558 



NATURE 



[October 8, 1S91 



tioa of what seem? to be inJici'.eJ a? his habit in mxny other 

 instances. Hj gives the weights of stones he mentions in ratis 

 or nimgelins, or in miihkals, and proceeds to state the equi- 

 valent weigh.s in terms of ttos carats, i.e. of the Paris carat; 

 for no Frenchman would designate any ca-at other than one 

 current in France by such a term. 



It would be a tedious task to inflict on a reader the minute 

 detail of calculation and reference to statistical authorities that 

 would be involved in a critical study of Tavernier's assertions 

 regarding Indian and other weights, or Dr. Ball's incursion into 

 that study. 



But one fundamental error must be alluded to, that vitiates 

 the accuracy of Dr. Ball's calculations. lie is possessed of the 

 singular belief that, in the seventeenth century, Tavernier would 

 have been familiar wiih the French ponderary system known as 

 the systinie transitoire or iistiel, which was introduced by the 

 law of May 1812 into France, in temporary substitution for 

 the old livre [poids de marc) of 9216 French grains, and its 

 subdivisions. 



It is quite unnecessary to follow the results of this error ; for 

 the only interest as regards our inquiry concerns the significance 

 of the 3I9'5 ratis which Tavernier states the great diamond 

 of Aurungzebe to have weighed. 320 ratis was the Hindoo 

 equivalent, in Babar's time, of the 8 mishkals of Babar's 

 diamond, and the Koh-i-Nur in 1850 weighed those 8 

 mishkals. 



Tavernier says that the 31 9*5 ratis correspond to 280 French 

 ■carats {nos carats). Here, then, is a second of those marvellous 

 ooincidences in numbers to which we have already made 

 allusion — I may call them impossible coincidences, unless they 

 apply to one and the same diamond. 



Dr. Ball sees, apparently, no difficulty in the recurrence 

 of any number of these identical figures as representing the 

 weights of huge diamonds. For his explanation of the matter 

 is that the diamond Tavernier handled was, as the French mer- 

 chant asserted, the stone that Bernier mentions as the gift of 

 Emir Jumla to Shah Jahan ; that it did weigh 319^ ratis, but 

 that these were ratis of Tavernier's standard, equivalent, in 

 fact, to 0'875 of a carar, whereas Babar's ratis were only 0*578 

 of a carat. Dr. Ball's assertion, however, is that this great 

 diamond is the Queen's Koh-i-Nur, but that afcer Nadir Shah's 

 time it had become diminished by successive chippings per- 

 formed on it by needy princes, who in succession owned it, and 

 turned its severed fragments to account, until finally, and pre- 

 sumably before it fell into the hands of Runjit Singh, this 

 great Mogul diamond had shrunk in magnitude from its asserted 

 280 carats to i85 carats — from the 319I ratis of Tavernier's I 

 reckoning to the 320 ratis on Babar's reckoning ; in a word, it 

 had become reduced by this astounding process to the precise 

 8 mishkals of the Koh-i-Nur in 1526. So here is a third ' 

 coincidence that we are called on gravely to accept as serious j 

 history. ' 



The only originality, however, involved in this singular view 

 of history, and the way to write it, is the reason assigned for 

 the whittling down of the diamond from the asserted 280 carats 

 to 186 carats. Several ingenious persons have indulged before 

 in speculations as to the synthesis of one big diamond to be called 

 the Koh-i-nur from several smaller ones scattered about the - 

 world, with a fine scorn of shape and weight and " water" in 

 the component fragments, and of any historical ground whatever 

 for their hypotheses. The late Mr. Tennant, of the Strand, 

 even engaged the services of the great Russian diamond in this 

 mosaic, ignorant, apparently of the facts that, like the Koh-i-Nur, 

 it is an Indian-cut stone of about 194 carats weight, and is of a 

 brownish-yellow hue. 



¥ But the coincidences in weight of various phantom diamonds 

 with that which Babar recorded do not come to an end even 

 with this crowning wonder, as I shall presently s'aow. 



Perhaps some one may, in parenthesis, ask what evidence 

 there is for the breaking up of a great diamond by owners 

 who clung to the Koh-i-Nur with a tenacity second only to their 

 own hold on life. To this the answer is very simple. Not one 

 fact or plausible argument is adduced to support it. Dr. Ball's 

 imagination is its argument ; and, indeed, I cannot find one 

 single contribution oi fact from that gentleman to the history of 

 the Koh-i-Nur that has any novelty at all. There remains, 

 however, a question that has to be answered, whether this 

 mutilation theory be ever so wild or were ever so sane. If 

 Tavernier saw thi Great Mogul diamoad, wh;re was the old 



NO. II 45, VOL. 44] 



Hindoo stone? or if it was, as 1 have supposed, the Hindoo Koh- 

 i Nur that Tavernier handled, where was ihe Great Mogul ? 



