Introduction

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Sabina Fazli
cues mankind from destruction (26). The Moonstone is dedicated 8 to Soma because
of its propensity to mirror the phases of the moon. It is thus believed to
have an organic connection with the god and wax and wane independently. The
colour yellow is also associated with the god Soma and either present as the colour
of his skin or garments (Bunce, “Soma”). Soma has a twofold meaning as it
first denoted the Vedic drug and only later came to stand for the moon. The
Moonstone thus also represents the juice of Soma which was won from the
“moon-plant” and is, in the Vedas, described as drunk at sacrifices (Bunce,
“Soma”).
The sanctity of the Moonstone relies on its wholeness. The destruction of its
“sacred identity” (Collins, Moonstone 82) puts an end to its existence as a religious
symbol. The cutting of the diamond turns it from a holy relic into brilliants, but
these would be worth more than the uncut diamond (47). Its spiritual significance
is thus distinctly set off against the value for which it is admired in England. Its
significance as a whole but worthless sacred symbol and cut but valuable cash item
constitutes another paradox in its existence.
The anonymous narrator of the prologue compares the practice of donating a
diamond to a shrine to customs of antiquity. In this respect, Indians, ancient Romans
and Greeks, his comparison concludes, share the same superstitions
(Collins, Moonstone 11). This idea may partly rely on King’s chapter “Sacred Gems”
(406-409) which enumerates such customs from Greek antiquity to the Middle
Ages. The parallel between antiquity and India, where diamonds are revered as
holy objects, also throws into relief the similarity of the British and Mogul interpretations
of the diamond as plunder. Additionally, the comparison of Greece,
Rome and India creates a cultural intimacy between India and Europe and at the
same time a temporal gap because the ancient superstitions, long abandoned in
the west, still flourish in the East, which is thus imagined as stuck in time and
development.
While the prologue is set in India it is also located in an apparently timeless
and “romantic” (Collins, Moonstone 462) space. The emphasis is on the age of the
Moonstone and the long and uninterrupted line of Brahmins who guard it: “One
age followed another” (repeated twice on the same page), “generation after generation”,
“the generations succeeded each other” (12). The specific indications of
time only occur in connection with conquests that interrupt the customs which
had existed “for centuries” (12). Mahmoud of Ghazni in the “eleventh century of
the Christian era” and Aurangzeb in the “first years of the eighteenth century of
the Christian era” (12) interrupt this flow of time and are granted an approximate
dating. Together with its guardians the Moonstone is the unchanging witness of
different violent conquests. The Moonstone is raised from the indistinct and unmarked
flow of time, it is suggested, on the “4 th of May 1799” (11) when John
8 Given the Hindu conviction that flawed diamonds are singularly inauspicious, the dedication of
such a diamond to a god is rather unlikely.