Stories About Famous Precious StonesOrpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
History
Stories About Famous Precious Stones
Orpen, Adela E. (Adela Elizabeth Richards)
Gems
Here absolutely ends the history of this magnificent gem. What became of
it no one knows. Whether it was lost in the sack of Delhi, or carried
off by Nadir Shah along with the Koh-i-nûr, it is impossible to say, or
even to conjecture with any degree of plausibility. No account of this
grand diamond, however, would be complete without some reference to the
extraordinary myths which have gathered around it. There is scarcely
another large diamond of no matter what size, or what color, or what
shape, that has not sometime, or by somebody, been declared to be the
Great Mogul. Its subsequent history seems to be the happy hunting-ground
of the foolish theories of writers on precious stones. Men who write
carefully enough about other diamonds, launch out into the wildest
conjectures about the Great Mogul. They apparently cannot bear the
thought of losing so precious a gem and therefore they find it
somewhere, no matter to what inconsistency and absurdity they may be
reduced in the process of identification.
Take a few examples.
It has been maintained that the Great Mogul is the Orloff; that it is
the Koh-i-nûr; that it is both together; that it is the Orloff, the
Koh-i-nûr and a third beside, now lost, which Hortenzio Borgis obtained
by cleavage--the precise thing which Tavernier distinctly says he did
not do, preferring to grind it down; that it was not a diamond at all,
but a white topaz--as if Tavernier, the greatest expert of his times,
would not have detected that fact. Even Mr. Streeter, in general a most
reliable authority on diamonds, is dazzled into inconsistency when he
comes to treat of the Great Mogul. In his work, _Precious Stones and
Gems_, published in 1877, he says under the head of celebrated diamonds:
"The diamond known as the Great Mogul has received an amount of
attention beyond any other. _Under the name of the Koh-i-nûr (Mountain
of Light)_ it played an important part in the Exhibition of 1851," etc.,
etc. Now harken to Mr. Streeter writing in 1882: "If this description
(Tavernier's) be compared with the models both of the Koh-i-nûr and of
the Great Mogul itself in our possession, all doubts will be at once
removed as to the essentially different character of the two crystals."
Again: "The two differ absolutely in their origin, history, size and
form!" The Mr. Streeter of 1882 is wisely ignorant of the lucubrations
of the Mr. Streeter of 1877.
Unable to offer the slightest hint as to the fate of the Great Mogul we
can only hope that some future day may reveal it, and until then we must
put up with our ignorance as best we may. It came and went in a flash of
glory, the Meteor of Diamonds.
X.
THE AUSTRIAN YELLOW.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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