CHAPTER XXII
Remarks
upon the largest and most beautiful Diamonds and Rubies which the
Author has seen in Europe and Asia, the figures of which are here
given, together with those of large Stones which he sold to the Emperor
on his return from his last Journey to India, with a representation of
a magnificent Topaz, and the largest Pearls in the World.
I shall follow
the order of the figures as they are arranged [in PL II] by their
numbers, and I shall commence with the heaviest diamond of which I have
any knowledge :
No.
1. This diamond * belongs to the Great Mogul, who did me the honour to
have it shown to me with all his other jewels. You see represented here
its form after having been cut, and, as I was allowed to weigh it, I
ascertained that it weighed 319| ratis, which are equal to 279 9/16 of
our carats. When in the rough it weighed, as I have elsewhere said, 907
ratis, or 793| carats. This stone is of the same form as if one cut an
egg through the middle.2
quios, quoted
by Dalgado. Orta does not use the word Chego, although he describes the
process of passing the pearls through a sieve. The earliest mention
appears to be that in Teixeira (see Ferguson's note on p. 179 of the
Hakluyt Society ed., 'The Kings of Ormus'). He says ' the reckoning and
weighing is by Chegos, by a method not easy, but very subtle and
ingenious '. The system appears to have been used for· seed-pearls
mainly or only in the Ceylon fishery. Dalgado says the word is not now
in use, and he has not been able to trace its origin."
The
relationship between the real weight called the mangelin in Madras, and
the nominal weight called chow, though it does not elucidate this
table, throws some light on the subject. Buie—Square the number
of mangelins, and divide three-fourths of this product by the number of
pearls. The quotient is the number of chows. Example—To find value
1 For full discussion of all the facts connected with the Great Mogul's diamond, see Appendix I.
1
This operation may be performed in either of two ways ; from the figure
given by Ta vernier he evidently means transversely. The Koh-i-Nûr as
it was when brought to England might be described as of the shape of
half an egg, cut longitudinally, but this difference of form,
'«
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