Description

This is a game drawn from an old book written in Sanskrit by Harikrishna, son of Venkatram in the late nineteenth 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, the intention of this shastra being that people will enhance their brain power by playing them.”

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

This is a battlefield game where two players with eight coins each literally battle it out to gain control of enemy territory.

All these are pocket size games making it easy to carry along and convenient to play anywhere at all. Priced reasonably, they make great return gifts for parties or for any occasion at all.

Contents:

• Game board
• Two sets of eight coins each
• Rule sheet