102 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



first suggested by me/ I shall discuss in connexion with the 

 account given by Nicolo Conti. 



TJiird : This method, which may be described as a corollary of 

 the second, consisted in searching the birds' droppings and intes- 

 tines for diamonds which they had swallowed with the meat. 



Marco Polo, in various parts of his book, refers to other 

 precious stones, especially to the Balas rubies and " azure " or 

 lapis-lazuli of Badakshan. The value of the former was kept up 

 by a limit being imposed by the king on the out-turn. The 

 latter, he says, occurred in a vein like silver, and was the finest in 

 the world. 



In reference to gold and silver^ there are several important 

 facts recorded ; among others, the enormous extent of the accumu- 

 lation of gold in the treasuries of the princes of Southern India, 

 upon which Colonel Yule remarks, after speaking of the spoil 

 carried off by AUahud-din, that " some years later, Mahomed 

 Tuglak loads two hundred elephants and several thousand bullocks 

 with the precious spoil of a single temple." And a further state- 

 ment, given on the authority of Wassaf, is, that " Kales Dewar, 

 Eaja of Malabar, about the year 1309, had accumulated 1200 

 crores of gold, i.e. 12,000 millions of dinars."^ 



Marco Polo distinctly mentions copper, gold, and silver as 

 being imports into Malabar and Cambay from Eastern countries 

 in his time. 



Ferishta. — Our next authority is the Indian historian, Ferishta, 

 who wrote in 1425. What he says on the subject is chiefiy of im- 

 portance as confirming other evidence of the great wealth possessed 

 by the princes of Southern India in the form of stores of precious 

 stones and bullion. It has already been partly quoted on page 96. 

 He refers to now long-deserted diamond mines in the Central Pro- 

 vinces of India,* which I have been able to identify as having been 

 situated at Wairagarh, in the Central Provinces. 



Nicolo Contai. — The last writer of what may be called the fabu- 

 lous period, which closed with the fifteenth century — at least in so 

 far as regards the diamond fable — was the Venetian, Nicolo Contai, 



1 Jour. As. Society, Bengal, vol. l. pt. ii. p. 31. 



2 G., vol. ii. pp. 276, 284 ; S., ibid. pp. 325 and 327. 



3 Marco Polo, vol. ii. p. 284, note 6. 



* History. Ed. by J. Briggs. London: 1819, vol. ii. p. 261. 



