which
have fallen from the flesh." Nicolo Conti continues with an account of
how other less precious stones are obtained, and his description is
that of ordinary Indian diamond mining. " The Travels of Sindbad the
Sailor"* and of Marco Polo, whose accounts apparently refer to
localities in Golconda, on the Kistna, have made this tradition of
throwing pieces of meat where the diamonds may stick to them familiar
to most people ; yet an adequate explanation of the origin of the myth
does not appear to have been offered hitherto. I believe the following
to be a complete and probable one :—
Heyne,
in the account of his visit to the mines at Kadapah (Cuddapah), states
that they were under the particular protection of Ammawaru (the
sanguinary goddess of riches), and the miners objected to his riding
on horseback up to the mines for fear of offending her. Now what can be
more probable than that the miners before opening a new mine, in order
to invoke the aid of this sanguinary goddess, made an offering to her
of cattle or buffaloes. The opening up of new mines was, and is, we are
told by several authorities, preceded by various rites and ceremonies.
The miners were probably never Hindus, and the custom of offering up
cattle in sacrifice by the aboriginal tribes, from the Todas to the
Sontals, is too well known to require special illustration. Admitted
that the opening of a mine was preceded by the sacrifice of cattle, and
the throwing of the fragments of the flesh to be devoured by the fowls
of the air, we at once arrive at the foundation of fact upon which this
superstructure of fable has in all probability been erected.
Casual
spectators and travellers may very easily have supposed that the
throwing about pieces of meat was an essential part of the operations ;
and any one with experience of how Oriental imaginations can erect a tale of fiction on a small substratum of fact, will find no difficulty
* These have been well called a repertory of Arabian myths and traditions.
