История жонглирования: от Древнего Египта до Китая.

The art of juggling has existed in various cultures throughout history. The beginning is uncertain. The first depictions were found in ancient Egypt, China, Greece, and Rome, as well as medieval and modern societies.

The earliest record of toss juggling is a painting on the wall of Tomb 15 in Egypt's Beni Hasan cemetery complex. This tomb belonged to Baqet III, a provincial governor of Menat Khufu (present day Minya) during the later years of the Eleventh Dynasty of Egypt. It depicts female dancers and acrobats juggling up to three balls, and one of the girls juggling with her arms crossed. In another Beni Hasan painting, four girls are playing a juggling game in which two girls throw and catch a ball while being carried on the backs of the others. Arthur Watson, in his 1907 article for The Reliquary and Illustrated Archaeologist, suggests that if a player dropped the ball in this game, it became that player's turn to become the bearer. Brooklyn Museum associate curator Dr. Robert Bianchi suggests that the appearance of jugglers in the Beni Hassan tomb may be "an analogy between balls and circular mirrors, as round things were used to represent solar objects, birth and death."

References to jugglers in Chinese literature from the Spring and Autumn period indicate that toss juggling was a well developed form of ancient Chinese art. Xiong Yiliao , was a Chu warrior who fought under King Zhuang of Chu (ruled 613 591 BC) during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history. Ancient Chinese annals state that he practiced nòngwán, "throwing multiple objects up and down without dropping". During a battle in about 603 BC between the states of Chu and Song, Xiong Yiliao stepped out between the armies and juggled nine balls, which so amazed the Song troops that all five hundred of them turned and fled, allowing the Chu army to win a complete victory. As Xu Wugui recounts in Chapter 24 of the Zhuangzi, “Yiliao of Shinan juggled balls, and the conflict between the two states was ended.”

Lanzi , another juggler from the Spring and Autumn period who is mentioned in the Chinese annals, lived during the reign of Duke Yuan of Song (531 517 BC). Roughly translated, Chapter 8 of the Liezi, an ancient collection of Daoist sayings, reads as follows:
In the State of Song there lived a man named Lanzi, who sought favor from Lord Yuan of Song for his skills. Lord Yuan of Song summoned him, and he performed on stilts that were twice as long as his body and attached to his legs. He walked and ran on them, and he also juggled seven swords, alternately throwing them and always keeping five swords in the air. Lord Yuan was amazed, and at once he granted Lanzi gold and silk. The passage states that Lanzi juggled the jian, a straight, double edged sword which was used during the Spring and Autumn period. According to Jian Zhao in The Early Warrior and the Birth of the Xia, Lanzi was a general term for itinerant entertainers in pre Qin and Han times.

In the Middle Ages juggling was one of many skills performed by entertainers and buffoons. Representations of juggling in the Middle Ages may be found in illuminated manuscripts in the British Museum. One manuscript (Cotton MS. Tib. C. vi, folio 30 v.), from an eleventh century book on the life of Christ, shows an attendant of King David juggling three balls with his right hand and three knives with his left. William the Conqueror's minstrel Taillefer is recorded as performing a simple juggling trick with his sword at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, throwing and catching it, and then killing an English soldier. The Boke of Saint Albans, published in England in 1486, mentions a “Neverthriving of Jugglers” as part of a list of collective nouns. Legends and epic sagas from medieval folklore mention juggling. The Irish hero Cuchulainn is described “keeping nine apples, and his shield, and his sword in the air, that none of them fell to the ground.” Similarly, in The Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel, a juggler named Tulchinne is described with “nine swords in his hand, and nine silvern shields, and nine apples of gold.”

In 1528, Emperor Babur of Hindustan described in his memoir a group of jugglers simultaneously spinning seven rings on their forehead, thighs, fingers, and toes. In the same year, Aztec antipodist jugglers were brought to Europe by Hernán Cortés and painted by Christoph Weiditz. Stewart Culin in Games of the North American Indians lists examples of juggling among the Naskapi, Eskimo, Achomawi, Bannock, Shoshone, Ute, and Zuni tribes of North America. One example, quoted from George Dorsey, describes a game played by Shoshone women who juggled up to four balls made of mud, cut gypsum, or rounded water worn stones. Dorsey describes betting contests in which the women raced toward an objective such as a tree or tipi while juggling. This may be an early example of joggling. Otedama is a traditional Japanese juggling game practiced by women throwing up to five balls in a shower pattern, often while singing rhymes. A similar game called hiko, involving throwing limes, gourds, or tuitui nuts in the shower pattern has been played by young girls in Tonga for centuries. The earliest record of juggling in Tonga is from Johann Reinhold Forster in 1773, who describes a girl of 10–12 years juggling five fruits on the beach. Incredibly, Polynesian women have been verified showering 7 tuitui nuts, and there are reliable reports of women showering up to 10 nuts.