CHAPTER XLIII 



THE ORIGIN OF POLO 



What is the oldest game extant? Golfers point with 

 pride to an antiquity of at least six centuries. Footballers 

 claim an equal, if not greater, antiquity for their game. 

 But they are things of yesterday compared with polo, 

 which can trace its origin back over six and twenty 

 centuries. When you once get groping back after the 

 origins of games there is no telling where to stop. Still, 

 there can be no doubt that a game of ball, played on horse- 

 back with sticks, was in vogue as far back as the days of 

 Alexander the Great, who saw it played in Persia when he 

 invaded and conquered that empire three centuries and a 

 half before the Christian era. 



Persia was the cradle of polo. There, among a race 

 unequalled for horsemanship, the nursling first saw the 

 light and was nurtured into adolescence. The Persian 

 name for polo is " chaugan," which I believe signifies " four- 

 sided." Polo is derived from the Tibetan word pulu, 

 which means a ball made from a knot of willow — a wood 

 as sacred to that game as it is to cricket. The Persian 

 poet, Firdusi, frequently mentions the game. Now, Firdusi 

 wrote his Schah Nanieh (Book of Kings) about the time 

 that Canute the Dane became King of England and 

 addressed his memorable rebuke to his flattering courtiers 

 when the sea showed itself no respecter of his royal person. 

 That alone gives the game a reputable and authentic 

 antiquity of goo years, and Firdusi speaks of the pastime 

 then as of great antiquity. There is an illuminated MS. 

 of Firdusi's poems in the British Museum which contains 

 an elabourate illustration of chaugan as it was then played. 

 The sticks which the players are represented as using are 



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