Tavernier saw no ^econd diamond of the first rank in magni- 

 tude. But there were two great diamonds somewhere — Babar's 

 and Mir Jumla's, or, as I have designated them, ihe Koh-i-Nur 

 and the Great Mogul. One or oth.r of these Tavernier has 

 described : where was the one he did not see ? 



It is now thirty-five years ago that I suggested the answer. 

 Supposing, as I did and do, that Tavernier handled the Koh-i- 

 Nur, I indicated the prison-palace of Shah Jahan as the 

 repository of the Great ^iogul. But, whichever diamond it may 

 have been that the French traveller saw, the other was assuredly 

 among those splendi 1 stones that ihe old Emperor told the son 

 who had usurped his throne that he would pound to dust if 

 their surrender wa> insisted on. Anyone read in Indian history 

 needs not to be told that the threat never had to be fulfilled ; 

 that Aurungzebe, content with the realities of power, cared little 

 for the splendours that environad it, and left his captive father 

 in the enjoyment of the allurements and the external pomp and 

 vanity of a sovereign's surroundings including the collection of 

 jewels and precious stones in which his soul delighted. On his 

 death they were brought to Aurungzebe by his sister Jehanira, 

 who had shared her father's captivity. 



It matters nothing to the subsequent history of the Koh-l-Nur 

 whether it or the Great Mogul was the stone that remained in 

 the custody of the fallen Emperor. But I have maintained that 

 it was more probable that Shah Jahan should have retained the 

 diamond that may be styled his private property, as having 

 been given him by the Emir Jumla ; and that therefore the stone 

 seen in Aurungzebe's possession would in every probability have 

 been the diamond of Babar, which, like the peacock throne and 

 olher gorgeous adornments of the presence chamber, would, as 

 a Crown jewel, have remained in the imperial treasury. 



Of course, this view of the matter involves great misgivings 

 as regards Tavernier's accuracy. It involves his having applied 

 to the only big diamond he saw the stories he had heard, from 

 Bernier, no doubt, and from others, regarding that other great 

 diamond given by the Emir Jumla to Shah Jahan. It further 

 involves his having attempted to represent in a drawing a dia- 

 mond he had seen several years before, but in a drawing so 

 absolutely unlike the Koh-i-Nur as to be hardly recognizable as 

 representing the Queen's diamond, and even less the diamond 

 that he himself described, as he saw it, among the treasures of 

 Aurungzebe. 



The Great Mogul diamond had been cut by a European cutter. 

 But, so far as it is of any value at all as evidence, Tavernier's draw- 

 ing suggests a characteristically Indian-cut stone, much resembling 

 in form and facetting the Russian diamond known as the 

 " Orloff," which I have inspected, and can aver to be Indian in 

 its cutting. The Koh i-Nur, too, to which I personally gave 

 careful atten'.ion in 185 1, was no less unquestionably Indian in 

 its facetting. Models in plaster-of-Paris made directly from the 

 diamond confirm this ; and traces of the original faces of the 

 diamond, besides two large octahedral faces, appear to have 

 been worked into the design of the facetting. The roAS of 

 facets were obviously put oa so as to humour the original form 

 of the stone and diminish its weight as little as possible ; and 

 notably they were thus skilfully arranged in regard to the upper 

 edge of one of two large octahedral laces that has erroneously 

 been described as a cleavage plane due to a fracture after the 

 cutting had been performed. In fact, it and another large face, 

 forming the base of the crystal, had not the lustre of cleavage 

 surfaces, but wore the aspect of faces that had so far undergone 

 attrition, probably in a river-bed, that the angle between them 

 was no longer quite the true octahedral angle. The facets in 

 general presented an imperfect adamantine lustre, and appeared 

 slightly rounded, the result, probably, of the imperfect processes 

 employed by the native Hindoo lapidary, especially in very early 

 times. 



Even Tavernier's drawing rudely indicates three rows of 

 facets, put on in a manner that hardly consists with the fashion 

 of a rose-cut diamond of European workmanship. 



With my profound scepticism as to the critical value of 

 Tavernier's arithmetic, I have ventured to think that the 

 simplest explanation of all these instances of marvellous recur- 

 rence in various forms of the numbers representing the weight 

 of the Koh-i-Nur is best explained by supposing that Akhil 

 Khan gave Tavernier the Iradirional weight of the Babar 

 diamond which he had placed in his hand, and that the French 



