Chapter CHERRY FOUJ to CHICANE of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

chauigan; but according to the Bahari ’Ajam (a great Persian dictionary compiled in India, 1768) the primitive form of the word is chulgan from chul, ‘bent,’ which (as to the form) is corroborated by the Arabic sawljan. On the other hand, a probable origin of chaugan would be an Indian (Prakrit) word, meaning ‘four corners’ [Platts gives chaugana, ‘four-fold’], viz. as a name for the polo-ground. The chulgan is possibly a ‘striving after meaning.’ The meanings are according to Vüllers (1) any stick with a crook; (2) such a stick used as a drumstick; (3) a crook from which a steel ball is suspended, which was one of the royal insignia, otherwise called kaukaba [see Blochmann, Ain, vol. i. plate ix. No. 2.]; (4) (The golf-stick, and) the game of horse-golf.

The game is now quite extinct in Persia and Western Asia, surviving only in certain regions adjoining India, as is specified under Polo. But for many centuries it was the game of kings and courts over all Mahommedan Asia. The earliest Mahommedan historians represent the game of chaugan as familiar to the Sassanian kings; Ferdusi puts the chaugan-stick into the hands of Siawush, the father of Kai Khusru or Cyrus; many famous kings were devoted to the ga me, among whom may be mentioned Nuruddin the Just, Atabek of Syria and the great enemy of the Crusaders. He was so fond of the game that he used (like Akbar in after days) to play it by lamp-light, and was severely rebuked by a devout Mussulman for being so devoted to a mere amusement. Other zealous chaugan-players were the great Saladin, Jalaluddin Mankbarni of Khwarizm, and Malik Bibars, Marco Polo’s “Bendocquedar Soldan of Babylon,” who was said more than once to have played chaugan at Damaseus and at Cairo within the same week. Many illustrious persons also are mentioned in Asiatic history as having met their death by accidents in the maidan, as the chaugan-field was especially called; e.g. Kutbuddin Ibak of Delhi, who was killed by such a fall at Lahore in (or about) 1207. In Makrizi (I. i. 121) we read of an Amir at the Mameluke Court called Husamuddin Lajin ’Azizi the Jukandar (or Lord High Polo-stick).

It is not known when the game was conveyed to Constantinople, but it must have been not later than the beginning of the 8th century.¹ The fullest description of the game as played there is given by Johannes Cinnamus (c. 1190), who does not however give the barbarian name:

“The winter now being over and the gloom cleared away, he (the Emperor Manuel Comnenus) devoted himself to a certain sober exercise which from the first had been the custom of the Emperors and their sons to practise. This is the manner thereof. A party of young men divide into two equal bands, and in a flat space which has been
measured out purposely they cast a leather ball in size somewhat like an apple; and setting this in the middle as if it were a prize to be contended for they rush into the contest at full speed, each grasping in his right hand a stick of moderate length which comes suddenly to a broad rounded end, the middle of which is closed by a network of dried catgut. Then each party strives who shall first send the ball beyond the goal planted conspicuously on the opposite side, for whenever the ball is struck by the netted sticks through the goal at either side, that gives the victory to the other side. This is the kind of game, evidently a slippery and dangerous one. For a player must be continually throwing himself right back, or bending to one side or the other, as he turns his horse short, or suddenly dashes off at speed, with such strokes and twists as are needed to follow up the ball.…And thus as the Emperor was rushing round in furious fashion in this game, it so happened that the horse which he rode came violently to the ground. He was prostrate below the horse, and as he struggled vainly to extricate himself from its incumbent weight his thigh and hand were crushed beneath the saddle and much injured.…”—In Bonn edition pp. 263–264.

We see from this passage that at Byzantium the game was played with a kind of racket, and not with a polo-stick.

We have not been able to find an instance of the medieval French chicane in this sense, nor does Littré’s Dictionary give any. But Ducange states positively that in his time the word in this sense survived in Languedoc, and there could be no better evidence. From Henschel’s Ducange also we borrow a quotation which shows chuca, used for some game of ball, in French-Latin, surely a form of chaugan or chicane.

The game of chaugan, the ball (gu or gavi) and the playing-ground (maidan) afford constant metaphors in Persian literature.

c. 820.—“If a man dream that he is on horseback along with the King himself, or some great personage, and that he strikes the ball home, or wins the chukan ( [Greek Text] ptoi tzukanizei) he shall find grace and favour thereupon, conformable to the success of his ball and the dexterity of his horse.” Again: “If the King dream that he has won in the chukan ( [Greek Text] oti etzukanizen) he shall find things prosper with him.”—The Dream Judgments of Achmet Ibn Seirim, from a MS. Greek version quoted by Ducange in Gloss. Graecitatis.

c. 940. — Constantine Porphyrogenitus, speaking of the rapids of the Danapris or Dnieper, says: “ [Greek Text] o de touto fragmoz tosouton esti stenoz oson to platoz tou tzukanisthriou” (“The defile in this case is as narrow