10-21-2004, 01:48 AM
The Telegraph, 20 Oct., 2004
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NOT A VERY DIFFERENT BALL GAMEÂ
<b>Raju Mukherji argues that there is evidence to prove that cricket was played in ancient India </b>
The modern versionÂ
When was cricket first played? This question has not yet been clearly answered. Based on assumptions, historians of cricket have all informed the world that the game of cricket began in the south of England in the 14th century.
Apart from the pictures and the poems of the 16th and 17th centuries, they based their contention on the reference to Edward I playing a sport called âcreagâ in England in the 14th century. But this information does not mean that cricket began in England. If we accept that âcreagâ was cricket in its earliest form, then the information about Edward I playing cricket merely confirms that the game was played in 14th century-England. The questions about the origins of the game of cricket remain. The English author, Andrew Lang, was probably right to claim that ââ¦no one invented cricket. Like almost everything else, cricket was evolved.â This kind of practical reasoning, free from bias, invariably keeps the door open for further search to unearth earlier versions of the game.
A close look at ancient Indian literature and the epics might provide some idea to cricket followers about the origins, or at least the antiquity, of the most noble of sports. A reference in the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, suggests that an antiquated form of cricket did exist in India at least 2,000 years ago.
The thing which Dronacharya extricated from the well in the adiparva of the Mahabharata is the object of my attention. I have no doubt at all that the object was either oval or spherical in shape, made of wood and more or less the size of a cricket ball. If the readers would care to remember, in the adiparva of the Mahabharata there is an incident which relates to the Kaurava princes. They were playing among themselves when their game had to be stopped as the object they were playing with had fallen into a dry well.
According to the epic, Dronacharya happened to be watching the children at play. When the object fell into the well and they were unsuccessful in retrieving it, he first castigated the princes for their poor skills and intelligence. Then he uprooted a handful of the ishika plant. Ishika is the Sanskrit word for a tall species of grass whose stem has a very sharp pointed end. At first he aimed an ishika stem to pierce the object that had fallen inside the well. Then he directed another to pierce the tail-end of the first. In this way he used quite a few stems, piercing one with the other. Ultimately, he just pulled up the string that he had made with the ishika and the object was brought out of the well. The young Kaurava princes were fascinated by Dronaâs ability.
Now the issue here is, was the object a ball? It is likely that the object was something of the shape of a ball. However, it could also have been an elongated oval-shaped object, as is the shape of the target in danda-guli, an old Indian sport, which is still played in rural India.
Rajsekhar Basu, in his commentary on the Mahabharata, mentioned that it was an oval-shaped object made of wood. But in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan version of the Mahabharata, edited by Kamala Subramaniam, it is specified that the object was actually a ball. The great writer Kaliprasanna Sinha, the eminent authority on Mahabharata, as well as Sudhir Chandra Sarkar, an editor, have also acknowledged that the object was indeed a ball. The widely acknowledged Gita Press (Gorakhpur) edited Ved Vyasâs Mahabharata also accepts that the object was a ball made of wood.
Either the object was an elongated oval-shaped piece or one spherical in shape. Early versions of the game also confirm that the target in cricket had evolved from being oval-shaped to being shaped like a sphere. This may be confirmed from Barclayâs World of Cricket, edited by the erudite duo, Jim Swanton and John Woodcock.
What sort of a game was it? There is little reason to think that it was similar to football. This is because in those days, people generally played the kind of games which were primarily hand-oriented â archery, wrestling, fencing and so on â not ones in which the feet were dominant. Thus it is more likely that the sport was either cricket or volleyball.
Now that we have authoritative evidence that the object was a ball, the next query would be, was it a small ball or a big one? What was its likely size? In all likelihood, the ball was of the shape and size of a cricket ball. Bose, Sinha, Subramaniam and Sarkar as also the Gita Press have agreed that it was a small ball, but not as small as a ring.
Was the ball soft or hard? Here again, the circumstantial evidence is that the ball was not soft. Nor was it of an inflatable kind. It was surely a hard ball. If it were not, then the pointed end of the ishika plant would not have punctured the ball.
What was the material of the ball being used? Was it wood, iron or something else? Rajsekhar Basu mentioned that it was made of wood. So did Subramaniam, Sarkar and the Gita Press. Only Sinha seems to think that it was made of iron. But the ball could not have been made of iron or any hard metal. In that case, the ishika plant-head would not have been able to pierce it at all. Thus we may confirm that the ball was hard and made of wood. This revelation, that the original cricket ball was made of wood, is in conformity with the information available in the Barclayâs World of Cricket regarding the evolution of the cricket ball.
This brings us to the issue whether the sport that the Kaurava princes were indulging in could have been polo, hockey or cricket in their ancient forms. All these sports use balls of more or less similar shape, material and size.
In India, danda-guli (âbat-ballâ in literal translation) was a common pastime for young people. For aeons, people have been playing the game in which a stick or club (bat?) would be used to hit an oval-shaped, wooden object (ball?). A sport that required the co-ordination of hand and eye of a very high order. Early Sanskrit literature too mentions the existence of this sport. It is likely that on the basis of the mention of danda-guli in Sanskrit literature, Rajsekhar Basu conceived that the object was oval-shaped and not spherical. Even this view is consistent with the accepted idea of the evolution that the cricket ball underwent.
The principal implements of the sport, the stick and the small target, are remarkably similar to what is used in cricket, as we know of the game today. The game of hockey would have required many such sticks and polo would have required the presence of horses. There is no evidence that there were many sticks or clubs involved, nor of horses. <b>Thus we can safely assume that the sport played by the Kaurava princes was neither polo nor hockey, but a sport that had remarkable similarity to modern-day cricket.</b>Â <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->
TO BE CONCLUDED
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NOT A VERY DIFFERENT BALL GAMEÂ
<b>Raju Mukherji argues that there is evidence to prove that cricket was played in ancient India </b>
The modern versionÂ
When was cricket first played? This question has not yet been clearly answered. Based on assumptions, historians of cricket have all informed the world that the game of cricket began in the south of England in the 14th century.
