The page in your link is an interesting one, and might be very plausible if there were not so much information to the contrary - not as regards the India-versus China debate, which I did not notice anywhere on the page at first glance, but as regards how the pieces developed.
The connection between the elephant's leg s and the Rook most ingenious, but it is entirely spurious. The shape of the modern Rook is well documented as originating in the similarity of the Arabic Rukh, from which that piece's English name is derived, and rocco, one of the Italian words for a tower. As Chess reached Europe from an Islamic culture, which shunned representational art, there would be no reason to associate any piece with an elephant from the shape of abstract pieces alone.
A European acquainted with the Arabic language might spot a physical reference to elephants, but it would be in the precursor to the Bishop, which was an abstraction of the (male) elephant's tusks. The clue was in its name of Alfil, literally the phrase "the elephant". Someone with such an education would also recongnise Rukh as meaning a chariot, a quite different piece of military equipment. If the Rook ever really did represent an Elephant it was certainly a chariot by the time Chess began spreading west - and for that matter east.
The connection between the elephant's leg s and the Rook most ingenious, but it is entirely spurious. The shape of the modern Rook is well documented as originating in the similarity of the Arabic Rukh, from which that piece's English name is derived, and rocco, one of the Italian words for a tower. As Chess reached Europe from an Islamic culture, which shunned representational art, there would be no reason to associate any piece with an elephant from the shape of abstract pieces alone.
A European acquainted with the Arabic language might spot a physical reference to elephants, but it would be in the precursor to the Bishop, which was an abstraction of the (male) elephant's tusks. The clue was in its name of Alfil, literally the phrase "the elephant". Someone with such an education would also recongnise Rukh as meaning a chariot, a quite different piece of military equipment. If the Rook ever really did represent an Elephant it was certainly a chariot by the time Chess began spreading west - and for that matter east.