that he
prosecuted a methodical scheme of conquest with the deliberate object
of bringing all India under one umbrella, that is, of constituting
it into one state. This phrase seems to support the idea that the
umbrella symbolised the firmament. Similarly, when Visvamitra sent
beautiful maidens to tempt the good king Harischandra he instructed
them to try and induce the king to marry them, and if he would not do
this, to ask him for the Puchukra Undi or State Umbrella, which was
the emblem of the king's protecting power over his kingdom, with the
idea that that power would be destroyed by its loss. Chhatrapati or
Lord of the Umbrella was the proudest title of an Indian king. When
Sivaji was enthroned in 1674 he proclaimed himself as Pinnacle
of the Kshatriya race and Lord of the Royal Umbrella. All these
instances seem to indicate that some powerful significance, such as
that already suggested, attached to the umbrella. Several tribes,
as the Gonds and Mundas, have a legend that their earliest king was
born of poor parents, and that one day his mother, having left the
child under some tree while she went to her work, returned to find a
cobra spreading its hood over him. The future royal destiny of the
boy was thus predicted. It is commonly said that the cobra spread
its hood over the child to guard it from the heat of the sun, but
such protection would perhaps scarcely seem very important to such
a people as the Gonds, and the mother would naturally also leave the
child in the shade. It seems a possible hypothesis that the cobra's
hood really symbolised the umbrella, the principal emblem of royal
rank, and it was in this way that the child's great destiny was
predicted. In this connection it may be noticed that one of the Jain
Tirthakars, Parasnath, is represented in sculpture with an umbrella
over his head; but some Jains say that the carving above the saint's
head is not an umbrella but a cobra's hood. Even after it had ceased
to be the exclusive appanage of the king, the umbrella was a sign of
noble rank, and not permitted to the commonalty.

The old Anglo-Indian term for an umbrella was 'roundel,' an early
English word, applied to a variety of circular objects, as a mat
under a dish, or a target, and in its form of 'arundel' to the conical
handguard on a lance. [499] An old Indian writer says: "Roundels are
in these warm climates very necessary to keep the sun from scorching
a man, they may also be serviceable to