70 NATURAL HISTORY OF PRECIOUS STONES, &c.
pledged
it to the Jews of Metz for a certain considerable amount, which being
unable to repay he forfeited the stone for ever ; as the well-informed
author of. his life in the ' Biographie Universelle ' has recorded.
This Diamond, therefore, even granting it to be Charles's and Philip's,
at this point entirely disappears from the scene : and there only
remains the one subsequently brought by Harlai " from the Levant," that
is from Constantinople, during his embassy to the Grand Seigneur. That
he was an amateur in Diamonds is indicated by the fact of his
purchasing Dom Antonio's in those troublous times, as well as from his
love of display and magnificence. Sancy died in 1627 ; and the next
notice we find of his well-known Diamond is forty-two years later, as
then belonging to the " Queen of England."
KOH-I-NOOR.
To
borrow the forcible language of Professor Maskeleyne, " The history of
this Diamond is one long romance from then till now ; but it is well
authenticated at every step, as history seems never to have lost sight
of this stone of fate from the days when Ala-ud-deen took it from the
Rajahs of Malwa, five centuries and a half ago, to the day when it
became a crown jewel of England: while tradition carries back its
existence in the memory of India to the half-mythic hero Bikramajeet,*
Eajah of Usjein and Malwa, 57 b.c. ;
and a still wilder legend would fain recognise in it a Diamond
recorded as worn by Carna, Rajah of Anga, who fell in the " great war,"
and first discovered near Masulipatam, in the bed of the Godavery, 5000
years ago."
* Better known as Vikramaditya, the espeller of the Sacae (Scythians', from India.
