Introduction

Indian Diamonds 121
theft from Singh and India (186). Thus the Orientalist aura and history seems to
have proven too persistent an element in the domestication of the diamond 6.
Ellenborough’s attempt to restore the Gates of Ghazni to their original site in
Somnath was also widely debated at the time. The plundering of Somnath by the
Afghan Muslims in 1024 is mentioned in the prologue of The Moonstone. Ellenborough
seized the famous gates during the Afghan campaign which ended in 1842.
He suggested restoring them to the Hindu temple in Somnath whence they had
presumably been stolen by Mahmud. The act was supposed to cover the otherwise
disastrous results of the war and to ingratiate themselves with the Hindu population.
The plan was, however, fiercely rejected by Ellenborough’s contemporaries
and marked the end of his career (Jasanoff 129-130). The Sancy offers an interesting
instance of an Indian diamond which actually found its way back to India and
thus upset the connotation of historical Indian diamonds as loot, trophy and a
representation of the splendour of a subjugated colony. It presumably came to
Europe in the sixteenth century through Portuguese trade and was henceforth in
French possession. The diamond was bought by a Bombay merchant in 1865,
who then sold it on to the Maharajah of Patiala two years later, or, according to
another version, kept it until the late 1880s (Balfour 34).
The second diamond mentioned by Collins is the Orlov which is also supposed
to have been a sacred stone, set in a statue of Vishnu in Srirangam, in
southern India. It was supposedly stolen from the shrine by a French soldier, who
had deserted from his regiment and feigned his conversion to Hinduism. The
priests of the temple eventually granted him access to its inner precincts where he
stole the diamond and escaped to a British station. It was purchased in Amsterdam
by Prince Orlov and presented to Catherine the Great of Russia. According
to legend, when Napoleon invaded Russia and searched for the diamond, he
opened the tomb of a priest where it lay hidden. The ghost of the priest then appeared
and cursed anyone who dared touch the diamond (Balfour 79-80).
The diamond in The Sign of Four evokes two historical stones. Doyle names it
after the existing Great Mogul which is now lost (Balfour 44). The setting in Agra,
the capital of the Mogul emperors, also suggests the Agra diamond which was
smuggled by British soldiers out of India, at exactly the time of Small’s story, i.e.
during the Mutiny in 1857. In its history as a trophy of war, it too, had been in the
possession of Humayun, perhaps together with the Koh-i-Noor (Balfour 37).
“The Adventure of the Mazarin Stone” also draws on an existing diamond, or
rather a collection of diamonds: The diamonds which Cardinal Jules Mazarin
(1602-61) bequeathed to Louis XIV included the celebrated Sancy, and the whole
6 The Koh-i-Noor continued to spark controversy when the Indian government claimed the
return of the diamond in 1947. India was followed by Pakistan and Iran to ask for restitution.
Additionally, the Indian federal state of Orissa demanded that the diamond ought to be given
back to its rightful owner, the god Jaganath (Balfour 28).