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 cháta 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