Chathurvimshathi Koshtaka

This is a game drawn from an old book written in Sanskrit by Harikrishna, son of Venkatram in the late 18th century. It is interesting to read the first stanzas of the book and appreciate the importance he gave to play.

'I hereby describe the organization, structure and rules of this ancient shastra (games), the reason being that there is no such book available and the scholars do not study them. In this book there is a description of several board games, and the intention of this shastra being that people will enhance their brain power by playing them.'

He goes on to conclude the book thus:

I have described the famous games of my time. I do not claim this to be exhaustive, there are several games of various types played in the world and it is physically impossible to compile all of them. I have done my best to compile the most important of my time. ... I, Harikrishna, son of Venkatram was born in Aurangabad in south Maharashtra. I have described in this book many wonderful games and the ways to play them.

It was about the same time that Krishnaraja Wodeyar of Mysore developed and promoted many interesting games.

The game we have here is a simple strategy game described by Harikrishna as a game in 24 squares. We have used the Sanskrit description he has given as the name of the game. Chathurvimshathi Koshtaka simply means 24 boxes or squares.

Contents: game board, two sets of 8 coins each, rule sheet.