sans sauter means that the pawn just moves a step, from which I deduce that the bishops - basy - who  marchent diagonalement en sautant un carré actually move two steps, which is what I see in ludii's version): I guess the move of a pawn is more a slide than a step. Still about the pawns, du Pick writes
Quote:Ils prennent les pièces voisines sur les diagonales
(they remove an enemy piece - other than the king, see below - as in classical chess). And once a pawn gets to the other side, it promotes to a queen and nothing else, which is the same than in ludii's versions.
  • about the queen, du Picq writes
    Quote:L'anakova marche diagonalement carré par carré et prend de même.
(The queen - anakova - moves one diagonal step and takes a piece of it is there). If the queen could move any number of steps, du Picq would have written un nombre quelconque de carrés which he did not: I think the queen should step and not slide.
  • about the king, du Picq writes
    Quote:Les hova marchent carré par carré rectangulairement ou diagonalement et prennent de même.
(the kings - hova - move by orthogonal or diagonal steps and eat any enemy piece which is in their neighborhood). This is exactly the same than in classical chess, from which I infer again that the queen moves only one step, except that it is only diagonal. But du Picq goes on, about the kings:
Quote:Ils ne sont pris par aucune autre pièce et ne se prennent pas entre eux.

(they cannot be eaten by an enemy piece, not even by the enemy's king). Which confirms that the goal of the game is not to chessmate the king, but to block it.

To sum up, I think the following changes should be made to the script:
  • change the pawn rule so that it can slide forwards, and not move forwards,
  • change the queen rule so that it steps diagonally instead of sliding diagonally,
  • change the endrule so that the once a king is blocked (regardless of the other pieces) the game ends,
  • add as reference, du Picq's 1912 article,
  • change the look of the board, as the diagram in Linton's chapter does not show colored cells, just a plain 8×8 grid.
Some remarks about the names of the pieces:
  • the king is a hova who is more a baron (or even not noble at all) than a king
  • the queen is hova's feminine version (anakova). Its moves are much like the ferz from shatranj which suggests that the game has been introduced by persans when they came to Madagascar.
  • the bishops are basy (rifle balls, or blow guns) which evoque the arrows shot by the vizier in ancient versions of chess. The 2 steps move of this piece is the same than the alfil from shatranj, except that it can not jump over an other piece. This too, suggest shatranj as an ancestor of samantsy.
  • the knights are called farasy which means horse. This word comes from kiswahili which again suggests an arab or persian origin of the game.
  • the rooks are called vorona which means birds. Maybe because they can move farther than the other pieces?
  • the pawns are called zaza which means children (the promotion to queen is when the child has grown up!). In shatranj the pawns are soldiers, as in any variant of chess I have seen, with only one exception, but not in Iran: the mongol version. There too the pawns are children. It would be strange if samantsy had mongol origins!


RE: about Samantsy - Alain Busser - 04-04-2024

After some thinking, I guess there is an error in de Picq's writing: if the king is allowed to eat enemy pieces in his vicinity, I don't see how it is possible to block him. Then I guess "et prennent de même" should be removed and the description of the hova should just be "Les hova marchent carré par carré rectangulairement ou diagonalement": the king does not take pieces, is not taken by other pieces and the game is won when the king is blocked (so I guess there is a draw when there is not enough pieces to block the king).

By the way the evidence range is now 1912-1926, thanks to Linton's drawings.

RE: about Samantsy - Alain Busser - 04-11-2024

After some experiments, I finally think that "blocked" means "can not move without being in check" so I came up with this proposition. What do you think about that?