In
Sumbulpur the Diamond seekers were of two castes. They resembled
Negroes rather than Hindoos, and received the names of Ihara and Tora.
Sixteen villages of the poorest kind were given up to them as free
Jaghirs ; ten being occupied by the Iharas and four by the Toras, the
remaining two being dedicated to their gods.
These
people were naturally superstitious. Nicolo Conti, who travelled in
India in the early part of the 15th century, gives some very
questionable stories as to a Diamond-producing mountain, and the means
by which they were produced. It is also believed that sacrifices were
made upon the opening of a new Diamond mine, and credulous travellers
in those early days, might possibly have supposed that these
sacrificial rites were essential to the successful search for Diamonds.
The
Diamond seekers with their families, numbering from 4000 to 5000
persons, migrated yearly ; and from November to the commencement of the
rainy season searched the bed of the Mahanadi River from Chunder-pur to
Sonepur, a distance of twenty-four miles, scrutinizing every cleft and
corner for the Precious Stones. They carried with them only three tools
: a pickaxe, a board five feet long, hollowed in the middle and
provided with a raised border three inches high, and a second board
about half the size of the other.
With the pickaxe they scraped the earth out of the
clefts and holes, and piled it in heaps on the bank. Their
women laid the earth on the larger board, slightly inclined,
washed it with water, and removed all the rougher sand
and pebbles, which were subsequently placed on the smaller
board, spread out, and searched for precious stones and
gold dust. The Diamond was found for the most part
in a mass of tough, reddish clay, pebbles, sand, and
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