Tale XV.
[1.] “Diamond kingdom.” It is probably Magadha (now Behar) that is here thus designated (Jülg.); though it might stand for any part of Central India: “Diamonds were only found in India of all the kingdoms of antiquity” (Lassen, iii. 18), and (Lassen i. 240), “in India between 14° and 25°;” a wide range, but the fields are limited in extent and sparsely scattered. The old world only knew the diamond through the medium of India. In India itself they were the choicest ornaments of the kings and of the statues of the gods. They thus became stored up in great masses in royal and ecclesiastical treasuries; and became the highest standard of value. The vast quantities of diamonds made booty of during the Muhammedan invasion borders on the incredible. It was thus that they first found their way in any quantity to the West of Europe. Since the discovery of the diamond-fields of Brazil, they have been little sought for in India. In Sanskrit, they were called vag’ra, “lightning;” also abhêdja, “infrangible.” It would appear, however, that the Muhammedans were not the first to despoil the Eastern treasuries, for Pliny (book ix.) tells us that Lollia, wife of Claudius, was wont to show herself, on all public occasions, literally covered from head to foot with jewels, which her father, Marcus Lollius, had taken from the kings of the East, and which were valued at forty million sesterces. He adds, however, this noteworthy instance of retribution of rapacity, that he ended by taking his own life to appease the Emperor’s animosity, which he had thereby incurred.
Hiuen Thsang, the Chinese pilgrim who visited India about A.D. 640, particularly mentions that in Maláva and Magadha were chief seats of learned studies.
[2]. Abaraschika; magic word of no meaning. (Jülg.)
[3]. Astrologers. Colebrooke (“Miscellaneous Essays,” ii. 440) is of opinion that astrology was a late introduction into India. Divination by the relative position of the planets seems to have been in part at least of foreign growth and comparatively recent introduction among the Hindus; (he explains this to refer to the Alexandrian Greeks). “The belief in the influence of the planets and stars upon human affairs is with them indeed remotely ancient, and was a natural consequence of their early creed making the sun and planets gods. But the notion that the tendency of that supposed influence and the manner in which it is to be exerted, may be foreseen by man, and the effect to be produced by it foretold through a knowledge of the position of the planets at a given moment, is no necessary result of that belief; for it takes from beings believed divine their free agency.” See also Weber, “Geschichte der Indischen Astrologie,” in his Indische Studien, ii. 236 et seq.