resplendent
turquoise of the gods" and "the white turquoise of the gods. ' ' A
tradition relates that the largest turquoise found up to that time was
discovered in the eighth century a.D. by King Du-srong Mang-po on the summit of a mountain near the sacred Tibetan city of Lhasa.52
In
1613, Shah Abbas of Persia sent to Jehangir six bags of
"turquoise-dust," weighing in all some 23.5 pounds Troy. However, the
material proved to be of very inferior quality, for the jewellers
searched in vain through the whole mass for a single stone fit for
setting in a ring. Jehangir consoles himself with the reflection that
"probably in these days turquoise-dust is not procurable such as it
was in the time of Shah Tahmasp."53
When
the Syrian monarch Antiochus XIII visited Syracuse during the
prtetorship of Caius Verres, he bore with him many richly adorned
vessels, some of them being of gold set with gems after the Syrian
fashion. However, the finest of all was a wine-cup carved out of a
single piece of precious-stone material. When this had once met the
gaze of the greedy Verres, he did not rest until he had got it into his
possession. To attain his end he resorted to a most ignoble stratagem.
Professing his ardent admiration of this as well as of the other
richly-adorned and finely-wrought vessels, Verres requested that they
might be left with him for a short time so that he might contemplate
them at his leisure, and might also have an opportunity to submit them
to examination by his goldsmiths with a view to having some copies
executed. Antiochus readily acceded to this request, but when after the
lapse of a few days he wished to regain possession of his things,
Verres put him off from day to day, on
■Berthold
Laufer, "Notes on Turquois in the East," Field Museum of Natural
History, Anthropological Series, vol. xiii, No. 1, Chicago, July, 1913,
pp. 6, 8.
"The
Tûzuk-i-Jâhangîrt, or memoirs of Jahangir, trans, by Alexander Rogers,
London, 1909, p. 238; Orient. Trans. Fund, N. S., vol. xix.
