THE KOH-I-NUR. 83
ally
believed that he obtained " the famous diamond " in 1304 when he
conquered the Rajah of Malwa in whose family it had been for ages. How
it eventually came into the hands of Bikermajet is not explained. But
in the wild whirl of revolution and insurrection, which form the main
staple of Indian history, many things get hopelessly mixed, and a
diamond might easily turn up unexpectedly and be quite unable to
account for itself. Baber goes on to relate that the great diamond— we
will antedate its name by two centuries and call it henceforward the
Koh-i-nûr — was valued by a competent judge of diamonds "at half the
dally expenditure of the whole world " — an expression which for
grandiloquent vagueness can scarcely be surpassed. Fortunately the
same competent judge had not the weighing
