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382 THE GREAT MOGUL'S DIAMOND
by
well-verified references, so that the reader may be in a position to
pronounce for himself a verdict on definite evidence alone, and accept
or reject the conclusions which are here suggested.
In
order, so to speak, to clear the way for the discussion, it will be
necessary, as a preliminary, to give short accounts of all the large diamonds with which authors have sought to identify the Koh-i-Nür.
Firstly, there is the diamond of Sultan Bâbur, which his son Humäyün received in the year a.d. 1526
from the family of Râjâ Bikramajit, when he took possession of Agra. It
had already then a recorded history, having been acquired from the Râjâ
of Mälwä by Alâ-ud-dïn in the year 1304.1 Regarding its
traditional history, which extends 5,000 years farther back, nothing
need be said here ; though it has afforded sundry imaginative writers a
subject for highly characteristic paragraphs. We have no record of its
having been at any time a cut stone.
According
to Sultan Bâbur the diamond was equal in value to one day's food of all
the people in the world. Its estimated weight was about 8 mishkâls, and
as he gives a value of 40 ratis to the mishkäl—it weighed, in other
words, about 320 ratis. Ferishta 2 states that Bâbur
accepted the diamond in lieu of any other ransom, for the private
property of individuals, and that it weighed 8 mishkâls or 224 ratis.
Hence 1 mishkäl = 28 ratis, from which we may deduce that the ratis
Ferishta referred to were to those of Bâbur, of which 40 went to the
mishkâl, as 28 : 40 ; and this, on the supposition that the smaller
rati was equal to 1-842 troy gr., gives a value of 2-63 troy gr. for
the larger, which closely approximates to the value of the pearl rati
of Tavernier. If on the other hand we deduce the smaller from the
larger (at 2·66 gr.'for the pearl rati) we obtain for it a value of
1-86. So far as I am aware, this explanation of Ferishta's figures 3 has
not been published before. The value of the mishkâl in Bäbur's time, as
being a more tangible weight than the variable rati, has been
investigated by Prof. Maskelyne,4 and he concludes that it
was equal to about 74 gr. troy, and that if taken at 73-69 gr. troy,
and multiplied by 8, it would yield a weight exactly corresponding to
that of the Koh-i-nür when brought to England, namely 186-06 carats.
Accepting the second estimate for the value of the mishkäl, that of
1 See Erskine's Memoirs of Sultan Bâbur, 1918, ii, p. 191 ; History of India, i. 438.
2 History of the Rise of the Mahomedan Power in India, &c, trans, by J. Briggs, London, 1829, Calcutta, 1909, ii. 46.
3 See also Dow, History of Hindustan, 1812, ii. 105. ' Lecture at the Royal Institution, March 1860.
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