Asil
Reza · The Ancestral Game

date: 2026-06-01

The Asil is the oldest documented game breed in the world. Its name, in Arabic and Hindustani, means of pure lineage; its antiquity in the cockpit is matched only by the Persian love of the sport. The Asil is not so much a single breed as a family of related landraces, from the diminutive Reza of the Andhra country to the imposing Kulang of South India and the high-stationed Sonatol of the north.

A Bird of the Indus

The earliest firm references to game-fowl contests in the Indian subcontinent appear in the Manasollasa, a twelfth-century encyclopaedia of royal pleasures compiled under the Western Chalukya king Someshvara III. The book describes in detail the feeding, conditioning, and matching of fighting cocks — birds of a build so recognizable to us from later breed books that they cannot have been very different from the Asils kept today in Hyderabad, Kurnool, and Lucknow.

The British, encountering these birds in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, recognized them as the source from which the “Shamo” of Japan and several East Asian fighting strains had sprung — a conviction confirmed by modern zoological study.

Distinctive Physical Traits

The Asil is a short, tall-standing, wide-breasted bird — three adjectives that taken together define its unmistakable silhouette. The comb is small, set low, and almost always of the pea type (three narrow ridges): a comb that bleeds little in the pit. Wattles are reduced to almost nothing; the face is rough and “gamey,” the brow overhanging the eye.

“The Aseel cock is short in the leg, broad in the breast, upright in carriage, with a cruel, relentless eye.” — Harrison Weir, The Poultry Book (1853)

Plumage runs to black-breasted red in the most traditional strains, with white, spangled, furness, and black varieties in regional populations. The body is peacock-shaped — broad shoulders, deep keel, prominent shoulder hump, and a tail held nearly horizontal or slightly downward. Weight in cocks runs from about 4 lb in the Reza to 7 lb in the Kulang.

Temperament & Behaviour

A genuine Asil is born game. Cocks will fight from the first days of life — even chicks may set upon one another before they have feathers. The breed is also noted for its broodiness: Asil hens are exceptional mothers, and the breed has been used to incubate and raise chicks of pheasants and partridges.

“No other breed can match the Asil in hardness of heart or single-mindedness of purpose.” — Aviculture-Europe breed monograph, vol. 7 (2011)

Cultural Role

The Asil is the foundation stock of most Eastern game breeds. The Shamo of Japan, the Thai Game of Siam, the Burmese Game of Myanmar, and the Saigon of Vietnam are all descended in part from birds the East Asian trading fleets brought out of the Indian Ocean during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Even in the West, several of the modern American “fighter” strains — Sweater, Hatch, Kelso — carry an estimated 25–50% Asil blood, mostly introduced through the “Shamo cross” of the early twentieth century.

Conservation & Modern Status

The Asil is listed by the Livestock Conservancy as a heritage breed of moderate conservation concern. In its home range, populations remain strong — cockfighting, while restricted in India to certain regional and festival contexts, persists. In the West, the exhibition tradition has preserved several distinct bloodlines.