140 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [April, 1912. 
to the ‘* Great Moghul,’’ had come into Aurangzib’s possession 
from Jagannath, how is it that no description of it, and especi- 
ally no account of any subsequent theft from Aurangzib’s 
treasury, was made by either Muhammadan historians or 
European travellers? It is true that, when the Moghul heard 
of Pitt’s Diamond about 1710, he ordered Pitt’s successor at 
Fort St. George, Madras, to send it up to him without delay, 
little suspecting that it had alzeady left the country; but. 
on what grounds he claimed it we do not see.! If it had been 
stolen from the Royal treasury, this would have been alleged, 
whereas no allusion to any such theft was made. We must 
then infer that the King aad his jewellers supposed the stone 
to have come from the Golkonda mines, which were looked 
upon as the King’s property, and that they claimed either pos- 
session or right of pre-emption or the usual royalty of 2% on 
all purchases.* According to Methold (about 1622), the Moghul 
retained all stones above 10 carats, and we know that Shah 
ahan claimed and obtained ‘‘ a wonderfully large diamond 
from a mine in the territory of Golkonda [which] had fallen 
into the hands of Kutbu-l-Mulk.’? When cut, it weighed 100 
ratts and was valued by the King’s jewellers at one lakh and 
50,000 rupees.® 
here are other serious difficulties against accepting the 
statement of the Tabcirat-ul-Nazirin. It stands unsupported 
y any contemporary evidence, European or Indian. If 
the temple of Jagannath had been profaned between 1690- 
1713 and the statue and jewels abstracted, an event of such 
they refer to the theft of diamonds by Europeans. Babi 
Monmohan Chakravarti writes to me: ‘‘I have gone through 
the greater part of the palm-leaf chronicles of the temple of 
Jagannatha [the Mandala Panji], but I have not come across 
any account of the theft of any diamond by any Sahib from 
the temple.’’ 
This is not all. We may justly doubt whether diamonds 
were ever set in the eyes of the images at Piri. Supposing 
such a custom to have existed three centuries ago, we should 
expect it to exist still, even had it led to occasional robbery in 
the past. Now, Rajendralala Mitra, who ‘as a Hindu by birth 

! Cf. H. Yue, Diary of W. Hedges, III, pp. cxxxi-cxxxii. 
2 Cf. V. Ball's edit. of Tavernier’s Travels, II, pp. 63, 66—67. 
8 Cf. Ettiot’s Hist, of India, VII, 8 ; 
4 
Cf. RigenpRatara Mirra, The Antig. of Orisea, IL, p. 111. 
