@JoseOYes, you are totally right about that. Western chess (with rules dating back from cca 1600, minor modifications were added later) was developed to be faster than shatranj, it's direct predecessor.
However, even if openings were very long and took many moves, there was a way to overcome that. There were many opening positions for shatranj. It's kind of like if you were playing modern chess from move 10 in Najdorf Sicilian (just an example).
Something like this cam be seen in modern derivatives from chaturanga, Thai chess (makruk) and Burmese chess (Sittuyin). In makruk pawns are on the third and sixth row at the beginning of the game and in sittuyin both players start from one of couple of possible stages. Check it out:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sittuyin