NATURE 



[November 5, 1891 



I could say more about the Garcias-De Boot matter, but I am 

 satisfied with having shown that it was not Dr. Ball, but Mr. 

 King, who, twenty-five years ago, explained the misprints in 

 De Hoot, and declared the very great improbability of the 140 

 mangelin diamond of Garcias, estimated by De Boot at a weight 

 of 187J carats, not being the Koh-i-Nur. Dr. Ball alludes to 

 inaccurate figures in Mr. King's treatise. That Mr. King was 

 inaccurate, was hasty, no one knows better than I. Nor did 

 any of his many warm friends lament more than I did the unhappy 

 infliction of advancing blindness which explains so much of the 

 former demerit, as no one admired more than I the boy-like 

 enthusiasm whicn often gilded in his imagination what seemed 

 to other-! metal of a less precious order than gold. lie had a 

 splendid memory, and he trusted too much to ii in drawing out 

 from it, rather than throwing on his impaired eyesight, the veri- 

 fying tbe records of his enormous reading and varied knowledge. 

 I had controversies with him over a thousand subjects, but while 

 he kept singularly isolated, and let no one come between him I 

 and his printer, he never resented a friend's criticism or difference 

 from him. 



As regards the scene before the throne of Aurungzebe, it can 

 never, perhaps, be determined whether the view first put for- 

 ward by Prof. H. II. Wilson, that Tavernier weighed the 

 diamond, but wiih weights and scales supplied by Akil Khan 

 its custodian, is the correct one ; or the view I have held — 

 namely, that Tavernier's account of the transaction given in his 

 tenth chapter was barely compatible with his having weighed 

 the stone, as he asserts he did in the twenty-second chapter of 

 his book, which was avowedly a retrospective one written long 

 afterwards, and near the end of his life. That I have reason for 

 adhering by preference to the latter view is confirmed by what Dr. 

 Ball himself says of another passage referring to the Great Mogul : 

 diamond. Dr. Ball condemns the passage as "in part spurious if 

 not altogether so, . . . as the statements are in contradiction 

 with others made elsewhere in the ' Travels ' ; and there is the 

 strongest reason for attributing them to an erroneous editorial 

 interpretation, and not to Tavernier himself." The delinquent 

 he supposes to have been a M. Samuel Chappuzeau, the reputed 

 editor of Tavernier's works. 



As a fact, the travelled Frenchman seems to have been a 

 person somewhat illiterate, as he had to call in extraneous aid 

 in putting his memoirs into shape. He must be supposed to 

 have picked up some colloquial Persian, but otherwise seems 

 to have been dependent on interpreters throughout his travels. 

 The treatment Chappuzeau received during a year of editorial 

 service at the hands of Tavernier and his wife is recounted 

 by Dr. Ball as a sort of "mortification, if not martyrdom." 

 Chappuzeau appears to have described the notes of the traveller, 

 on which he had to depend, as a chaos, and to have attributed 

 the only written part of them to the penmanship of one Father 

 Gabriel. I think I am justified, then, in asking whether the 

 account of the weighing in the later chapter may not have been 

 an editorial afterthought; but whether it were so or was historical, 

 in the sense assigned to it by Prof. Wilson, really very little 

 affects the question. 



The logical issue of this discussion is involved in the accept- 

 ance of one of two alternatives, the one a series of astounding 

 coincidences and improbabilities, the other one of simple prob- 

 abilities. Garcias saw a diamond weighing 140 mangelins ; 

 Le Cluze estimated its weight at 700 apothecary grains (= 573 "8 

 grains troy, or 180 carats). De Boot assigned to it a weight of 

 187I carats. The Koh-i-Nur weighed 589J grains, or 186 carats. 

 Misinterpreting a note of Le Cluze, Dr. Ball throws scorn on 

 this having anything to do with the Koh-i-Nur. 



Tavernier sees a diamond to which a weight is assigned of 

 319*5 rati-. Babar's diamond (the Kohi-Nur) weighed 8 

 mishkals, or 320 ratis, equivalent to about 186 carats. Dr.eBall 

 says this diamond was that known as the Great Mogul, that it 

 is the Queen's Koh-i-Nur, but that it was whittled down by 

 necessitous princes — to find them, in fact, in pocket-money — 

 from 280 carats to 589^ grains, or 186 carats, the identical 

 weight of Babar's diamond and of the Koh-i-Nur. Dr. Ball 

 finally declares the Darya-i Nur to have this same weight of 

 186 carats. 



In opposition to this impossible recurrence of coincidences I 

 have endeavoured to show that the stone Garcias saw may have 

 been the Koh-i-Nur, that the one Tavernier handled was in all 

 probability — I believe was certainly — the Koh-i-Nur. I say there 

 is no evidence whatever of the Koh-i-Nur having been whittled 

 ■ down by cleavage, accidental or intentional ; that its form in 185 1 



was more probably its original form rudely facetted (and I think, 

 perhaps, I may not be without a mineralogist's experience when 

 I say this) ; I further say that the Darya-i-Nur is undoubtedly 

 the " Golconda table " diamond. 



Finally, I assert the probability that the Great Mogul, un- 

 whittled down and entire, is in the jewel chamber of the Shah of 

 Persia to this day. 



Of the great diamond which I would identify with this stone 

 I append a tracing, in which it is seen in its carcanet of ruby- 

 enamel. In the original drawing it is accompanied to right and 

 left by two large diamonds, similarly girdled ; while, above and 

 below, is a row of three enormous rubies encircled by emerald- 

 enamel. Ten pearls above and ten below, some of them \ of an 

 inch in diameter, form a fringe to this gorgeous ornament. It 



Great Mogul. 



is, however, only one half of a cylindrical cap the correspond- 

 ing half of which is its counterpart in splendour and wealth of 

 stones, only the Darya-i-Nur is in, that other half, the central 

 ornament. 



I leave the great stone to speak for itself in the tracing, and 

 I furthermore for comparison give a tracing from a drawing of 

 the Koh-i-Nur, taken from a somewhat similar point of view 

 — that is to say, looking down on it. 



That the Koh-i-Nur was valued beyond these greater stones 

 I believe to have been in consequence of its being the reputed 

 talisman of Indian empire. It was probably that last relic 

 of his treasure surrendered by the miserable Muhammad Shah 

 when he exchanged caps with Nadir, and the conqueror saluted 

 this most historic of his spoils by the name it has since borne — 



NO. II 49, VOL. 45] 



Fig. 2. — Koh-i-Nur. 



the Koh-i-Nur, It was certainly the diamond that Shah Rukh, 

 after yielding up all his wealth of jewellery, held to through every 

 torture till he gave it to Ahmad Shah. Shah Zaman carried it 

 to his prison, and secreted it in a crevice ; whence Shah Shuja 

 recovered it on information from his blinded brother. 



Shah Shuja again clung to the old talisman not less fiercely 

 than those who had preceded him, till he surrendered it to 

 Runjit Singh under pressure which amounted to compulsion ; 

 and memorable was the answer of Shah Shuja to Fakeer Nur- 

 ud-din, who had been sent by Runjit to ask in what its value 

 consisted. It is "good luck," said Shah Shuja, " for he who 

 has possessed it has done so by overpowering his enemies." 



I have put, I hope clearly, to my readers, the alternative and 



