44 The Diamond 



adamas of India, it is fairly certain that also the adamas is the dia- 

 mond; it is, at any rate, infinitely more certain than that the jewel 

 first known only to kings should have been quartz, specular iron ore, 

 emery, or some other unidentified substance. That emery is not meant 

 by Pliny becomes evident from the fact that emery was well known 

 to the ancients under the name naxium. 1 The Indian diamond is per- 

 fectly well described by Pliny as an hexangular crystal resembling 

 two pyramids placed base to base; that is, the octahedral form in 

 which the diamond commonly crystallizes. 2 Whether the five other 

 varieties spoken of by Pliny are real diamonds or not is of no conse- 

 quence in this connection; two of these he himself brands as degen- 

 erate stones. The name very probably served in this case as a bare 

 trademark. Diamonds at that time were scarce, and the demand was 

 satisfied by inferior stones. That such were sold under the name of 

 "diamond" does not prove that the ancients were not acquainted with 

 the true diamond. The diamond of India was known to them, 3 and 



first place." P. S. Iyengar (The Diamonds of South India, Quarterly Journal of 

 the Mythic Society, Vol. Ill, 1914, p. 118) observes, "Among the Hindu, both ancient 

 and modern, the diamond is always regarded as the first of the nine precious gems 

 (navaratna)." 



1 BlUmner, Technologie, Vol. Ill, pp. 198, 286. In Greek it is styled oixbpu. 

 "Emery is the stone employed by the engravers for the cutting of gems" (Dios- 



CORIDES, CLXVl). 



1 This passage has embarrassed some interpreters of Pliny (H. O. Lenz, Mine- 

 ralogie der alten Griechen und Romer, p. 163; A. Nies, Zur Mineralogie des Plinius, 

 p. 5), because they did not grasp the fact that it is the octahedron which has six 

 points or corners (sexangulus) ; and thus such inadequate translations were matured 

 as "its highly polished hexangular and hexahedral form" (Bostock and Riley, 

 Natural History of Pliny, Vol. VI, p. 406). No body, of course, can simultaneously 

 be hexangular and hexahedral, the hexahedron being a cube with six sides and four 

 points. Pliny's wording is plain and concise, and his description tallies with the 

 Sanskrit definition of the diamond as "six-cornered" (shafkona, sha(ko(i, or sha^dra; 

 see R. Garbe [Die indischen Mineralien, p. 80], who had wit enough to see that this 

 term hints at the octahedron and correctly answers to the diamond; likewise L. 

 Finot, Lapidaires indiens, p. xxvu). It is not impossible that the Plinian definition 

 is an echo of a tradition hailing, with the diamond, directly from India. 



3 The Indian diamond is mentioned also by Ptolemy, according to whom the 

 greatest bulk of diamonds was found with the Savara tribe (Pauly, Realenzyklo- 

 padie, Vol. I, col. 344), by the Periplus Maris Erythraei (56, ed. Fabricius, p. 98), 

 and by Dionysius Periegetes (second century a.d.) in his poem describing the 

 habitable earth (Orbis descriptio, Verse 11 19). The diamond is doubtless included 

 also among the precious stones cast by the sea upon the shores of India, mentioned 

 by Curtius Rufus, and among Strabo's precious stones, some of which the Indians 

 collect from among the pebbles of the river, and others of which they dig out of the 

 earth (McCrindle, Invasion of India by Alexander, pp. 187-188). Alexander's 

 expedition made the Greeks familiar with the diamond, hence it is mentioned by 

 Theophrastus (De lapidibus, 19), who compares the carbuncle with the adamas. I 

 do not agree with the objections raised by some authors against Theophrastus' 



