DIAMOND: OCCURRENCE IN INDIA 153 



fact, but it agrees with an old Indian tradition that diamonds have been found in the 

 Himalayas. 

 _^ From the mines of these various diamantiferous districts have been derived the 

 enormous number of diamonds, often of large size and great beauty, which, in the course of 

 centuries, have slowly accumulated in the treasuries of Indian princes or have been used in 

 the gorgeous adornments of idols, sacred shrines, and temples. Up to the tenth century 

 almost all the diamonds discovered remained in the country, and it was not till the invasion 

 and plunder of India by other nations that any portion of these treasures was carried away, 

 first into other eastern countries and subsequently into Europe. The first of these 

 occasions was the invasion by the Persians under Mahmud of Ghazni, at the end of the 

 tenth and the beginning of the eleventh century. The magnificence and number of the 

 diamonds amassed in India at that time is related by Ferishtah, the Persian historian of 

 the rise of the Mohammedan power in India. We learn from his account, which was 

 published in 1609, that Mohammed the first, of the Ghuridem dynasty in Persia, who in 

 1186 founded the Mohammedan rule in India, left at his death 500 muns (= 400 lbs.) of 

 diamonds ; all this enormous treasure he had amassed during the thirty-two years of his 

 Indian sway. 



Europeans became acquainted with the riches of India mainly through the writings of 

 the Italian traveller Marco Polo, who at the end of the thirteenth century spent many years 

 in Central Asia, China, &c. According to C. W. King, the Portuguese writer Garcias ab 

 Horto was the first to publish, in 1565, any authentic account of Indian diamonds. Towards 

 the end of the seventeenth century the French traveller Tavemier made himself intimately 

 acquainted with the occurrence and mining of diamonds in India, and succeeded in actually 

 viewing the wealth of precious stones amassed by the Great Mogul, Aurungzebe. Tavernier, 

 who in the capacity of a merchant in precious stones spent the years between 1665 and 

 1669 in India, wrote a detailed description of his journeyings about the country, which is 

 at the present time of the greatest value. 



As commercial relations between Europe and the Orient gradually arose and developed, 

 an increasing number of Indian stones found their way into Europe. The principal Indian 

 market for diamonds, and indeed for all precious stones, was, and still is, Madras. At the 

 time of the annexation of India by Britain, a considerable number of Indian stones found 

 their way into English hands ; this was the fate of the most famous and beautiful of Indian 

 diamonds, the " Koh-i-noor." Originally the property of the ruler of Lahore, this diamond 

 passed on the dethronement of this prince into the possession of the East India Company, 

 by whom it was presented in 1850 to Queen Victoria. 



India has now lost all its former fame as a country rich in diamonds ; the most 

 productive mines have long ago been exhausted, and only the poorer deposits still remain. 

 During the devastating wars and native struggles for supremacy, many only partially 

 exhausted mines were abandoned and their very sites forgotten, while from the same cause 

 the demand for diamonds fell off. Moreover, the oppressive and unreasonable tribute 

 demanded by native rulers in former times, and to a certain extent at the present day also, 

 so crippled the industry that many diamond seekers forsook the mines for more lucrative 

 employments, to return perhaps under more favourable conditions. 



The chief blow, however, to the diamond mining industry of India was the discovery 

 of the precious stone in Brazil, a country from which diamonds have now been sent to the 

 market since 1728. There could be no competition between these rich and uuworked 

 deposits arid the Indian mines, whose age can be counted in centuries or even tens of 

 centuries. More recently, the rich yields of the South African diamond-fields have made a 



