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ON THE RELIGIOUS USE OF VARIOUS STONES 301
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Sundara Pandiyan, at a date prior to 1310 a.d. Another
magnificent gift was a gorgeous jewelled turban adorned with diamonds,
rubies, emeralds and pearls, bestowed in 1623 by Trimal Nayakkan.32
These gifts or dedications show the prevailing tendency to propitiate
the higher powers and insure success in royal enterprises.
The
English ambassador, Sir Thomas Roe, sent to the court of Shah Jehangir
by King James I, saw the Shah on the day of his great birthday festival
when he was weighed against a great variety of objects, jewels, gold,
silver, stuffs of gold and silver, silk, butter, rice, fruits, etc. All
these things, heaped up on the scale balancing the one in which stood
the Shah, were distributed as imperial gifts after the conclusion of
the ceremony. Sir Thomas Roe declares that on this occasion (he missed
seeing the actual weighing) the monarch was adorned with a great array
of jewels, and he adds : ' Ί must confess I never saw at one time such
unspeakable wealth," a testimony of considerable value, for the
English Court in the time of James I was one by no means poor in
jewels, that sovereign having a great fondness for them. After the
ceremony of weighing had been completed, Jehangir enjoyed the spectacle
of a procession of twelve troupes of hischoicest elephants, each troupe
led by a "lord elephant of exceptional stature." The finest of these
had all the plates on his head and breast set with rubies and
emeralds, and all the elephants as they neared the Shah saluted him
with their trunks.33
In
Persia the pink and red coral was believed to have acquired its
beautiful color after removal from the water, and the odor of the
material was said to be a trustworthy
B
Hendley, " Indian Jewelfery," London, 1909, p. 106; see Major H. H.
(Jole, " Preservation of the Natural Monuments of India," PI. 52.
*»
" Journal of Sir Thomas Roe, Ambassador of James I to Shah Jehangir,
Mogul Emperor of H'indoostan "; in Kerr's Collection of Voyages and
Travels, Edinburgh, 1824, vol. ix, p. 288.
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