36 The Diamond 



the same work, is recorded thus: 1 "In the thirteenth year of the reign 

 of the Emperor Wu (a.d. 277) there was a man in Tun-huang, who pre- 

 sented the Court with diamond jewels (kin-kang pao). These are 

 produced in the midst of gold ( £.&$*). Their color is like that of 

 fluor-spar, 2 and in their appearance they resemble a grain of buck- 

 wheat. Though many times fused, they do not melt. They can cut 

 jade as though it were merely clayish earth." It is manifest that these 

 two texts, from their coincidence chronologically, are but variants 

 referring to one and the same event, under the Tsin dynasty (265-419) ; 

 and it is likewise apparent that the text as preserved in the T'ai pHng yii 

 Ian, the great cyclopaedia published by Li Fang in 983, bears the stamp 

 of true originality, while that in the PHen tse lei pien is made up of scraps 

 borrowed from the Pao p x u tse of Ko Hung (p. 2 1) and Lie-tse's notice 

 of kun-wu (p. 28). 3 From this memorable passage we may gather 

 several interesting facts: diamonds were traded in the second part of 

 the third century from India by way of Turkistan to Tun-huang for 

 further transmission inland into China proper; and the chief charac- 

 teristics of the stone were then perfectly grasped by the Chinese, par- 

 ticularly its property of cutting other hard stones. The most important 

 gain, however, for our specific purpose, is the observation that a bit of 

 Plinian folk-lore is mingled with the Chinese account. We are at once 

 reminded of Pliny's statement that adamas was the name given to a 

 nodosity of gold, sometimes, though but rarely, found in the mines in 

 company with gold, and that it seemed to occur only in gold. 4 Pseudo- 



1 PHen tse lei pien, Ch. 71, p. 11 b. 



'See above, p. 21. 



* A third variant occurs in Yuan kien lei han (Ch. 361, p. 18b), where the term 

 "diamond" is, strangely enough, suppressed. This text runs thus: "The Books of 

 the Tsin by Wang Yin say that in the third year of the period Hien-ning (a.d. 277), 

 according to the K'i kil chu, from the district of Tun-huang were brought to the 

 Court objects found in gold caves, which originate in gold, are infusible, and can cut 

 jade." 



4 Ita appellabatur auri nodus in metallis repertus perquam raro [comes auri] 

 nee nisi in auro nasci videbatur (xxxvn, 15, § 55). Also Plato is credited with 

 having entertained a similar notion (Krause, Pyrgoteles, p. 10; H. O. Lenz, Mine- 

 ralogie der alten Griechen und Romer, p. 16; Blumner, Technologie, Vol. Ill, 

 p. 230; and in Pauly's Realenzyklopadie, Vol. IX, col. 322); although others, like 

 E. O. von Lippmann (Abhandlungen und Vortrage, Vol. II, p. 39), are not convinced 

 that Plato's adamas means the diamond. The note in Bostock and Riley's trans- 

 lation of Pliny (Vol. VI, p. 406) — that "this statement cannot apply to the diamond 

 as known to us, though occasionally grains of gold have been found in the vicinity of 

 the diamond" — is not to the point. On the contrary, it is a well-established fact 

 that the diamond does occur in connection with gold; and this experience even led 

 to the discovery of diamond-mines in the Ural. Owing to the similarity between the 

 Brazilian and Uralic gold and platina sites, Alexander von Humboldt, in 1823, 



