Introduction

Indian Diamonds 119
the following I will look in detail at the stories of the Koh-i-Noor and the Orlov. I
will include other famous diamonds whose histories and legends might have contributed
to the plot of The Moonstone and other texts centring on Indian diamonds.
Given the general interest in diamonds from the middle of the nineteenth century
onwards and Collins’ own well-known research into diamonds, it is more than
likely that he would have been familiar with these stories as well as his Victorian
readers. The existence of these stories, more widely known in the nineteenth century
than today, may also refute the claim that the Moonstone is an interchangeable
and meaningless item to trigger the detective plot and actually evokes a range
of associations with existing diamonds.
C. W. King describes the transmission of the legends surrounding diamonds as
conspicuously unreliable: “[T]here is no class of relics (except sacred) whose
whole history swarms with confused and conflicting stories, re-copied and reblundered
by careless writers, […] and these fictions […] obtrude themselves into
newspaper paragraphs” (King vii). The layer of fiction, which constitutes parts of
these stories, feeds on Orientalist stereotypes. As many of the stories were collected
and edited for a growing interested Victorian reading public (Rosador 300)
the image of India which is conveyed oscillates between excessive violence, excessive
riches and the occultism of an unknown religion. This becomes evident in the
recurring motif of the theft of diamonds from a temple or statue of a god and the
idea of a curse laid on the diamond. While the disregard for native “superstition”
establishes the thief as superior and immune to “heathen” beliefs, the theft also
holds the possibility of an Oriental revenge in the form of a curse which reflects
the interest in occultism (Brantlinger, Rule 227). The original function of diamonds
in Hinduism as talismanic and generally auspicious is suppressed in these stories.
When the Koh-i-Noor reached England in 1850, it could already boast a
documented history of many centuries. According to legend, the diamond was
mounted in a statue of Shiva as his third eye. Its earliest known owner was the
Rajah of Malawah (Harlow, “Great Diamonds” 109). His kingdom was conquered
by the first Mogul emperor of India, Barbur, who obtained the Koh-i-Noor as
loot after his taking of Agra in 1526. It became a symbol of omnipotence and
power (Balfour 15-16) and thus remained in the hands of Humayun, Barbur’s son
and successor to the throne. In the reign of Aurangzeb, it passed to Persia after
the sacking of Dehli in 1739. Nadir Shah there named it the Koh-i-Noor, the
‘Mountain of light’ (Mersmann 178). The last Persian owner of the diamond was
Shah Shuja, who traded it to Maharajah Ranjit Singh of the Punjab for protection
in Lahore after he had been driven out of his country. Ranjit Singh, at one point,
intended to dedicate the diamond to the temple of Jaganath in Puri, but was dissuaded
by his treasurer (Balfour 23). This episode, however, was to become the
basis of one of India’s claims for restitution. The British took the Koh-i-Noor
from Ranjit Singh’s son Dalip Singh after the conquest of the Punjab in the Second
Anglo-Sikh War of 1849. The peace treaty which was drawn up between the