Sports in Ancient India

Though not much has been written on sports in ancient India, there is enough evidence to infer that sports and games were an essential part of the culture. A L Basham, in his book the wonder that was India, states that both polo and hockey, in some form, were played in ancient India.

Boxing and wrestling were also popular, though they were not general hobbies of respectable young men “but the preserve of low professional pugilists, who performed for the amusement of the audience.”

Archery, however, was a much – loved sport of the warrior class, and vivid descriptions of such contests occur in the epics.

In classical sources, there is a reference to gladiatorial contests at the court of Chandragupta Maurya (321 BC-297 BC) and later in the medieval deccan, when dueling became frequent. Fern Nuniz, the Portuguese traveler in the mid-fourteenth century, mentions in his writings that when to nobles of Vijayanagara quarreled, they would fight to the death in the presence of the king and his court. Despite the doctrine of non-violence, animal fights remained a popular sport. Indian quail, cocks and rams were the animals commonly used for the fights.

There are also references to fights between buffaloes and elephants.

Another form of animal contests, which was confined to south India was the bull fight. Unlike the Spanish bullfight, were the scales are heavily weighed against the bull, here the bull appears to have the advantage. The fights were popular among herdsmen who entered the arena unarmed, and embraced the bull in an attempt to master it, rather like the cowpunchers of an American rodeo. The bull fight was looked on as an ordeal to test the manhood of young men, since it is stated that the girls who watched the performance would choose their husbands from amongst the successful competitors.

The game of chess (Shatranj) probably also evolved in this period. Basham states that certain board games were played with the help of dice. With time, one such game developed into a complex game “ with a king piece, and pieces of four other types, corresponding to the corps of the ancient Indian army – an elephant, a horse, a chariot or ship and four foot men”. As the game was played with pieces representing military forces and its strategy suggested that of campaigning armies, it was known as Chaturanga or four corps. In the 6^th century, the Persians learnt the game, and when Persia was conquered by the Arabs it quickly spread all over the middle east, under the name of Shatranj.

However, the most famous sport in ancient India was gambling. The plot of the epic Mahabharata revolves around a gambling tournament of chausar (a game of dice), at which Yudhisthira loses his kingdom to his cousin Dhuryodhana.