238 THE CURIOUS LORE OF PRECIOUS STONES
The
Kalpa Tree of Hindu religion, a symbolical offering to the gods, is
described by Hindu poets as a glowing mass of precious stones. Pearls
hung from its boughs and beautiful emeralds from its shoots; the tender
young leaves were corals, and the ripe fruit consisted of rubies. The
roots were of sapphire; the base of the trunk of diamond, the uppermost
part of cat's-eye, while the section between was of topaz. The foliage
(except the young leaves) was entirely formed of zircons.23
The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Heuen Tsang, who visited India between 629 and 645 a.d., tells
of the wonderful "Diamond Throne" which, according to the legend, had
once stood near the Tree of Knowledge, beneath whose spreading branches
Gautama Buddha is said to have received his supreme revelation of
truth. This throne had been constructed in the age called the "Kalpa of
the Sages"; its origin was contemporaneous with that of the earth, and
its foundations were at the centre of all things; it measured one
hundred feet in circumference, and was made of a single diamond. "When
the whole earth was convulsed by storm or earthquake this resplendent
throne remained immovabie. Upon it the thousand Buddhas of the Kalpa
had reposed and had fallen into the "ecstasy of the diamond." However,
since the world has passed into the present and last age, sand and
earth have completely covered the "Diamond Throne," so that it can no
longer be seen by human eye.24
In
the Kalpa Sutra, written in Prakrit, one of the sacred books of the
Jains, the rivals of the Buddhists, it is said that Harinegamesi, the
divine commander of the
a Surindro Mohun Tagore, " Mani Mala," Pt. II, Calcutta, 1881, pp. 645, 647.
24 Heuen Tsang, " Memoires sur les contrees occidentales," French trans, by Stanislas Julien, Paris, 1857, vol. i, p. 461.
