Copyright (c) Olympic Council of Asia
The Olympic Council of Asia is a governing body of sports in the continent of Asia, currently with 45 member National Olympic Committees, or NOCs.
Its origins dated back from 1913, when a small-scale multi-sport event known as the Far Eastern Games took place, and was held in between a period of 1913 to 1938 in different cities of Japan, Philippines, and mainland China. The Games were successfully organized for the next nine terms, but in September 1937, Japan invaded China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which triggered the Second Sino-Japanese War (which later became part of the World War II), thus the originally planned Games of 1938 in Osaka was cancelled, and the Far Eastern Games were discontinued thereafter.
During the starting years of the 1930s, efforts were made to organize a multi-sport competition to include the countries of West Asia too. This gave a birth to "Orient Championship Games", which later renamed as Western Asiatic Games before its first inception. The scope of the Games comprised all the countries east of Suez and west of Singapore. The event was first celebrated at New Delhi in 1934 at the Irwin Amphitheater, in which four countries—Afghanistan, British India, Palestine Mandate (now a disputed part of Israel and Palestine) and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)—participated.
The decision was made to hold these Games once in four years at midpoint between the two successive Summer Olympics. The 1938 Western Asiatic Games were scheduled to be held in Tel Aviv, in the then-Palestine Mandate, however, the Games were ultimately cancelled due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
In 1948, during that year's Summer Olympics in London, Asian NOCs had decided to establish the Asian Games, with the first edition being taken place at New Delhi. Originally scheduled to be held in 1950, it was, however, been postponed until 1951 due to delays in preparations.
The hymn of the Olympic Council of Asia was adopted during an OCA meeting held in Bangkok, Thailand on 9 December 1996. Having played in instrumental most of the time (with no lyrics), the anthem is an amalgamation of all the sounds and cultures of the Asian Continent to represent their co-operation and unity.
We added lyrics so that we simulate how the anthem would be sung, and we've also translated the verses in other languages of the competing countries (Hindi, Tamil, Filipino, Malay, Thai, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Arabic, Japanese, Korean, Chinese) just to give significance, starting with Hindi because they were the hosts of the first Asian Games in 1951, and then the last two verses are in Chinese, symbolizing the current hosts of the Games (as of this upload), since China would stage the 19th Asian Games at Hangzhou (postponed at a further date). These lyrics are based on a fan-made cover version posted just years ago on Soundcloud by a user named pet2540, with some minor improvements.
However, take note that these are unofficial lyrics, which are only made specifically for this video.
