IIIF Color HighRes
National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
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| IIIF Color HighRes |
| The Book of Ser Marco Polo : vol.1 |
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Citation Information
CRAP. VII. U MBRELLAS
355
An Indian prince, in a Sanskrit inscription of the 9th century, boasts of having wrested from the King of Márwár the two umbrellas pleasing to Parvati, and white as the summer moonbeams. Prithi Ráj, the last Hindu king of Delhi, is depicted by the poet Chand as shaded by a white umbrella on a golden staff. An unmistakable umbrella, copied from a Saxon MS. in the H arleian collection, is engraved in Wright's History of Domestic Manners, p. 75. The fact that the gold umbrella is one of the paraphernalia of high church dignitaries in Italy seems to presume acquaintance with the thing from a remote period. A decorated umbrella also accompanies the host when sent out to the sick, at least where I write, in Palermo. Ibn Batuta says that in his time all the people of Constantinople, civil and military, great and small, carried great umbrellas over their heads, summer and winter. Ducange quotes, from a MS. of the Paris Library, the Byzantine court regulations about umbrellas, which are of the genuine Pan-Asiatic spirit ;—CTKCá&ca XpvOoKÓKKCVa extend from the Hypersebastus to the grand Stratopedarchus, and so on ; exactly as used to be the case, with different titles, in Java. And yet it is curious that John Marignolli, Ibn Batuta's contemporary in the middle of the 14th century, and Barbosa in the 16th century, are alike at pains to describe the umbrella as some strange object. And in our own country it is commonly stated that the umbrella was first used in the last century, and that Jonas Hanway (died 1786) was one of the first persons who made a practice of carrying one. The word umbrella is, however, in Minsheu's dictionary. [See HobsonJobson, s.v. Umbrella.—H. C.]
(Murat. Dissect. II. 229 ; Arclziv. Storic. Ital. VIII. 274, 560 ; Klapr. 11Iérn. III. ; Carp. 759 ; N. and Q., C. and J II. 'So ; Arrian, Indica, XVI. ; Smith's Dict. , G. and R. Ant., s. v. unzbraculunz ; J. R. A. S. v. 351 ; Ras 11 dla, I. 221 ; I. B. II. 440 ; Cathay, 381 ; Ramus. I. f. 301.)
Alexander, according to Athenaeus, feasted his captains to the number of 6000, and made them all sit upon silver chairs. The same author relates that the King of Persia, among other rich presents, bestowed upon Entimus the Gortynian, who went up to the king in imitation of Themistocles, a silver chair and a gilt umbrella. (Bk. I. Epit. eh. 31, and II. 31.)
The silver chair has come down to our own day in India, and is much affected by native princes.
NOTE 4.---I have not been able to find any allusion, except in our author, to tablets, with gerfalcons (shonkczr). The shorzkdr appears, however, according to Erdmann, on certain coins of the Golden Horde, struck at Sarai.
There is a passage from Wassáf used by Hammer, in whose words it runs that the Sayad Imámuddín, appointed (A. n. 683) governor of Shiraz by Arghun Khan, was
Sculptured Gerfalcon. (From the Gate of Iconium.) VOL I.
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