THE MISTS OF TIME : ORIGINS OF POLO.

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and Noes,
But Right or Left as strikes the player goes;
 And He that toss'd thee down into the Field,
 He knows about it all - He knows - He knows!

-Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

The origins of Polo are lost in the mists of antiquity History records that the ancient Persians knew the sport as  'Chaughan' and played it as far back as 2500 years ago. The Chinese too lay claim to a Polo tradition dating back several thousand years. Be that as it may, in all probability these ancient civilizations picked up the sport from the Central Asian nomads whose home was the saddle and whose writ ran from the Great wall of China in the east to the Caspian Sea in the west. Certainly the game of Polo reflects all the qualities that made the Mongol hordes the greatest nation of horsemen in the ancient world; great equestrian skills coupled with a clear eye and stout heart remain the prerequisites of a Polo player till today.

 Radiating outwards from the steppes of Central Asia, the game eventually spread as afar as Japan, China, Tibet and India. Over the ages, the aristocratic game developed to promote equestrian and military skills, and was ranked next to battle itself as the ultimate test of the prowess of princes and warriors. Patronised by kings and the horsed cavalry, it was played by the likes of Darius, Genghis Khan, and Alexander the Great. It is said that when Alexender took over from his father in 336 BC, the Persian emperor Darius III, sent him a Polo ball and stick with the message that he should stick to the sport, and leave the business of war to those better adapted to it. The young Alexander thanked the Emperor for the present and replied that the gift was indeed symbolic, as he represented the stick and the ball was the earth which he intended to conquer. If Alexanders' skill at Polo was anything akin to his skill in the arts of war - for he had soon defeated the mighty Darius, then he must indeed rank as one of the earliest known high goal players!

 While the Persians and later the Mughals, knew the game as 'Chaughan', meaning mallet, variants of the game tested the horsemanship and courage of the participants under the name of  'Da-Kyu' in Japan, 'Khis - Kouhou' on the Russian steppes and 'Djerid' in Turkey. The origins of the modern name for the sport can however be traced to Tibet, where it was known as 'Pulu', meaning ball, and which, in its anglicised form is known to the world as Polo.

 In India, Polo was widely played in medieval times as is evidenced from the fact that Sultan Qutubuddin Aibak, founder of the slave dynasty and builder of one of Delhi's most famous landmarks, the Qutub Minar, died of a fatal accident, impaled on the ornate horn of his own saddle after a fall on the Polo field in Lahore. However, it was Babar, the founder of the Mughal dynasty who established the popularity of Polo in India in the fifteenth century. The emperor Akbar the Great was a patron of polo which was regularly played at his court. He himself was described as an outstanding player in all branches of the game. He introduced a uniform set of rules for the game, and his vast polo stables can still be seen near Agra.

 Under the Mughals, Polo was the national sport of India until the end of sixteenth century. During the period that the house of Taimur reigned supreme in Delhi, Polo enjoyed the patronage of kings and nobles and was widely played in the provinces of the Empire and in the courts of the Rajput kings.

 However, the decline of the Mughal dynasty also heralded the decline of indigenous Polo in the country. In the unsettled times of the eighteenth century, when the imperial authority waned in the plains and peninsula of India, the sword ruled the land, and Polo all but vanished from the Indian scene. However, luckily for all lovers of the game in the world today, it survived in a few remote mountainous enclaves of the great subcontinent, notably in Gilgit , Ladakh and Manipur. Far removed from the tumult and political turmoil of the plains, and secure in their mountain fastness, life continued much the same as it ever had, and Polo continued with it. In truth, it is to the survival of the game in the remote northeastern state of Manipur, that the world owes the genesis of modern Polo as it is universally played today.

The word 'POLO' is derived from the Tibetan word 'PULU' -  meaning ball. It was by this name that the Tibetans played their version of this ancient sport, described by some authorities as being the origins of the game itself.

Qutub-Ud-Din Aibak, founder of the Turkish slave dynasty and builder of one of medieval Delhi's most famous landmarks, the Qutub Minar, died when he was impaled on the ornate horn of his saddle while playing Polo at Lahore in 1206 A.D.

Alexander the Great responded to the Persian Emperor Darius' mocking present of a Polo stick and ball by saying that the gift was truly symbolic - for he represented the stick, and ball was the world he intended to conquer.

The Cradle Of The Game  

India has rightly been called the cradle of modern Polo. While Polo may have grown to maturity in the Americas, it was in India that the modern game was 'discovered' and nurtured. Within a decade it had spread across the globe like wildfire taking horse-lovers around the world by storm.

 When polo had all but disappeared from the subcontinent with the decline of the Mughal Empire, it survived in a few places where life was untouched by the great battles and intrigues taking place on the plains below. Polo is still played in Gilgit, Ladakh and Manipur, much the same as it has been played for over 2000 years with few, if any, concessions to the modern version of the game.

