I'm trying to identify a game my brother gave me. He said that it was a chess board he picked up in his recent extended trip there. It was a box containing pieces; on the back there was a small but usable chess/checker board (just the standard 2-color 8x8).

He identified the elephants (two types, 8 of each) as pawns and one piece as a king. That sounded right, so I figured I'd just select appropriate pieces to serve as each type.

But when I actually went through the pieces I found there were more than 32. In particular:
* 8 stone elephants
* 8 shiny elephants
* 6 pairs of dull pieces
* 4 unpaired dull pieces (a)
* 3 pairs of shiny pieces
* 2 unpaired shiny pieces (a)

That's a total of 40 pieces.

(a): Two of these pieces are similar enough that they suggest themselves as "king/queen".

I don't think the composition means much, especially since it's hard to tell in some cases. (I imagine there's some reasonable way to split them into two groups of 20, but that's not clear to me now.) The stone elephants are white and rather soft, possibly soapstone. The dull pieces look like pewter. The shiny pieces are some other cheap metal.


I can try to describe the pieces, but I'm not sure how well I'll manage.
* Pair: Sitting elephant-headed man with four arms (Ganesh)
* Pair: Standing elephant-headed man with wings or possibly a sunburst
* Pair: Very tall monkey-faced man with tail (Hanuman?)
* Single: Three men meditating back-to-back (Brahma)
* Single: Four-armed man standing/dancing on one foot (Vishnu?)
* Single: Woman (?) sitting with a peacock (Saraswati?)
The others aren't as easy to describe.


So does anyone know of a game that this might be? Or is anyone willing to say that this is just an odd assortment of figurines in a chess box?

My best bet is that it is in fact chess pieces of an odd variety. There are many sets that are odd looking like yours. Maybe someone threw in a few extra pawns.

Any way for you to get pics of it up?

I'll try.

No picture (yet), but I talked to my brother and figured it out. He collected the various pieces and put it together as a chess set -- so is really is one-of-a-kind!

And the elephants are actually marble. I wasn't willing to even hope...!

Hi!

i think what you got there is an assortment of chess pieces made in India. they may have come from a variety of collection.