The Diamond-Point 



3i 



mond Valley, states, " The workers in jade polish jade by the persevering 

 application of river-gravel, and carve it by means of a diamond-point. 

 Its shape is like that of the ordure of rodents; 1 it is of very black color, 

 and is at once like stone and like iron." Chou Mi apparently speaks 

 of the impure, black form of the diamond, which is still used by us for 

 industrial purposes, the tipping of drills and similar boring-instruments.* 

 These texts render it sufficiently clear that the kun-wu stone of the Shi 

 chou ki, which is found in the Hellenistic Orient, is the diamond, 8 and 

 that the cutting-instrument made from it is a diamond-point. The 

 alleged transmutation of the stone into iron is further elucidated by the 

 much-discussed passage of Pliny, "When by a lucky chance the diamond 

 happens to be broken, it is triturated into such minute splinters that 

 they can hardly be sighted. These are much demanded by gem- 

 engravers and are enclosed in iron. There is no hard substance that 

 they could not easily cut by means of this instrument." 4 



accounts of Huan Tsang, see Fa Hien, Ch. 38 (Legge, Record of Buddhistic King- 

 doms, pp. 105-107); Chavannes, M6moire sur les religieux 6minents, p. 55; de 

 Groot, Album Kern, p. 134; Yule and Cordier, Book of Ser Marco Polo, Vol. II, 

 PP- 3*9. 3 2 9-33 . etc. The Pah Chronicle of Ceylon describes a statue of Buddha, 

 in which the body and members were made of jewels of different colors; the com- 

 mentary adds that the teeth were made of diamonds (W. Geiger, Mahavamsa, 

 p. 204). It accordingly was an Indian idea (not an artifice conceived in China) 

 that the diamond could be substituted for Buddha's tooth. It is curious that 

 Pseudo- Aristotle warns against taking the diamond in the mouth, because it destroys 

 the teeth (Ruska, Steinbuch des Aristoteles, p. 150). The poet Su Shi (1036-1101), 

 in his work Wu lei siang kan chi (Wylie, Notes, p. 165), remarks that antelope- 

 horn is able to break Buddha's tooth to pieces; in this case, Buddha's tooth is a 

 synonyme for the diamond, and we have an echo of Ko Hung's legend above referred 

 to (p. 21). 



1 Shu shi 9*K, incorrectly rendered by F. de Mely (Lapidaires chinois, p. 124) 

 by "arrow-point." The word shi is here not "arrow," but "ordure, dung" (shi in 

 the third tone) ; the text of the Wu li siao shi indeed writes shi M. . which is the prop- 

 er character; and Ko chi king yuan (Ch. 33, p. 3 b), in quoting the same text of Chou 

 Mi, offers the variant shufin fltJL which has the same meaning. 



1 Known in the trade as "bort," — defective diamonds or fragments of diamonds 

 which are useless as gems. 



* The reflective and refractive power of the diamond is well illustrated in the 

 definition of that book, "brilliant and reflecting light like crystal." The coincidence 

 with Pliny's (xxxvii, 15, § 56) description of the Indian adamas is remarkable, 

 "which occurs not in gold, but in a substance somewhat cognate to crystal, not 

 differing from the latter in its transparent coloration" (Indici non in auro nascentis 

 et quadam crystalli cognatione, siquidem et colore tralucido non differt). The 

 opinion that diamond, according to its composition, was a glass-like stone of the 

 nature of rock-crystal, prevailed in Europe till the end of the eighteenth century, 

 when it was refuted by Bergmann in 1777, and experiments demonstrated that the 

 diamond is a combustible body (F. von Kobell, Geschichte der Mineralogie, p. 388). 



4 Cum feliciter contigit rumpere, in tam parvas friatur crustas, ut cerni vix 

 possint. Expetuntur hae scalptoribus ferroque includuntur, nullam non duritiam 



