Introduction

Indian Diamonds 163
isher and on different types of ashes to identify a lunkah-smoker. Together with
another work on the tracing of footsteps a number of events in the story are already
foreshadowed in writing (Doyle, Sign 126).
Christopher Keep and Don Randall observe that the description of Tonga’s
deformity evokes “contemporary accounts of the murderous rage exhibited by the
Sepoys during the Mutiny, the maddened features of the cocaine addict, and late
nineteenth-century fears concerning devolution and degeneration” (214). Tonga
can be read as impersonating the curse of the treasure and as functioning as its
evil spirit. The Mutiny, poison and going native are equally evoked through the
Agra treasure, its theft and its intoxicating quality. The danger that emanates from
both leads to Tonga and the treasure being sunk in the Thames together (Doyle,
Sign 205), which further emphasises their connection. Yet Tonga does not only
display every imaginable trait of barbarism, but he is also described as “a black
cannibal” (188). Although he is a native from the Andamanese islands, his name
connotes the South Seas and thus links him even closer to a region which was
long thought to be inhabited by cannibals.
Tonga’s main action is the murder of Bartholomew Sholto. The episode is a
nod to E.A. Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, which introduced the lockedroom
mystery. Tonga shoots Bartholomew with a poisoned arrow and leaves
traces which first leads the reader in the same direction as in Poe’s version of the
mystery: Holmes observes that Tonga’s toes are “each distinctly divided” (170)
and evokes the ape that turns out to be the murderer in Poe’s story. After his
escape, Tonga is then traced by a dog through the scent of creosote, another hint
at his animal rather than human nature as he is turned into game (160) 16. Tonga’s
murder of Bartholomew Sholto additionally associates him with “Senegambia” in
Holmes encyclopaedic knowledge of “parallel cases” (159). Tonga thus signifies
more than just India but the generally dangerous and exotic Other capable of and
importing crimes that have previously been unknown in England and must necessarily
originate in some ‘barbarous’ region.
While both novels draw on the fear of infiltration, the Brahmins and Tonga as
representatives of India paint two very different pictures. The Moonstone’s Indians
are the agents of an alien culture while Tonga is the personification of a threatening
wilderness. The Brahmins, by their designation as such alone testify to the
existence of a whole civilisation. This strange culture imbues the Moonstone with
its meaning as a religious artefact. Tonga, by contrast, is not represented as the
exponent of a native Andamanese society but as the embodiment of wilderness,.
The image of India as such a wilderness also informs “The Rajah’s Diamond” and
John Vandeleur’s character as a hunter (Stevenson, “Rajah’s” 127). This presupposes
the colony as jungle, a view which the two later texts share.
16 “The Crooked Man” is a Sherlock Holmes story with a locked-room mystery and a monkey as
the alleged suspect.