Apart from the pictures and the poems of the 16th and 17th centuries, they based their contention on the reference to Edward I playing a sport called âcreagâ in England in the 14th century. But this information does not mean that cricket began in England. If we accept that âcreagâ was cricket in its earliest form, then the information about Edward I playing cricket merely confirms that the game was played in 14th century-England. The questions about the origins of the game of cricket remain. The English author, Andrew Lang, was probably right to claim that ââ¦no one invented cricket. Like almost everything else, cricket was evolved.â This kind of practical reasoning, free from bias, invariably keeps the door open for further search to unearth earlier versions of the game.
A close look at ancient Indian literature and the epics might provide some idea to cricket followers about the origins, or at least the antiquity, of the most noble of sports. A reference in the great Sanskrit epic, the Mahabharata, suggests that an antiquated form of cricket did exist in India at least 2,000 years ago.
The thing which Dronacharya extricated from the well in the adiparva of the Mahabharata is the object of my attention. I have no doubt at all that the object was either oval or spherical in shape, made of wood and more or less the size of a cricket ball. If the readers would care to remember, in the adiparva of the Mahabharata there is an incident which relates to the Kaurava princes. They were playing among themselves when their game had to be stopped as the object they were playing with had fallen into a dry well.
According to the epic, Dronacharya happened to be watching the children at play. When the object fell into the well and they were unsuccessful in retrieving it, he first castigated the princes for their poor skills and intelligence. Then he uprooted a handful of the ishika plant. Ishika is the Sanskrit word for a tall species of grass whose stem has a very sharp pointed end. At first he aimed an ishika stem to pierce the object that had fallen inside the well. Then he directed another to pierce the tail-end of the first. In this way he used quite a few stems, piercing one with the other. Ultimately, he just pulled up the string that he had made with the ishika and the object was brought out of the well. The young Kaurava princes were fascinated by Dronaâs ability.
Now the issue here is, was the object a ball? It is likely that the object was something of the shape of a ball. However, it could also have been an elongated oval-shaped object, as is the shape of the target in danda-guli, an old Indian sport, which is still played in rural India.
Rajsekhar Basu, in his commentary on the Mahabharata, mentioned that it was an oval-shaped object made of wood. But in the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan version of the Mahabharata, edited by Kamala Subramaniam, it is specified that the object was actually a ball. The great writer Kaliprasanna Sinha, the eminent authority on Mahabharata, as well as Sudhir Chandra Sarkar, an editor, have also acknowledged that the object was indeed a ball. The widely acknowledged Gita Press (Gorakhpur) edited Ved Vyasâs Mahabharata also accepts that the object was a ball made of wood.
Either the object was an elongated oval-shaped piece or one spherical in shape. Early versions of the game also confirm that the target in cricket had evolved from being oval-shaped to being shaped like a sphere. This may be confirmed from Barclayâs World of Cricket, edited by the erudite duo, Jim Swanton and John Woodcock.
What sort of a game was it? There is little reason to think that it was similar to football. This is because in those days, people generally played the kind of games which were primarily hand-oriented â archery, wrestling, fencing and so on â not ones in which the feet were dominant. Thus it is more likely that the sport was either cricket or volleyball.
Now that we have authoritative evidence that the object was a ball, the next query would be, was it a small ball or a big one? What was its likely size? In all likelihood, the ball was of the shape and size of a cricket ball. Bose, Sinha, Subramaniam and Sarkar as also the Gita Press have agreed that it was a small ball, but not as small as a ring.
Was the ball soft or hard? Here again, the circumstantial evidence is that the ball was not soft. Nor was it of an inflatable kind. It was surely a hard ball. If it were not, then the pointed end of the ishika plant would not have punctured the ball.
What was the material of the ball being used? Was it wood, iron or something else? Rajsekhar Basu mentioned that it was made of wood. So did Subramaniam, Sarkar and the Gita Press. Only Sinha seems to think that it was made of iron. But the ball could not have been made of iron or any hard metal. In that case, the ishika plant-head would not have been able to pierce it at all. Thus we may confirm that the ball was hard and made of wood. This revelation, that the original cricket ball was made of wood, is in conformity with the information available in the Barclayâs World of Cricket regarding the evolution of the cricket ball.
This brings us to the issue whether the sport that the Kaurava princes were indulging in could have been polo, hockey or cricket in their ancient forms. All these sports use balls of more or less similar shape, material and size.
In India, danda-guli (âbat-ballâ in literal translation) was a common pastime for young people. For aeons, people have been playing the game in which a stick or club (bat?) would be used to hit an oval-shaped, wooden object (ball?). A sport that required the co-ordination of hand and eye of a very high order. Early Sanskrit literature too mentions the existence of this sport. It is likely that on the basis of the mention of danda-guli in Sanskrit literature, Rajsekhar Basu conceived that the object was oval-shaped and not spherical. Even this view is consistent with the accepted idea of the evolution that the cricket ball underwent.
The principal implements of the sport, the stick and the small target, are remarkably similar to what is used in cricket, as we know of the game today. The game of hockey would have required many such sticks and polo would have required the presence of horses. There is no evidence that there were many sticks or clubs involved, nor of horses. <b>Thus we can safely assume that the sport played by the Kaurava princes was neither polo nor hockey, but a sport that had remarkable similarity to modern-day cricket.</b>Â <!--emo&:lol:--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laugh.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='laugh.gif' /><!--endemo-->
TO BE CONCLUDED
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->