Chaturanga Family

Main Chator is a traditional game of the Malay Archipelago.   Little seems to be written about the game aside from a few sources which give the modern version of the game with the queen and bishop moves of chess. 

I had a theory when I started to research this game that originally it was much closer to the other south-east branch games.  I did find one source that gave the original moves of the mantri (queen) and gajah (elephant) as those of Makruk.  

The names of the pieces are all in Sanskrit, which leads me to believe this may have been initially introduced directly from India and later developed the unique promotion rules which made it differ from Chaturanga.  Also the initial placement of the pieces is in the older form with the pawns in the second row.  

All other south-east branch games later developed different setups usually with the pawns on the third row.