So The Diamond 



On the other hand, we have two testimonies in witness of the fact 

 that, even though a certain crude method of treating diamonds may 

 have lingered in the Orient, the superior European achievements along 

 this line were received by Oriental nations as a surprising novelty. The 

 Armenian lapidarium of the seventeenth century states, 1 "No one 

 besides the Franks (Europeans) understands how to polish and to bore 

 the diamond. The polished stone of four carats is sold at ten thousand 

 otmani. The Franks at Aleppo say that the diamond, though it is the 

 king of all precious stones, is of no utility without polishing, because 

 in its raw state admixtures will remain, which may often not be notice- 

 able in the cut stone." The Chinese made their first acquaintance with 

 polished diamonds among the Portuguese of Macao, who, they say, base 

 their valuation on this quality. 2 



Acquaintance of the Chinese with the Diamond. — Let us now 

 examine the objections which have been raised by sinologues to the 

 identification of the term kin-kang with the diamond. F. Porter 

 Smith, 3 who made rather inexact statements on the subject, in 1871 

 contested that kin-kang denotes the real diamond, and treated it under 

 the title "corundum," which arbitrarily he takes for "a kind of adaman- 

 tine spar." Corundum, he states, crystallizes in six-sided prisms, but 

 the Chinese siliceous stone is said to be octahedral in form. If this be 

 really said by the Chinese, it is evidence that the stone in question is the 

 diamond, not corundum; and the latter, in its main varieties of ruby and 

 sapphire, is well known to the Chinese under a number of terms. Black- 

 ish emery, containing iron, it is thought by Smith, is also described 



brought forward for the assertion that the ancients did not employ diamond-dust; 

 but he recruited no new facts for the discussion, and merely referred to the old fable 

 that the Bishop Marbodus (1035-1123) should have been familiar with diamond- 

 dust. Marbodus, however, in his famous treatise De lapidibus pretiosis, most 

 obviously speaks only of diamond-splinters (huius fragmentis gemmae sculptuntur 

 acutis; in the earliest French translation, des pieccettes |Ki en esclatent agu£ttes| 

 Les altres gemmes sunt talliees| E gentement aparelliees. — L. Pannier, Lapidaires 

 francais du moyen age, p. 36), as translated correctly also by King (Antique Gems, 

 p. 392); and he does so, not because he was possibly acquainted with them, but be- 

 cause he copied this matter, as most of his data, from Pliny. Likewise Konrad von 

 Megenberg, in his Book of Nature written 1349-50 (ed. of F. Pfeiffer, p. 433), 

 states only that other hard precious stones are graved with pointed diamond-pieces. 

 It means little, as insisted upon by Sokeland, that A. Hirth and Mariette second the 

 cause of the ancients in the use of diamond-dust, as their opinion is not based on any 

 text to this effect (such does not exist), but merely on the impression received from 

 certain engraved gems. The conclusion, however, that these could not have been 

 worked otherwise than by means of diamond-dust, is unwarranted, and plainly 

 contradicted by Pliny's data regarding the treatment of precious stones. 



1 Russian translation of Patkanov, p. 4. 



■ Wu li siao shi, Ch. 8, p. 22. 



* Contributions^toward the Materia Medica of China, pp. 74, 85. 



