the areas in which it ma/ reasonably be anticipated that the gem may be sought for successfully.
The
most southern of these tracts is one which has long borne a familiar
name, which, however, must be characterized as being to a certain
extent a misnomer. It falls to the lot of those who live in these
modern days of accurate research to be called upon to give up some of
their earliest and most cherished beliefs, and it will be unacceptable
to some, perhaps, to hear that Golconda itself never produced diamonds,
and that it was in fact merely the mart where diamonds were bought and
sold.
The
name originally applied to the capital, now represented by a deserted
fort in the neighbourhood of Haidrabad, was extended to the surrounding
district, and seems to have been used for the whole kingdom,* which
included many of the diamond localities, and in this way the popular
belief on the subject arose; but Golconda Fort, it should be
remembered, is many miles distant from the nearest of these.
At
the present day there is a totally distinct tract of hilly country
lying to the north of the Godaveri river, which also bears the name
Golconda; whether it at any time formed a portion of the ancient
kingdom I cannot say, but it is not, I believe, at present included in
the territories of the Nizam o Haidrabad.
The districts included in this southern tract in the
*
" Golconda is the most famous of the six independent Moslem kingdoms
which, in A.D. 1399, rose on the extinction of the Toghlak (Delhi)
dynasty, and it survived till 1688, when Aurungzebe brought all India
under one sceptre.''—Captain BURTON, Quarterly Journal of Science, N.S. vol. vi. 1876.
