242 POLO 



Here is a hint for our sporting ladies of the present day, and 

 especially for those who have lately been advocating through 

 the press the advisability of women riding astride ! We can only 

 hope that the king and his courtiers were gallant enough to 

 let the beauteous moon-faced Shirin and her minor constellations 

 win the game. 



In the ' Tarikhi-al-Subuktigin,' written by Abulfazl-ul- 

 Baihaki, who has been styled ' the Pepys of the East,' and 

 who lived about 1030 A.D., the game is constantly alluded to, 

 and we are told that when the Amir Masiid of Ghazni, the son 

 of the great Mahmiid before referred to, released the venerable 

 Khwaja Ahmad Hasan, and made him Wazir, or prime 

 minister, he specially exempted him from supervising the 

 arrangements connected with the game of chaugan, as well as all 

 convivialities. This would rather point to the fact that the 

 game was not considered very respectable, as it is classed with 

 ' fighting, drinking, conviviality, &c.' The old Wazir seems to 

 have regretted his master's partiality for the game and remon- 

 strated with him thereon. Later on, too, we find him advising 

 Ahmad Nialtigin, on his departure with an army into Hindustan, 

 not to allow his men to drink wine or play at chaugan \ What the 

 old Khwaja's objection to a game so eminently fitted to improve 

 his cavalry could have been it is difficult to say. 



In the twelfth century we read of the Greek Emperor 

 Manuel Comnenus enjoying the game on horseback with the 

 Byzantine princes and nobles of his court. The wooden ball, 

 however, seems to have been exchanged for one more soft, 

 formed of stuffed leather, and the stick instead of having a 

 hammer-like head terminated in a hoop, more resembling our 

 racket. Cinnamus, the Byzantine historian, who must often 

 have been a spectator of the game, as he accompanied the Em- 

 peror Manuel both in Europe and Asia, thus describes chaugan, 

 and from him we may infer that proficiency in the game was 

 considered no unworthy accomplishment of royalty. He says : 



A number of young men being divided into equal sides in a 

 place measured out and made for the purpose, a ball about the 



