22 
Land Si Water 
February 28, 191 B 
The Cradle of Polo : By Lewis R. Freeman 
A Typical Ladakh Maidan or Village Green 
The writer of this article has travelled very widely ; his ex- 
periences of the Roof of the World are probably unique for 
an American. Mr. Freeman, R.N.V.R., is at the present 
time attached to the Grand Fleet. 
THE antiquity of polo is much more definitely estab- 
lished than is the region of itsorigin. As far back 
as the sixth century B.C. the praises of a mounted 
" ball game called chaugan " was sung by the 
Persian poets, and Omar Khayyam's 
The ball no question makes of ayes and noes. 
But here and there, as strikes the players, goes, 
indicates that something of the kind was played in that 
ancient empire at the time of the old astronomer-poet of 
Nashipur. Persia's claim to having been the birthplace of 
polo, however, is disputed by the Chinese, who point out that 
one of their philosophers, writing a thousand \ears before 
the time of Christ, compared the ups and downs^of life to the 
ebb and flow of the tide of the " horse-and-ball game." 
An att( m ^t to " back track " the path of polo from the 
frontier of India — from which country it reached the Western 
world by way of England — gives no indication which of the 
rival claimants is the legitimate one. The Mohammedans — 
probably the hordes of Ghingis Khan and Tamarlane — brought 
the game from somewhere to Tartary, whence it found its way 
to India by oneorbothof two routes — through Afghanistan and 
the Khyber Pass, and (or) across the Roof of the World 
and Kashmir. The tracks on the former trail have dis- 
appeared, but along the latter— village by village, valley 
by valley— the footsteps of polo may be traced from the 
Vale of Kashmir to Gilgit and Hunza-Nagar, over the Hindu 
Kush or Karakoram and down to the plains of Yarkand 
and Kashgar, where they arc lost in the desert. The secret 
of its birth place is lost in the shifting sands that have piled 
alxwe the cradle of the Aryan race. 
The nearest thing to polo that one encounters in Central 
Asia to-day is a game of the Khirghiz in which each of the 
mounted sides endeavours to carry the body of a calf to 
opposite ends of the field. No ball or sticks are used, but the 
contest resolves itself into an equine rough-and-tumble which 
requires no end of dare-devil horsemanship, and is almost as 
hard on the mounts as on the fiercely-striven-for anatomy 
of the calf. Across the Pamirs to the south, however, the 
game begins to take shape, and there is no difficulty in recog- 
nizing the progenitor of modem polo in the fierce mounted 
contests of the hillmen. Wherever there is room between 
the soaring slide-scarred mountain walls and the foam-white 
glacial torrents that tumble through the narrow valleys, each 
little community of stone huts has its maidan or village 
green upon which the " pulu " games are played, usually 
rough informal bouts between the villagers themselves. 
These mountain maidans are always cut up by streams 
and often littered with rocks and broken by jagged outcrops 
of native granite, all mere trifles, however, to men and ponies 
who have been spending all their strenuous lives upon the 
serried ridge-poles of the Roof of the World. Untrammelled 
by off-side rules, unmenaced by threat of penalties for 
fouls, undismayed by sticks in the air, rocks of the earth 
Masqued Revellers alter a Polo Match 
or waters under the earth, the Himalayan polo player is 
free to concentrate heart and head and body upon banging the 
battered chunk of willow or bamboo root between the two 
little cairns of razor-edged slate slabs that serve him as goal 
posts. 
The game is as free from restrictions as proverbial love 
and war — literally, all is fair. To shoulder an opponent 
and send him raking along a jagged wall of rock is considered 
creditable and clever, but the acme of fine.sse in riding off is to 
force him over a cut bank into an icy stream. " Hooking 
across " for an opponent's mallet is rated good polo, but not 
nearly so much so as hooking the man himself off the 
precarious pad of sheep-skin which serves him as a saddle, 
by catching him under the chin from behind. Blows are often 
dealt with the stout sticks, but not quite ihdiscriminately. 
One player will belabour another to make him miss the ball 
or cause him to give ground in riding off, but otherwise he 
will not waste the effort. An action that will enhance the 
chance of making a goal is its own excuse. Himalayan polo 
furnishes the most striking example of singleness of purpose 
of any game on the roster of out-door sport. 
The keenness of the hillmen for their " pulu " is something 
amazing. Once on the upper Indus I saw half a dozen players 
follow a ball into a roaring torrent, at the imminent risk of 
being carried down by the swirling current, for the slight 
advantage incident to " passing " to their team mates on the 
bank. Just as the ball was bobbing out of reach, the foremost 
rider, lunging desperately, swept the crook of his stick under 
the buoyant chunk of willow and sent it flying back to the 
maidan. The long reach and the floundering pony upset 
his balance, however, and he toppled into the roaring waters 
and was carried away in an instant. Not for a moment did 
the game halt. Not a player gave the unlucky wight a look, 
and by the time the pluckiest swimming had just enabled 
him to grasp a jutting log in the wreck of an old cantilever 
bridge on the opposite bank, the centre of conflict was raging 
in a cloud of flying pebbles in front of his opponent's goal. 
Did he give a thought to the fact that the wind, drawing down 
from the ice caps of the Pamirs with the sting of a whip-lash 
in every gust, was stiffening the saturated folds of his felt 
jacket and woollen breeches ? Apparently not. Floundering 
up to a little terrace of cultivation where a couple of fellow 
villagers toiled in a barley patch, "he seized one of their goat- 
skin swimming bags, kicked his way across the stream upon 
it, and was on a pony and back in the game in time to make 
a hair-breadth "save" as the shifting tide of the game put 
his own goal in danger. 
It was in another game on this same maidan that a rather 
awkward player, unhorsed in a whirlwind scrimmage, was 
left lying among the rocks with, a twisted knee. The pack 
swept on unheeding, and even among the spectators I seemed 
to be the only one who took his eyes off the play long enough 
to note the movements of the rumpled figure left in the wake 
of the flying ruck. Twice he tried to rise and mount the 
dancing little pony whose reins he had pluckily retained in his 
fall, but both times the injured knee bent sideways and let 
him down. Releasing the pony in disgust, he pulled himself 
up together and began closely to follow the progress of the play. 
