250 POLO 



That the game was well known and popular all over Central 

 Asia and Thibet is evident, as the Emperor Baber, who lived 

 1494-1530 A.D., and was so celebrated as one of the most en- 

 lightened of Eastern monarchs, makes allusion to it in his 

 memoirs. In mentioning the officers who served his father, 

 Omar Sheikh Mirza, who ruled in Ferghana and Central Asia, 

 and who was great-great-grandson of the Emperor Timour, or 

 Tamerlane, he says : 



Another was Hassan Yakub Beg, who was frank, good-tempered, 

 clever, and active. The following verses are his : 



' Return again, O Huma, 1 for without the parrot down of thy 



cheek 

 The crow will assuredly carry off my bones.' 



He was a man of courage, an excellent archer, and remarkable 

 for his skill in playing the games of chaugan and leap-frog ! 



A queer medley of accomplishments, indeed. Fancy our 

 prominent poloists of the present day being handed down to 

 posterity with such characters. But we have no Babers nowa- 

 days, alas ! so they must be content with comparative obscurity, 

 except as polo players. 



The Persian poet Mahmoud Arifi, who lived in the fifteenth 

 century, amongst other effusions, wrote a poem called ' Goy-o- 

 chaugan ' (The Ball and the Bat). It is an allegory in which 

 the ball and the bat are personified as types of mystic love, and 

 all the images are borrowed from the favourite game. In fact, 

 all ancient Persian literature abounds more or less with allu- 

 sions to chaugan and metaphors drawn from the game, such as 

 ' Man is a ball tossed into the field of existence, driven hither 

 and thither by the chaugan-stick of destiny, wielded by the 

 hand of Providence ; ' r The heart of the lover is the ball, 

 while the curling love-lock of his charmer is as the curved club 

 that impels it,' and so on. 



1 The Huma, or phoenix, was a bird much celebrated in Oriental poetry. 

 It was supposed never to alight on the ground, and that every head that it 

 overshadowed was destined one day to wear a crown. 



