THE KING OF GAMES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 16, 19 July 1939, Page 6

THE KING OF GAMES

THE HISTORY OF POLO

SPORT IN ANCIENT PERSIA

ON THE LINES OF TODAY

There is, on the face of it, small connection between Meadow Brook and that ancient capital of Persia.. Ispahan, and it is indepd a long stretch in h.story from the pre-Christian era to today, writes Eric Wakeham from London to the "New York Times." Yet existing monuments and ancient literature prove that the connection exists, that those eight picked stalwarts of America and England ranged against each other in this year's series for the Westchester Cup at Meadow Brook are but carrying on a game which has been played for at least a score and seven centuries.

In the main square of Ispahan there stand today two stone piliars, shaped at the top like mitres. The distance between these two structures coincides exactly .with that between the less solid posts between which the teams of America and England endeavour to hit the ball. The stone pillars are, in fact, the goal posts of the polo ground of the capital of Shah Abbas, and we know from the pen of the traveller, Sir Antony Shirley, that the game played there resembled the modern game. The form of sticks used was the same as that of today, the ball was bowled into the centre of the ground in the modern manne:, and tactics and a code of rules were evident. Persian, and even Chinese pictures give proof of the game down the centuries.

THE UPLANDS OF IRAN

If the famous "Shah Namah," the Book of Kings, of the eleventh-century Persian poet Firdausi is to be believed, the modern polo match is but a latter day counterpart of one played on the uplands of Iran, the hero of which was the father of a monarch who was a mythical hero as early as the seventh century B.C. Siawush, Prince of Iran, fled from his father's court, there having been a little trouble over a woman, to that of the neighbouring King of Turan. There Afrasiab welcomed Siawush as a friend and a renowned polo player. One of the first remarks exchanged, after the tau J6logical compliments necessary on such occasions, was "Tomorrow let us play polo."

And play they did Li the first international match recorded. After a friendly exhibition, which may well be considered the equivalent of the modern habit of a preliminary knocking about of the ball, the match started —Iran v. Turan. To the shouts of spectators, the clashing of cymbals, and the throb of drums, the players of those ancient kingdoms rode at each other • through the dust. • It was not long" before the superiority of the Iranians was manifest. The Turanians lost .'their tempers, and only the diplomatic injunctions of Siawush to his men/couched in "high piping Pahlevi," a jttfnifue unknown to the Turanians, that- the match was a game, not a battle, saved a delicate international situation;

MORE LIKE A BATTLE

To this day men in the remote hill States bordering Kashmir play a game more resembling a battle than the game of more genteel Western civilisation. The ground is the village street. Each side possesses a band, which vies in cacophonic rivalry with the other. The tunes are measures of encouragement with definite meaning, drubbed out on hand drums, kettle drums of goat skin, and cornets of peculiar shape and excruciating tone. The captain of the side winning the toss gallops up the centre of ihe ground with the ball in his hand. The ball is thrown Into the air and struck, while the teams thunder in the wake of their captains.

Any player may catch the ball in mid-air and ride for the goal, endeavouring not to be pulled out of the saddle by his opponents, who are permitted by the rules to perpetrate most things short of actual murder. A mere hit through the posts does not necessarily score. The ball has to be picked up by hand by a member oi the same side. Since opponents take the opportunity at any such attempt to slash at the ball to hit it back into play, cricket batting gloves would be an amenity to polo. There are, however, no batting gloves, and knuckles consequently acquire a hardness similar to that of the walls surrounding the "ground." No periods exist.

A DIPLOMATIC INSULT.

Many references to polo are traceable down the centuries. A stick and ball were the instruments of diplomatic insult when the King of the Persians presented these implements to Alexander as a hint that Alexander would do well to confine himself to a harmless game rather than take up more dangerous pursuits. Alexander riposted neatly by accepting the ball as representing the world and the stick as representing himself with which to beat it.

As a youth, Bahram, the Great Hunter of Omar Khayyam's lay, had a special tutor for polo. Timur used the heads of the inhabitants of Damascus as polo balls when wreaking vengeance on that lovely city. Akbar. the Great Mogul, looked on the game as the best possible training for his officers and horses, and even made them play at tight with flaming balls of "pallas" wood, so enthusiastic was he. Since Akbar needed, ana habitually took, but three hours of sleep a night, this pastime probably appealed more to him than to his officers.

In the days of Firdausi and Haroun-al-Raschid the stick was shaped like a mustard spoon, and we hear that the gay monarch o J Bagdau was too small to reach down with his stick at polo. An Emperor of Byzantium, we know from Cinnamus, was incapacitated from a toss at polo, and the Kucb Minar, that lofty pillar dominating the site of one of the seven ancient capitals of India, near the Imperial Delhi oi today, is a memorial to a royal Moslem who was killed playing polo at Lahore.

PLAYED BY A QUEEN

Nor is polo for women a modern innovation. In the sixth century A.I ~ Shirin, the Byzantine Queen of King Khusru Parvez of Persia, and her seventy maidens defeated the King and his courtiers on the polo field. "These doves, these cities of sugar," as the King described Shirin and her maidens when going down to the ground "with happy heart to see the houris play." turned into hawks and lionesses on the polo field, and the King, slightly nettled by defeat, changed his views.

The game was evidently general among high-born women of the period, and a frieze in Central India depicts court women of the Mogul era playing the Byzantine form of polo, in whi^h the ball was f leather and the stick possessed a racket head. The King's affections even were staked on a game of polo by Sliirin. She challenged a

rival to a game. Gurdiya, the shedevil, as Shirin described her to the King, defeated Shirin and became the bride of the King as ~ result. Whether Shirin thereafter also remained as Queen, or whether she reverted to the harem of some IL.OOO which Khusru is reputed to have possessed, history does not relate. So much, however, once rested on the result of a mere game—but a y"ame which remains today as then, the king of games.