Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
yas (warriors) red, Vaisyas (merchants) yellow and Sudras (craftsmen) black diamonds.
If a diamond is worn by the member of a wrong caste, it brings bad luck
and even death. Yet, as long as the rules are observed, the diamonds are supposed
to grant wealth and social esteem (82). White diamonds bestow power, wealth and
friends, red ones grant health and prevent old age, yellow ones bestow success and
the blue-black diamonds provide for good fortune. The donation of a diamond to
a temple assured the giver of eternal life (Anon, “Diamond”). In the iconographical
depiction of Hindu gods, especially in temples, a recurrent element is a “jewelled
girdle” as in the different avatars of Vishnu and Shiva (Bunce, “Vişņu”;
Bunce, “Shiva”).
Narahari further details the medical usefulness of different diamonds, and he
emphasises that only unflawed diamonds are auspicious (Garbe 81). The earlier
Ratnapariksa further stipulates the privilege of kings to wear diamonds of all colours.
Buddha Bhatta also asserts that a flawed or damaged diamond is sure to
bring misfortune and death to its owner (Harlow, “History of Diamonds” 120).
Although sources on Hindu views on diamonds are rare, it seems clear that
they were valued as talismans and their influence regarded so highly that their
wearing was strictly regulated. In accounts of the diamond trade to Europe, it is
further remarkable that only smaller stones where traded west, as Indian kings had
the right to the bigger diamonds found in their lands (Levinson 72). In the stories
which centre on historical Indian diamonds their association with Indian religions
almost forms a staple ingredient.
Real and Fictional Diamonds: Story and History
The Models: Famous Indian Diamonds and their Stories
In the preface of the 1868 edition of The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins gives the Koh-i-
Noor and the Orlov as sources on which he modelled the Moonstone. Both diamonds,
he asserts, used to be part of Hindu cults:
With reference to the story of the Diamond, as here set forth, I have to acknowledge
that it is founded, in some important particulars, on the stories
of the royal diamonds of Europe. The magnificent [Orlov] stone which
adorns the top of the Russian Imperial Sceptre was once the eye of an Indian
idol. The famous Koh-i-Noor is also supposed to have been one of
the sacred gems of India; and, more than this, to have been the subject of a
prediction which prophesied certain misfortune to the persons who should
divert it from its ancient uses. (Collins, Preface 5)
Jaya Mehta adds three other diamonds as possible sources for the Moonstone:
“Charles Reed’s moonstone; the Pitt diamond, which […] proved a curse to its
owner; and the Sancy […] believed to have been returned to India” (ftn.6, 649). In