The Hindus classed diamonds according to the four castes. The Brahmin diamond gave power, friends, riches and good luck; the Kshatriya diamond prevented the approach of old age; the Vaisya stone brought success, and the Sudra, all manner of good fortune. On the other hand, in the treatise on gems by Buddhabhatta[80] we read: A diamond, a part of which is the color of blood or spotted with red, would quickly bring death to the wearer, even if he were the Master of Death. The Arabians and Persians, as well as the modern Egyptians, agree in attributing to the diamond a wonderful power to bring good fortune, and Rabbi Benoni, a mystic of the fourteenth century, treating of its magic virtues, asserts that it produces somnambulism, and, as a talisman, so powerfully attracts the planetary influences that it renders the wearer invincible; it was also said to provoke a state of spiritual ecstasy. An alchemist of the same century, Pierre de Boniface, asserted that the diamond made the wearer invisible. A curious fancy, prevalent in regard to many stones, attributed sex to the diamond, and it is therefore not surprising that these stones were also supposed to possess reproductive powers. In this connection Sir John Mandeville wrote: They grow together, male and female, and are nourished by the dew of heaven; and they engender commonly, and bring forth small children that multiply and grow all the year. I have oftentimes tried the experiment that if a man keep them with a little of the rock, and water them with May dew often, they shall grow every year and the small will grow great. The following lines from a translation of the celebrated Orphic poem, written in the second century, show the high esteem in which the adamas was held at that time: The Evil Eye shall have no power to harm Him that shall wear the diamond as a charm, No monarch shall attempt to thwart his will, And e’en the gods his wishes shall fulfil. This probably refers either to colorless corundum, the so-called “white sapphire,” or to quartz. The writer is disinclined to believe that the ancients knew the diamond. The ancient Hindu gem-treatise of Buddhabhatta asserts that the diamond of the Brahmin should have the whiteness of a shell or of rock-crystal; that of the Kshatriya, the brown color of the eye of a hare; that of the Vaisya, the lovely shade of a petal of the _kadali_ flower; that of the Sudra, the sheen of a polished blade. To kings alone the sages assigned two classes of colored diamonds,—namely, those red as coral and those yellow as saffron. These were exclusively royal gems, but diamonds of all other shades could be set in royal jewels.[81] A typical diamond is thus described in a Hindu gem-treatise:[82]