WOMEN AT POLO

Evening Star, Issue 21722, 17 May 1934, Page 7

WOMEN AT POLO

THE SUN AGAINST THE MOON Within the last few years polo for ■ . men has attained considerable popni ;;-iiy in both Europe and America. . .'..'tugonists and adversaries have argued extensively on the merits or otherwise of women playing a game tacitly accepted as suited • exclusively to the hardier male. Illustrated papers have given full advertisement to a subject considered a novelty, says a writer in an English paper. It may perhaps interest all concerned to know that polo for women is traceable as far back as 'the sixth century A. 0., when Shirin, the Byzantine wife of the Persian King, Klmsru Parvez (Chosroes 11., Gibbon, ‘’Decline and Fall "), introduced the game for ladies into Persia, and gave the king and bis courtiers their first lesson in. sex equality on the polo field. The game for ladies must have been a normal pastime in Byzantium, but it is impossible to deduce its real antiquity. The twelfth century poet, Nizami, gives the first recorded version of feminine polo when he describes in verse a game in which Shirin and her attendant ladies beat Khusru and his courtiers. _ .Vs this’ epic was written some six centuries after the event, allowance must bo made for poetic inaccuracy and exaggeration. Legend, however, dies slowly in the East and mingles inextricably with history, and it is therefore safe to say that the event described by Nizami is broadly correct and based on-real fact. Before the king paraded seventy veiled maidens, “ like lionesses all blazing with ardour,” in courage superb, in archery equal to the legendary hero Rnstum the Horseman, in polo so adroit that they “ filched the ball from the spiiihuing world ” and put Siawush, the hero of the first recorded international polo match, so in the shade that he was comparatively unfit to carry their horse rugs. King Khusru, it seems, was “ delighted at the persons and moon-like faces ” of “ these abodes of sweetness and cities of sugar,” though how he managed to survey their faces when they were -veiled, as expressly stated, until they east back their veils before playing is not shown by the poet. The probability is that Khusru did not see their faces, and that curiosity to do so was one of the reasons for his “ proceeding with happy heart to the plain to inspect these honris.” Before starting play the liouris would have to unveil (which, in fact, they did), and the result of this display of beauty may be the reason for the defeat of Khusru and his courtiers in the subsequent game. . Nizami proceeds to describe this game of the “ Deers versus Lions,” or The Sun against the Moon.” . The ladies wore quivers of arrows strappedto their sides, sat .their horses like cypresses, and when Khusru saw that these lovely doves were in fact hawks on the polo field he suggested joining in the game. “ A WILLOW GROVE.” From the number of sticks in play the ground resembled a willow grove. Unfortunately Nizami omits to meution whether the number of trees on each side of the grove were equal or not. If the form of polo played was Byzantine, which seems probable in view of Shjriu’s origin, the sides would bo equal in number; the ground would bo marked with a goal line; the sticks used would be the Byzantine type with a close network across the crook ami resembling a miniature lacrosse stick with a long handle; the ball would be about the size of an apple and of leather. The poet gives no details of the rules of the game, but says that the game was started by a servant throwing a ball into the royal Chogan. It is not absolutely clear what is meant by this. Chogan is the Persian word for the stick used, and it appears that the game was started by the ball being thrown into the network of the king’s stick. If so, it is not entirely in accordance with the normal Byzantine procedure by which the ball was thrown into the middle of the ground and the sides rode for it from an equal distance. It may well be that in this instance Chogan means the marked-out ground, and the following sentence tends, by inference, to prove this assumption as correct A cheer went up as the, “ Doves and the Hawks ” rode at the ball. “ Sometimes the Sun bore off’ the ball, sometimes the Moon.” “ Sometimes Shirin won, sometimes the Shah.” It-is suggested that by this is meant that sometimes one side scored and sometimes the other, in accordance with the code of the,period, to score a player had merely to drive the ball over the goal line. Goals as we know’them were not present and the game was more a display of horsemanship with stickwork than polo as we play it to-day. The match resulted, according lo Nizami, in victory i’or the Partridges, khusru and his warriors taking theknock.. After the termination of the game the victors circled once round the ground like prize-winners at a modern horse show, and then went off to hunt deer in the adjacent preserves (we now see the reason for their playing with quivers strapped to their sides), where they proved themselves as proficient at mounted archery as at polo. , . The match' described by Nizami is far from being the ’only instance of ladies playing polo in early times. A number of Persian pictures of various periods show women as players, a frieze in Central British India depicts Moghul court women of the seventeenth century as participants in tingame, and we know that Shirin challenged a rival to the affections of the king to a game. KhusruV feelings for a certain Cm;diya caused his queen Shirin justifiable anxiety. Gurdiya and her attendant ladies also played polo—a fact that tends to prove that the practice was general among high-born women of .the period—and a tourney was arranged with a share in, the king’s affections as the prize. Gurdiya won and Khusru married her in spite ol Shim's unsporting warning that Gurdiva was a “ she-devil.” Shirin’s romantic match with Gurdiya must be unique in the history ot polo. Now that the most ancient of games has been resurrected for the ladies of to-day, it is interesting to speculate on the possibility of a repetition of such a delightful example of female emancipation.