14 



NATURE 



\_Feb. 6, 1890 



It was the information given by the traveller on the 

 diamond-mines worked in his day, that first drew Mr. 

 Ball's attention to the subject of Tavernier's travels. The 

 mines visited and described by him have long been 

 abandoned, and even their very sites forgotten. With 

 free labour, and at its present enhanced rates, diamond- 

 working is no longer so remunerative as under the 

 despotic governments of the seventeenth century, and it 

 is within the recollection of the present writer that the 

 working of one of the most productive mines of the 

 former Golconda State was let on behalf of the British 

 Government at the modest rental of 100 rupees. Ta- 

 vernier gives it to be understood, indeed, that only four 

 mines were worked, all of which he visited ; but Mr. 

 Ball tells us there is ample reason for believing that they 

 were far more numerous than he had any conception of ; 

 and in an appendix he gives a full list of all the Indian 

 localities at which diamonds have been obtained as far 

 as is known, together with the geographical co-ordinates 

 of all such as he has succeeded in identifying. Owing 

 to the vagaries of phonetic spelling, and the ignorance of 

 Indian geography on the part of many who have dealt 

 with this subject, this identification has been far from 

 easy. As amusing examples of the way in which 

 localities have been confused by some previous writers, 

 Mr. Ball tells us that " one author gives Pegu as a 

 diamond-mine in Southern India ; in the Mount Catti 

 of another we have a reference to the Ghdts of Southern 

 India " ; and he adds : " For some time I was unable to 

 identify a certain Mr. Cullinger, who was quoted by one 

 writer, in connection with diamonds. Will it be believed 

 that this gerttleman ultimately proved on investigation to 

 be Xh&fort of Kalinjar 1 " — a well-known historical fortress 

 in Bundelkhand. 



Indian diamonds are found exclusively in rocks of the 

 Vindhyan formation or in the gravels of rivers that drain 

 these rocks. The formation consists of sandstones, lime- 

 stones, and other sedimentary rocks, certainly not more 

 recent than the Lower Palaeozoic age, but being unfossili- 

 ferous, their precise age cannot be determined. In 

 Southern India the diamonds occur only in the Bdnagan- 

 pili sandstone, at the base of the lower subdivision of the 

 Vindhyan series, or in gravels derived from that bed. 

 This is described by the authors of the " Manual of the 

 Geology of India" as usually from 10 to 20 feet thick 

 consisting of gravelly, coarse sandstone, often earthy, and 

 containing numerous beds of small pebbles. The dia. 

 monds are found in some of the more clayey and pebbly 

 layers, and in the opinion of Dr. W. King, the present 

 Director of the Indian Geological Survey, they are 

 innate in the rock. This view does not, however, appear 

 to commend itself to the authors of the manual. In 

 Northern India, at Panna, in Bundelkhand, the diamond 

 bed is in the upper division of the Vindhyan series ; but 

 it is considered not improbable that here also the original 

 nidus of the diamonds was, as in Southern India, a bed 

 of the lower subdivision, pebbles of which occur in the 

 diamond bed, and are extracted and broken up in the 

 search for the gem. 



As is well known, Tavernier examined, and in his book 

 described and figured, the famous Great Mogul diamond, 

 then in the possession of the Emperor Aurungzebe ; and 

 he has been often cited as a principal witness by those 



who have discussed the question of the history of the 

 Koh-i-noor. To this subject Mr. Ball devotes a long 

 note in the appendix, arriving at conclusions which differ 

 from those of Prof. N. S. Maskelyne, and indeed of most 

 previous writers, with the exception of James Forbes,. 

 Major-General Sleeman, and Mr. Tennant. The argu- 

 ment is somewhat complex, and hardly admits of abstrac- 

 tion, and we must therefore refer those who are interested 

 in the subject to the text of Mr. Ball's note. It will suffice 

 here to indicate the main issues. They are concerned 

 with the identification inter se of the three diamonds 

 known respectively as the Mogul diamond, Baber's dia- 

 mond, and the Koh-i-noor. The first of these, described 

 and figured by Tavernier, is the largest diamond on re- 

 cord, and is stated to have weighed originally, before 

 cutting, 900 ratis (an Indian weight still in use, but the 

 value of which has varied greatly at different times and 

 under different circumstances). When Tavernier saw 

 it, it had been reduced by unskilful cutting to about 

 two-fifths of its former size, and weighed only 3795 

 7-atis, which Mr. Ball computes to be equivalent to 268 

 English carats. Baber's diamond, of which Tavernier 

 makes no mention, but which is equally historic, Mr. 

 Ball thinks was probably retained by the imprisoned 

 Shah Jehan, and acquired by Aurungzebe only after 

 Shah Jehan's death. The weight of this stone is com- 

 puted by Mr. Ball, from the statements of Baber and 

 Ferishta, to have been 186 English carats. The weight 

 of the Koh-i-noor when first brought to England was 

 exactly the same as that computed for Baber's diamond, 

 or, accurately, i86'o6 carats. Now Prof. Maskelyne, 

 General Cunningham, and several other writers regard 

 these three stones as identical, and the former suggests 

 that Tavernier's estimate of the weight of the Great 

 Mogul diamond in carats (probably Florentine) was erro- 

 neous, and due to his having adopted a mistaken value 

 for the rati. This view Mr. Ball is unable to accept. 

 Nevertheless he considers it probable that the Koh-i-noor 

 is the remnant of the Mogul diamond, from which por- 

 tions have been removed while it was in the possession 

 of the unfortunate grandson of Nadir Shah, or some 

 other of those through whose hands it passed before it 

 was acquired by Runjeet Singh ; and that Baber's dia- 

 mond was a distinct stone, now in the possession of the 

 Shah of Persia, and known as the Dariya-i-noor (sea of 

 lustre), the weight of which is also 186 carats. 



Mr. Ball's careful criticism of the available evidence, 

 and his clear setting forth of the several steps of his 

 argument, give weight to the conclusion at which he 

 finally arrives, that will doubtless be acknowledged even 

 by those who differ from him. But as regards the 

 identity of the Koh-i-noor and the Mogul diamond, there 

 remains one objection which, as it appears to us, Mr. 

 Ball has hardly adequately disposed of. If Tavernier's 

 figure, as reproduced by Mr. Ball, represents at all faith- 

 fully the general form and especially the height of the 

 Mogul diamond, it is difficult to see how a comparatively 

 flat stone like the Koh-i-noor could have been obtained 

 from it without a much greater reduction of its weight 

 than the 82 carats which are all that his data admit of. 

 The lateral dimensions of the two stones accord fairly 

 enough, so that any reduction of Tavernier's figured 

 stone, to bring it down to the required size, could be 



