> Akasam astapadam was an ashtapada variant played with no board, literally "astapadam played in the sky". A correspondent in the American Chess Bulletin identi

> Akasam astapadam was an ashtapada variant played with no board, literally "astapadam played in the sky". A correspondent in the American Chess Bulletin identifies this as likely the earliest literary mention of a blindfold chess variant. I found it quite surprising that blindfold/mental variants of board games existed then, but thinking about it further there is no reason to be surprised about that I suppose. Many of the games discussed here seem more "modern" than I would have thought. It is interesting that Chaturaji and Chaturanga are omitted, though I am inclined to believe that is because they didn't exist yet, rather than them being expressly permitted. That seems consistent with the timelines of each: [0] [1] So it would seem that all of the existing board games in India at the time were race games. [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturanga [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturaji https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaturaji [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_game