Umbrellas and their History | Page 6

do not carry girls' parasols."]
Gorius says that the Umbrella came to Rome from the Etruscans, and certainly it appears not infrequently on Etruscan vases, as also on later gems. One gem, figured by Pacudius, shows an Umbrella with a bent handle, sloping backwards. Strabo describes a sort of screen or Umbrella worn by Spanish women, but this is not like a modern Umbrella.
Very many curious facts are connected with the use of the Umbrella throughout the East, where it was nearly everywhere one of the insignia of royalty, or at least of high rank.
M. de la Loub��re, who was Envoy Extraordinary from the French King to the King of Siam in 1687 and 1688, wrote an account entitled a "New Historical Relation of the Kingdom of Siam," which was translated in 1693 into English. According to his account the use of the Umbrella was granted to some only of the subjects by the king. An Umbrella with several circles, as if two or three umbrellas were fastened on the same stick, was permitted to the king alone, the nobles carried a single Umbrella with painted cloths hanging from it. The Talapoins (who seem to have been a sort of Siamese monks) had Umbrellas made of a palm-leaf cut and folded, so that the stem formed a handle. The same writer describes the audience-chamber of the King of Siam. In his quaint old French, he says:--"Pour tout meuble il n'y a que trois para-sol, un devant la fen��tre, a neuf ronds, & deux �� sept ronds aux deux c?t��z de la fen��tre. Le para-sol est en ce Pais-la, ce que le Dais est en celui-ci."
Tavernier, in his "Voyage to the East," says that on each side of the Mogul's throne were two Umbrellas, and also describes the hall of the King of Ava as decorated with an Umbrella. The Mahratta princes, who reigned at Poonah and Sattara, had the title of Ch'hatra-pati, "Lord of the Umbrella." Ch'hatra or ch��ta has been suggested as the derivation of satrapaes (exatrapaes in Theopompus), and it seems a probable derivation enough. The ch��ta of the Indian and Burmese princes is large and heavy, and requires a special attendant, who has a regular position in the royal household. In Ava it seems to have been part of the king's title, that he was "King of the white elephant, and Lord of the twenty-four Umbrellas." Persons of rank in the Mahratta court, who were not permitted the right of carrying an Umbrella, used a screen, a flat vertical disc called AA'-ab-gir, carried by an attendant. Even now the Umbrella has not lost its emblematic meaning. In 1855 the King of Burmah directed a letter to the Marquis of Dalhousie in which he styles himself "His great, glorious, and most excellent Majesty, who reigns over the kingdoms of Thunaparanta, Tampadipa, and all the great Umbrella-wearing chiefs of the Eastern countries," &c.
Thus we see that the same signification which was attached to the Umbrella by the ancient people of Nineveh, still remains connected with it even in our own time.
In the Great Exhibition of 1851 was the splendid Umbrella belonging to his Highness the Maharajah of Najpoor. The ribs and stretchers, sixteen in number, divided the Umbrella into as many segments, covered with silk, exquisitely embroidered with gold and silver ornaments. The upper part of the design was complete in each department, but at the lower, it was formed into a graceful running border, to which a fringe was attached. The handle was hollow and formed of thick silver plates.
In Bengal it appears that no distinction is attached to the Umbrella, since the poorer classes there use a ch��ta or small Umbrella, made of leaves of the Licerata peltata. These are of conical form and have numerous ribs and stretchers. The higher class in Assam use a similar Umbrella.
In China the use of the Umbrella does not appear to have been confined, as in India and Persia, to royalty; but it was always, as it is now, a mark of high rank, though not exclusively so. There seems to have been no particular rule about it, but it carried with it some peculiar distinction; for, on one occasion at least, we hear of twenty-four Umbrellas being carried before the Emperor when he went out hunting. Here it is, what it appears to be in no other Eastern country, a defence against rain rather than sun, and while the richer people do not go out much while it is wet, the poorer classes wear a dress that protects them from the weather. In the rainy season, for instance, a Chinese boatman wears a coat of straw, and a hat of straw and bamboo. Such a dress, of course, renders an Umbrella superfluous, and it matters little to the wearer how