most loyal and energetic supporter of the young Charles XI., and finally his indispensable counsellor. Indeed, it may be said, that the political principles which he instilled into the youthful monarch were faithfully followed by Charles during the whole of his reign. In 1679 Gyllenstjerna was appointed the Swedish plenipotentiary at the peace congress of Lund. The alliance which he then concluded with Denmark bound the two northern realms together in a common foreign policy, and he sought besides to facilitate their harmonious co-operation by every means in his power. In 1680, after bringing home Charles XI.’s Danish bride from Copenhagen, he was appointed governor-general of Scania (Skåne), but expired a few weeks later.
See M. Höjer, Öfversigt af Sveriges yttre politik under åren 1676–1680 (Upsala, 1875). (R. N. B.)
GYMKHANA, a display of miscellaneous sports, originally at
the military stations of India. The word would seem to be
a colloquial remodelling of the Hindustani gend-khana, ball-house
or racquet-court, by substituting for gend the first syllable
of the English word “gymnastics.” The definition given in
Yule’s Glossary is as follows: “A place of public resort at a
station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games . . . are
provided.” The name of the place was afterwards
applied to the games themselves, and the word is now used almost
exclusively in this sense. According to Yule the first use of it
that can be traced was, on the authority of Major John Trotter,
at Rurki in the year 1861, when a gymkhana was instituted
there. Gymkhana sports were invented to relieve the monotony
of Indian station life, and both officers and men from the ranks
took part in them. The first meetings consisted of promiscuous
horse and pony races at catch weights. To these were soon
added a second variety, originally called the pāgŏl (funny races),
the one generally known outside India, which consisted of
miscellaneous races and competitions of all kinds, some serious
and some amusing, on horseback, on foot and on bicycles.
Among these may be mentioned the usual military sports; such
as tent-pegging, lemon-cutting and obstacle racing; rickshaw
racing; tilting at the ring, sack, pillion, hurdle, egg-and-spoon,
blindfold, threading-the-needle and many other kinds of races
depending upon the inventive powers of the committees in charge.
GYMNASTICS AND GYMNASIUM, terms signifying respectively
a system of physical exercises practised either for recreation
or for the purpose of promoting the health and development
of the body, and the building where such exercises are carried
on. The gymnasium of the Greeks was originally the school
where competitors in the public games received their training,
and was so named from the circumstance that these competitors
exercised naked (γυμνός). The gymnasium was a public institution
as distinguished from the palaestra, which was a
private school where boys were trained in physical exercises,
though the term palaestra is also often used for the part of a
gymnasium specially devoted to wrestling and boxing. The
athletic contests for which the gymnasium supplied the means
of training and practice formed part of the social life of the
Greeks from the earliest times. They were held in honour of
heroes and gods; sometimes forming part of a periodic festival,
sometimes of the funeral rites of a deceased chief. In course of
time the Greeks grew more attached to such sports; their free
active life, spent to a great extent in the open air, fostered the
liking almost into a passion. The victor in any athletic contest,
though he gained no money prize, was rewarded with the honour
and respect of his fellow citizens; and a victory in the great
religious festivals was counted an honour for the whole state.
In these circumstances the training of competitors for the
greater contests became a matter of public concern; and
accordingly special buildings were provided by the state, and
their management entrusted to public officials. The regulation
of the gymnasium at Athens is attributed by Pausanias (i. 39. 3)
to Theseus. Solon made several laws on the subject; but
according to Galen it was reduced to a system in the time of
Cleisthenes. Ten gymnasiarchs, one from each tribe, were
appointed annually. These performed in rotation the duties
of their office, which were to maintain and pay the persons who
were training for public contests, to conduct the games at the
great Athenian festivals, to exercise general supervision over
the morals of the youths, and to adorn and keep up the gymnasium.
This office was one of the ordinary λειτουργίαι (public
services), and great expense was entailed on the holders. Under
them were ten sophronistae, whose duty was to watch the conduct
of the youths at all times, and especially to be present at all
their games. The practical teaching and selecting of the suitable
exercises for each youth were in the hands of the paedotribae and
gymnastae, the latter of whom also superintended the effect on the
constitution of the pupils, and prescribed for them when they were
unwell. The aleiptae oiled and rubbed dust on the bodies of the
youths, acted as surgeons, and administered the drugs prescribed.
According to Galen there was also a teacher of the various
games of ball. The gymnasia built to suit these various purposes
were large buildings, which contained not merely places for each
kind of exercise, but also a stadium, baths, covered porticos for
practice in bad weather, and outer porticos where the philosophers
and men of letters read public lectures and held disputations.
The gymnasium of the Greeks did not long remain an institution exclusively devoted to athletic exercises. It soon began to be applied to other uses even more important. The development arose naturally through the recognition by the Greeks of the important place in education occupied by physical culture, and of the relation between exercise and health. The gymnasium accordingly became connected with education on the one hand and with medicine on the other. Due training of the body and maintenance of the health and strength of children were the chief part of earlier Greek education. Except the time devoted to letters and music, the education of boys was conducted in the gymnasia, where provision was made, as already mentioned, for their moral as well as their physical training. As they grew older, conversation and social intercourse took the place of the more systematic discipline. Philosophers and sophists assembled to talk and to lecture in the gymnasia, which thus became places of general resort for the purpose of all less systematic intellectual pursuits, as well as for physical exercises. In Athens there were three great public gymnasia—Academy, Lyceum and Cynosarges—each of which was consecrated to a special deity with whose statue it was adorned; and each was rendered famous by association with a celebrated school of philosophy. Plato’s teaching in the Academy has given immortality to that gymnasium; Aristotle conferred lustre on the Lyceum; and the Cynosarges was the resort of the Cynics. Plato when treating of education devotes much consideration to gymnastics (see especially Rep. iii. and various parts of Laws); and according to Plato it was the sophist Prodicus who first pointed out the connexion between gymnastics and health. Having found such exercises beneficial to his own weak health, he formulated a method which was adopted generally, and which was improved by Hippocrates. Galen lays the greatest stress on the proper use of gymnastics, and throughout ancient medical writers we find that special exercises are prescribed as the cure for special diseases.
The Greek institution of the gymnasium never became popular with the Romans, who regarded the training of boys in gymnastics with contempt as conducive to idleness and immorality, and of little use from a military point of view; though at Sparta gymnastic training had been chiefly valued as encouraging warlike tastes and promoting the bodily strength needed for the use of weapons and the endurance of hardship. Among the Romans of the republic, the games in the Campus Martius, the duties of camp life, and the enforced marches and other hardships of actual warfare, served to take the place of the gymnastic exercises required by the Greeks. The first public gymnasium at Rome was built by Nero and another by Commodus. In the middle ages, though jousts and feats of horsemanship and field sports of various kinds were popular, the more systematic training of the body which the Greeks had associated with the gymnasium fell into neglect; while the therapeutic value of special exercises as understood by Hippocrates and Galen appears to have been lost sight of. Rousseau, in his Émile, was the first in modern times to call attention to the injurious consequences of such
