Polo is thought to have originated in China and Persia around
2,000 years ago. The name of the game may well come from the
word “pholo” meaning 'ball' or 'ballgame' in the Balti language
of Tibet. The first recorded game took place in 600BC between
the Turkomans and Persians (the Turkomans won). In the fourth
century AD, King Sapoor II of Persia learned to play, aged
seven. In the 16th century, a polo ground (300 yards long and
with goalposts eight yards apart) was built at Ispahan, then the
capital, by Shah Abbas the Great. The Moguls were largely
responsible for taking the game from Persia to the east and, by
the 16th century, the Emperor Babur had established it in India.
(It had already long been played in China and Japan, but had
died out by the time the West came in contact with those
countries). In the 1850s, British tea planters discovered the
game in Manipur (Munipoor) on the Burmese border with India.
They founded the world’s first polo club at Silchar, west of
Manipur. Other clubs followed and toda