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 hard
the rain may pelt.
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