An Indian prince, in a Sanskrit inscription of the 9th century, boasts of
having wrested from the King of Marwar the two umbrellas pleasing to
Parvati, and white as the summer moonbeams. Prithi Raj, 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 Harleian 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; - [Greek: skiadia
chrysokokkina] 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 umbrello is, however, in
Minsheu's dictionary. [See Hobson-Jobson, s.v. Umbrella. - H. C.]
(Murat. Dissert. II. 229; Archiv. Storic. Ital. VIII. 274, 560;
Klapr. Mem. III.; Carp. 759; N. and Q., C. and J. II. 180; Arrian,
Indica, XVI.; Smith's Dict., G. and R. Ant., s. v. umbraculum; J. R.
A. S. v. 351; Ras Mala, 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. ch. 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 (shonkar). The shonkar appears, however,
according to Erdmann, on certain coins of the Golden Horde, struck at
Sarai.
There is a passage from Wassaf used by Hammer, in whose words it runs that
the Sayad Imamuddin, appointed (A.D. 683) governor of Shiraz by Arghun
Khan, "was invested with both the Mongol symbols of delegated
sovereignty, the Golden Lion's Head, and the golden Cat's Head." It
would certainly have been more satisfactory to find "Gerfalcon's Head" in
lieu of the latter; but it is probable that the same object is meant. The
cut below exhibits the conventional effigy of a gerfalcon as sculptured
over one of the gates of Iconium, Polo's Conia. The head might easily pass
for a conventional representation of a cat's head, and is indeed
strikingly like the grotesque representation that bears that name in
mediaeval architecture. (Erdmann, Numi Asiatici, I. 339; Ilch. I.
370.)
[Illustration: Sculptured Gerfalcon. (From the Gate of Iconium.)]
[1] "In anno Simiae, octava luna, die quarto exeunte, juxta fluvium Cobam
(the Kuban), apud Ripam Rubeam existentes scripsimus." The original
was in lingua Persayca.
[2] See Golden Horde, p. 218.
CHAPTER VIII.
CONCERNING THE PERSON OF THE GREAT KAAN.
The personal appearance of the Great Kaan, Lord of Lords, whose name is
Cublay, is such as I shall now tell you. He is of a good stature, neither
tall nor short, but of a middle height. He has a becoming amount of flesh,
and is very shapely in all his limbs. His complexion is white and red, the
eyes black and fine,[NOTE 1] the nose well formed and well set on. He has
four wives, whom he retains permanently as his legitimate consorts; and
the eldest of his sons by those four wives ought by rights to be
emperor; - I mean when his father dies. Those four ladies are called
empresses, but each is distinguished also by her proper name. And each of
them has a special court of her own, very grand and ample; no one of them
having fewer than 300 fair and charming damsels. They have also many pages
and eunuchs, and a number of other attendants of both sexes; so that each
of these ladies has not less than 10,000 persons attached to her
court.[NOTE 2]
When the Emperor desires the society of one of these four consorts, he
will sometimes send for the lady to his apartment and sometimes visit her
at her own. He has also a great number of concubines, and I will tell you
how he obtains them.
You must know that there is a tribe of Tartars called UNGRAT, who are
noted for their beauty. Now every year an hundred of the most beautiful
maidens of this tribe are sent to the Great Kaan, who commits them to the
charge of certain elderly ladies dwelling in his palace. And these old
ladies make the girls sleep with them, in order to ascertain if they have
sweet breath [and do not snore], and are sound in all their limbs. Then
such of them as are of approved beauty, and are good and sound in all
respects, are appointed to attend on the Emperor by turns.
