CELEBRATED DIAMONDS 63
by
Babur, founder of the Mogul dynasty, and was known and celebrated of
old in India before his time (1556). The English mineralogist Maskelyne
thought it probable that this was the stone seen by Tavernier at Delhi
in 1665 and which he described as the Great Mogul, and that the same is
now known as the Koh-i-noor. Hindu tradition says of this stone that it
was worn by one of the heroes of the Indian epic poem Mahabharata, four
thousand years back, and that it was in the possession of Vikramaditya,
rajah of Ujayin, 56 B. C, through whom it passed to his successors, the
rajahs of Malwa and to the sultans of Delhi, when Malwa fell into their
hands. In 1658, Aurungzebe, third son of Shah Jehan, seized the reins
of government, placed his father in confinement and possessed his
treasures, the " Great Mogul" among them. In the rough, as it was when
presented to Shah Jehan, Tavernier says it weighed 900 ratis or
787-1/2 carats. The Mogul employed a Venetian named Hortensis Borghis
to cut it. This he did so unskillfully as to reduce the weight to
319-1/2 ratis or 280 carats. Some writers dispute Tavernier's
equivalent of 7/8, carat to one rati, claiming that the rati was
lighter and that the cut stone weighed 188 carats only. Instead of
rewarding the cutter for his work, the Mogul, angered, charged him with
spoiling the stone and threatened to kill him, but finally let him off
with a fine of ten thousand rupees. According to Tavernier, from whom
comes to us all the definite information we have about it, the stone in
the rough had several flaws, and was cut to a round rose, very high on
one side, and now thought to be almost identical in shape with the
Orloff of the Russian
