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POLO 



ceive in the pictures of manuscripts executed two and four hundred 

 years ago that the chaugdns, or sticks, are represented with heads 

 of three slightly different shapes, as shown below. 



Degraded into a pedestrian exercise, and under various forms 

 and denominations, the game seems to have been widely diffused 

 throughout Europe, and we may perhaps trace it in the cricket of 

 England, the golf or gough of Scotland, and the hurling matches 

 of Ireland. Pietro della Valle discovered it in the Florentine game 

 calcio, and to me the original name chaugdn appears but slightly 

 disguised from the chicane of Languedoc, where the game is played, 

 as in Persia, with a wooden ball and a club headed like a mallet or 

 hammer. Du Cange, in his ' Dissertation,' viii., added to Join- 

 ville's ' Histoire de Saint Louis' (Paris : folio, 1668. p. 185 et seq.} y 



Persian Chaugan-sticks of the seventeenth century. 



says of the chicane, oujeti de paume d clieval \ ' C'est un sujet qui 

 n'est pas indigne de la curiosite, puisqu'il est connu de peu de 

 personnes, et qu'il vous decouvre une espece de manege pratique 

 particulierement par les nouveaux Grecs, qui semble avoir ete 

 ignore dans 1'Occident.' Having mentioned some Byzantine his- 

 torians who allude to it, he adds : ' Ce jeu est appele par eux d'un 

 terme barbare, T^vKavia-Trjpiov, qui etoit aussi le nom du lieu qui 

 servoit a ces exercices ; ce lieu etoit dans Penclos du grand palais 

 de Constantinople, pres de 1'appartement dore.' 



Chaugan was one of the favourite pastimes of the great 

 Emperor Akbar, who reigned between 1555 and 1605 A.D., and 

 his chief chaugan ground was at a place called Ghan'wali, about 



