Thus, the title of the King of Burmah is ‘Lord of the twenty-four umbrellas,’ this being the number always borne before the Emperor of China upon every state occasion, and accompanying him even to the hunting-field.[27] The connection between this umbrella-reverence and primitive tree-worship is abundantly established, both having their origin in climatic conditions. On the Sanchi Tope is figured the sacred flowering Sal tree (beneath which Gautama Buddha died at Kasia), surmounted by two _Chhatras_, these, together with the tree, being adorned with garlands. Again, on the Great Tope at Buddha Gaya, B.C. 250, erected in front of the sacred Bo tree (_Ficus religiosa_), beneath which Gautama attained to the Buddhahood, are umbrellas hung with garlands. Also in a Thibetan picture of the death of Gautama given in Dr. Waddell’s _Buddhism of Thibet_, we see a garlanded and festooned umbrella in the centre over Buddha, with attendants waving fly-flaps, and on the right a large standard fan. So deeply rooted, indeed, is the reverence for the umbrella, and so completely in the minds of the populace are these objects identified with regal power, that, upon the occasion of the visit of the Prince of Wales (King Edward VII.) to India, it was deemed necessary for his Royal Highness to appear beneath a golden umbrella on an elephant in order that his sovereign dignity might be demonstrated. In the manuscript of Nieder Muenster of Ratisbon, now in the library at Munich, we find a curious blending of the tree and umbrella form, introduced as accessories in representations of the four evangelists, doubtless merely intended as conventional floral forms, but evidently the work of some monkish illuminator who had become influenced by Oriental mythology. In Ratisbon, also, is an illumination of Christ bearing the cross, to one arm of which is attached a half-closed umbrella, reproduced in _Curiosités Mystérieuses_. ‘Le pommeau,’ says the chronicler, ‘est orné de ce que les Romains nomment Ombrellino (petit dais en parasol). S’il s’agissait à coup sûr de ce baldaquin (qui est le propre de certains dignitaires) nous pourrions rappeler que ce mot figurait déjà dans l’étiquette impériale avant Constantin.’[28] On Attic and other Greek vases of the third and fourth century B.C., to quote Sir George Birdwood, it is often very difficult to distinguish the fan from the umbrella. ‘Where it is distinctly an umbrella, it is either of the peaked Assyrian form, or of the dome-(‘rondel’ of Valentijin, etc., and ‘arundels’ of Fryer) topped Indian form (chhatra); and when it is distinctly a fan, it is usually of the Indian type, determined by the fan palm frond and the peacock feather, and rarely of the Egyptian type determined by the date-palm and the ostrich feather.’