WOMEN AT POLO

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 28 April 1934, Page 8

WOMEN AT POLO

OLD-TIME games recalled THE SUN AGAINST T-HE MOON RLIAY -BEFORE A KING T *• ‘Within the last few years polo for women, has attained considerable popularity in brfth’ Bur ope and America. Protagonists and adversaries have argued extensively on the merits or otherwise of women playing a game tacitly accepted as "suited exclusively to .the hardier male. ’lllustrated papers •have given full to a subject'considered a novelty, says a writer in an English paper. It may perhaps interest alT.concerned : to know that polo. for women is traceable as far back as the sixth cen-; tury AaD., when Shirin, the Byzantine wife of the Persian. (King Khusru Pafvez ('Ohosroes ii. Gibbon, "Decline and lEall”), "introduced’the'game for ladies into Persia, and’ gave"the King' and"his courtiers their first lesson in sex equality on the polo' (field. The game for ladies must have been a. normal pastime iu Byzantium,- 'but it is .impossible :to deduce its real antiquity. : The. twelfth century poet "Nizami gives the first recorded version of feminine .polo when- ne describes in verse a game. in which Shirin and her attendant ladies beat Khusru and his eourtiers. •, • - As this epic was -written some six centuries after the. event allowance must be 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. VEILED MAIDENB Before the. King paraded seventy veiled maidens, “like lionesses all blazing with ardour,”' in courage superb, in archery equal to the legendary hero Rustum the 'Horseman, in polo so adroit that they "filched the ball from the spinning 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 mooii-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 cast 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 houris:” Before starting play the. houris would have to uuvcil (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 Moos.” The ladies wore quivers of arrows strapped to 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 tlie number of sticks in play the ground resembled -a willow grove. Unfortunately Nizami omits to mention 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 Shirin’s origin, the sides would be equal in number; the ground would be marked with a goal line; the sticks used would be the Byzantine type with a close network across -the crook and 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 •vyas. started by a servant throwing a iball info the royal IChogan. It is not absolutely clear what is meant iby 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 stiek. . 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 anu 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.

- PARTRIDiGES WIN The match resulted, according to Nizanii, in victory for the Partridges, iKhusru and his warriors taking the knock. After the termination of the game the victors circled once Tound 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 the game, and we know that Shirin challenged a rival to the affections of the King to a game. Khusru’s feelings for a certainj (Gufdiva caused fiis queen Shirin justifiable anxiety. Gurdiya ancl 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 of Shirin’s unsporting warning that 'Gurdiya was a 11 - she-devil. ’’ Shirin’s romantic match with Gurdiya must be unique in the history of 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. I