64 THE GREAT DIAMONDS OF THE WORLD.
of
the world from this period for two hundred years, to go to pieces in
the last days of the Indian Mutiny. There is a little uncertainty as to
the date when the Gani Mine gave up its precious freight ; but only in
the matter of a few years, and we are inclined to fix it somewhere
between 1630 and 1650, It is imÂpossible to ticket and number a gem
such as the Great Mogul as if it were a piece of antiquity, the relic
of an ancient palace, the capital of a column, the statue of some
classic sculptor. The births of the famous diamonds which scintillate
the dark traditions of Eastern Courts are all, as we have said before,
more or less shrouded in mystery ; but few gems have had a more
striking career or a more dramatic denouement than the Great Mogul.
It
was at a strange and sanguinary period when the first European saw this
remarkable stone, under circumstances which we shall presently quote in
the narrator's own words. The year was, November, 1665, a few years
before the decease of " the Grand Monarque,'' Shah Jehan. The scene was
the Palace of Agra, formerly the Metropolis of the Empire, but then the
prison of the dethroned and stricken Great Mogul. For seven years he
had been kept in close durance ; Murad, his youngest son, had just been
murdered by the usurper, Aurung-zeb, his brother, who had stimulated
the lad's ambition, in order to accomplish his own designs on the life
of both father and son ; Darà , the eldest son of the captive Monarch, a
man of great parts, brave, handsome, and gifted, had been betrayed by
his brother's contrivance. Hurried ignominiously to Delhi, he was led
as a
