238 POLO 



CHAPTER I 



THE ANTIQUITY OF POLO 



GREAT BRITAIN'S connection with the East has made our empire 

 what it is, and to the East we owe a debt of gratitude in more 

 ways than one. We are indebted to it for many of our arts, 

 sciences, and literature the improved breed of our horses ; 

 and last, but not least, for the popular pastime of polo, which 

 now may be said to rank high amongst our national games. 



The origin of polo is indeed hard, nay, well-nigh impossible 

 to determine with any strict degree of accuracy, shrouded as 

 it is in the hoary mists of centuries. Still history, legendary 

 and authentic, enables us to trace it pretty far back in fact, far 

 enough back for all practical purposes. 



Probably the first mention of the game under the title of 

 chaugan (for such was its Persian name) that is to be found in 

 Eastern literature is in the ' Shahnamah.' This poem was 

 written by the Persian poet Firdusi, who was bom near Tiis, 

 and who flourished towards the end of the tenth and beginning 

 of the eleventh century. Composed for the amusement of the 

 Sultan Mahmiid of Ghazni (who was celebrated as the destroyer 

 of the Hindu temples in Northern India), it abounds in all 

 the flowery language of Oriental rhetoric. Mahmiid's father, 

 Subuktigin, the deposer of the old Hindu kings of Cabul, was 

 born A.D. 967, and probably the game was learnt from his 

 conquered foes. One of the characters in the ' Shahnamah ' is 

 a certain Afrasiab, an ancient and practically mythical Turkish 

 king of Turan, or Scythia, who is said to have lived prior to the 



