A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of IndiaSewell, Robert
History
A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India
Sewell, Robert
Vijayanagar (Empire) -- History
As regards the diamond "as large as a hen's egg," said to have been
found at the sack of Vijayanagar and presented to the Adil Shah
(above, p. 208), Couto (Decade VIII. c. xv.) says that it was a jewel
which the Raya had affixed to the base of the plume on his horse's
head-dress. Garcia da Orta, who was in India in 1534, says that at
Vijayanagar a diamond had been seen as large as a small hen's egg, and
he even declares the weights of three others to have been respectively
120, 148, and 250 MANGELIS, equivalent to 150, 175, and 312 1/2 carats
(Tavernier, V. Ball, ii. 433).
Dr. Ball has gone carefully into the question of the diamonds known
as "Babar's," "the Mogul's," "Pitt's," "the KOH-I-NUR," and others,
and to his Appendix I. I beg to refer those interested in the subject.
It is clear that this hen's egg diamond could not be the fame as Sultan
Babar's, because the former was taken at Vijayanagar in A.D. 1565,
whereas Sultan Babar's was received by his son Humayun at Agra in 1526,
and could not have been, forty years later, in the possession of the
Hindu king of the south.[651]
Dr. Ball has shown that probably the KOH-I-NUR is identical with
the "Mogul's diamond." Was, then, this "hen's egg" diamond the
same? Probably not. If we had been told that the "hen's egg," when
found in the sack of Vijayanagar, had been cut, the proof CONTRA would
be conclusive, since the KOH-I-NUR was certainly uncut in A.D. 1656
or 1657. But there is no information available on this point.
The "hen's egg" was apparently taken by the Adil Shah to Bijapur in
1565, and it is not likely to have found its way, still in an uncut
state, into the possession of Mir Jumla in 1656.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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