as
they agree or disagree with their independently conceived hypotheses,
is one against which we are bound to protest. It is a kind of treatment
which no author should receive. If supposed to be guilty of so many
blunders and inaccuracies of statement, the proper course would be to
leave all that such a writer states severely alone.
Judging
from Tavernier's drawing and description, the stone had been ground by
Hortensio Borgio to a fairly symmetrical shape as a round rose, one
side being, however, steeper than the other, which feature, though
indicated to some extent in the original drawing, is not generally
faithfully reproduced in the copies in various works on diamonds, and
some of the glass models which have been made are not only defective in
this respect, but are altogether too small. This is mentioned here
because these models are sometimes referred to as though they afforded
authentic evidence of the true form of the stone.
We
have now arrived at a stage when we can agree with those authorities
who have maintained that Babur's diamond and the Mogul's were distinct;
but with most, if not all of them, we must part company, as they
maintain that the Mogul's diamond no longer exists, and that it was
upon Babur's diamond that Nadir Shah conferred the title Koh-i-Nur in
the year 1739. But the Mogul's diamond has a stronger and more
immediate claim to be regarded as the diamond, so denominated,
which was taken from Muhammad Shah, Aurangzeb's feeble descendant. The
name was an eminently suitable one to apply to the Mogul's stone as it
was when seen by Tavernier, though not equally applicable to it in its
subsequent mutilated condition, in which it has been so confidently
identified by some writers with Babur's diamond.
The
stone which now bears the title Koh-i-Nur was taken by Nadir to Persia,
and from thence we have rumours of its having been cleaved into several
pieces, when or by whom is doubtful. Acceptance of these stories has
been rendered difficult by some authors having attempted to assign
names and weights to these pieces, the sum of the latter being greater
than the total weight of the Mogul's stone, as it was when seen by
Tavernier. Thus the Orloff, the Great Mogul itself, and the Koh-i-Nur
have been spoken of as having formed parts of the same stone.1
This hypothesis is in opposition to everything connected with the
histories of these stones which can be relied on ; but as regards the
possibility of the Koh-i-Nur alone having been carved out of the Great
MogulVdiamond, it is not argument—but is simply begging the whole
question—to assert that the Koh-i-Nur existed 120 years befoTe Borgio
handled the Mogul's diamond. This 1 Quenstedt,. Klar and Wahr, Tubingen, p. 79.
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