 A rough form of polo is still played in an annual tournament in Gilgit in present day Pakistan. In this extreme test of courage and horsemanship deaths are frequently recorded on the long narrow playing field bordered by low stone walls. Each period of play lasts for 20 minutes and no substitution of man or pony is allowed. The proud polo tradition of Gilgit is evinced from the tournament programme which states "The game of polo was born in Central Asia, spent its childhood in Iran and attained maturity in the northern areas."

 Similarly in Tibet, the game supposedly has its origins in the annual autumnal hunt for the muskrat. The animal was chased on horseback and when finally captured, beaten to death with a stick carried for the purpose. In summer, the riders used a root ball covered with animal skin for practise. From Tibet , the game spread to nearly Ladakh where it also continues to be played till this day. However, it is to the survival of the game in Manipur and the coming of the British, that the next page in the story of polo must unfold.

 Shortly after the Indian Mutiny of 1857, Joseph Sherer, a subaltern in the Indian Army, was posted to Assam's Cachar district as Commandant of the Kuki Levy and Assistant Superintendent of the district. He first came across the game being played by the hardy Manipuri tribesmen at Silchar. Greatly excited, he is said to have exclaimed "We must learn the game".

 In Manipur the game was played in most villages with tremendous enthusiasm. Curiously enough, it was very much a game of the people, as opposed to being a game restricted to a chosen few that it was destined to become after its 'Europisation'. In the mountains of the northwest, where the game had survived in places like Gilgit, Chitral, Baltistan and Ladakh, polo was still played in its original unrestrained form. There were very few rules and the number of players was only limited by the number of ponie that could be mustered for the game. Since there were few places large enough to make an ordinary-sized ground, more often than not, the village main street was used. In Manipur, however, the grounds were more even and something akin to the modern polo stick was used. Players legs were protected by stiff leather shields attached to the saddles and girths.

 The Raja of Manipur when informed of Sherers' 'discovery' and desire to adopt the game, was constrained to draw Sherers attention to the fact that the Manipuris had been playing the sport for more than two thousand years. They called their game by two names - 'Kanjai-bazee', and 'Pulu'. It was the anglicised form of the latter, referring to the wooden ball which was used, that was adopted by the sport in its slow spread to the west.

 At Silchar, Sherer experienced his first taste of the mounted game along with the District Superintendent, Captain Robert Stewart and like a good Englishman, proposed that they form a club. Thus it came to be that in 1859, Sherer - dubbed the father of English Polo - Stewart and seven tea planters set up the first club of the modern game, the Silchar Polo Club. The other founding members of the club in that remote outpost of the Empire were James Abernethy, Arthur Brownlow, James Davidson, Ernst Echardt, Julius Sandeman, A. Stuart and W. Walker. Regular seven - to- a - side games were played between the club and the local Manipuris mounted on the small Manipuri ponies. The members seem to have attained a reasonable degree of proficiency in the game. Rules were formulated in 1863 to sensibly regulate the game. These also included the stipulation that "It is to be understood that no player shall be under the influence of  bhang, ganja or spirituous liquors". A couple of years lapsed before other Europeans noticed what was happening in this somewhat remote frontier district, and it was not until 1861 that a Captain Eustace Hill took the game to Dacca and CB Stewart and a few Calcutta merchants introduced it to their city.

In 1862, during the Christmas Race week in Calcutta, polo was played in public for the first time. Joseph Sherer visited Calcutta in 1863, and once again was instrumental in setting up a club - the Calcutta Polo Club - which holds the proud title of being the oldest Polo club in the world still in existence. In 1863 Sherer organised a match with a visiting team of Manipuis, called the Band of Brothers. Playing on their handy little ponies of about 11.2 hands, the Manipuris easily beat the less well mounted or experienced Calcutta team. They returned hone after selling many of their ponies for good prices and leaving behind an enthusiasm for the game which was soon to spread rapidly across the world.

 By 1865 the game had taken root in Bengal and by 1870 had spread throughout British India where it was at once taken up by army officers and civil officials, all of whom kept ponies both as a normal means of transport and for taking exercise. Soon reports of the 'New' game began to appear in the British press at home and it was in 1869 that an officer of the 10th Hussars at  Aldershot, reading of the game in 'Field' magazine after lunch, immediately initiated an afternoon's sport with his fellow officers. Mounting their chargers, the officers attempted to play 'Hockey on Horseback' using walking sticks and  billiard balls; not with much success. However, the game appealed enough to catch on and fellow officers from the 9th Lancers were introduced to the sport, with the result that the first inter-regiment match on an English ground was played on Hounslow Heath in 1869.

 Even at that early stage of the game, a newspaper reported that "Nearly all fashionable London" journeyed out to witness the match. Playing eight to a side, the game lasted for one and a half hours. In 1870 the 1st Life Guards, Royal Horse Guards, 9th Lancers and 10th Hussars played a series of games in Richmond Park. Polo soon became an important fixture of army life in many countries across the globe.