26 The Diamond 



will only become intelligible if we substitute "ram's blood" for "ram's 

 horn" and interpret "ram's blood" as the blood of the Lamb, the 

 Christian Saviour. This symbolic explanation has indeed been attached 

 in the West to Pliny's ram's blood subduing the diamond. The idea is 

 not found in the Physiologus, which compares the diamond itself with 

 Christ (analogous to Buddha as the diamond), but it turns up in the 

 mediaeval poets. Frauenlob explains the destruction of the diamond 

 through buck's blood as the salvation, saying that the adamas (diamond) 

 of the hard curse was broken by the blood of Christ. 1 



Diamond and Lead. — Dioscorides of the first century a.d. observes 

 on the diamond, "It is one of the properties of the diamond to break 

 the stones against which it is brought into contact and pressed. It 

 acts alike on all bodies of the nature of stone, with the exception of lead. 

 Lead attacks and subdues it. While it resists fire and iron, it allows 

 itself to be broken by lead, and this is the expedient employed to pul- 

 verize it." 2 



The oldest Arabic book on stones, sailing under the flag of Aristotle, 

 reports in the chapter on the diamond, probably drawing from Dios- 

 corides, that it cannot be overpowered by any other stone save lead, 

 which is capable of pulverizing it. 8 



In a Syriac and Arabic treatise on alchemy of the ninth or tenth 

 century, edited and translated by R. Duval, it is said that lead makes 

 the diamond suffer; the translator understands this in the sense that 

 lead serves for the working of the diamond, adding in a note that one 

 worked the diamond and other precious stones, enclosed in sheets of 

 lead, by means of ruby or diamond dust. 4 The action of lead on the 

 diamond certainly is imaginary. This idea conveys the impression of 

 having received its impetus from the circle of the alchemists. Muham- 

 med Ibn Mansur, who wrote a treatise on mineralogy in Persian during 

 the thirteenth century, says regarding this point, "On the anvil, the 

 diamond is not broken under the hammer, but rather penetrates into 

 the anvil. In order to break the diamond, it is placed between lead, 

 the latter being struck with a mallet, whereupon the stone is broken. 

 Others, instead of using lead, envelop the diamond in resin or 



1 Compare F. Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, p. 179. In the Cathedral 

 of Troyes there is a sculpture from the end of the thirteenth century, representing the 

 Lamb of God under the unusual form of a ram with large horns and bearing the Cross 

 of the Resurrection. A. N. Didron (Christian Iconography, Vol. I, pp. 325, 326) 

 styles this work a "most unaccountable anomaly," but the symbolism set forth above 

 surely accounts for it. 



1 L. Leclerc, Traite des simples, Vol. Ill, p. 272. 



* J. Ruska, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 149 (compare p. 76). 



4 M. Berthelot, La chimie au moyen age, Vol. II, pp. 124, 136. 



