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.