Such was the fate of Dara, the second owner of the Great Mogul.
In conclusion Tavernier says of the treasures belonging to Aurungzeb:
"These then are the jewels of the Grand Mogul which he showed to me by a particular grace granted to no other foreigner, and I held them all in my hand and considered them with so much attention and leisure that I can assure the reader that the description which I have given is very exact and faithful, as also of the stones which I had time enough to contemplate."
Here absolutely ends the history of this magnificent gem. What became of it no one knows. Whether it was lost in the sack of Delhi, or carried off by Nadir Shah along with the Koh-i-nûr, it is impossible to say, or even to conjecture with any degree of plausibility. No account of this grand diamond, however, would be complete without some reference to the extraordinary myths which have gathered around it. There is scarcely another large diamond of no matter what size, or what color, or what shape, that has not sometime, or by somebody, been declared to be the Great Mogul. Its subsequent history seems to be the happy hunting-ground of the foolish theories of writers on precious stones. Men who write carefully enough about other diamonds, launch out into the wildest conjectures about the Great Mogul. They apparently cannot bear the thought of losing so precious a gem and therefore they find it somewhere, no matter to what inconsistency and absurdity they may be reduced in the process of identification.
Take a few examples.
It has been maintained that the Great Mogul is the Orloff; that it is the Koh-i-nûr; that it is both together; that it is the Orloff, the Koh-i-nûr and a third beside, now lost, which Hortenzio Borgis obtained by cleavage—the precise thing which Tavernier distinctly says he did not do, preferring to grind it down; that it was not a diamond at all, but a white topaz—as if Tavernier, the greatest expert of his times, would not have detected that fact. Even Mr. Streeter, in general a most reliable authority on diamonds, is dazzled into inconsistency when he comes to treat of the Great Mogul. In his work, Precious Stones and Gems, published in 1877, he says under the head of celebrated diamonds: "The diamond known as the Great Mogul has received an amount of attention beyond any other. Under the name of the Koh-i-nûr (Mountain of Light) it played an important part in the Exhibition of 1851," etc., etc. Now harken to Mr. Streeter writing in 1882: "If this description (Tavernier's) be compared with the models both of the Koh-i-nûr and of the Great Mogul itself in our possession, all doubts will be at once removed as to the essentially different character of the two crystals." Again: "The two differ absolutely in their origin, history, size and form!" The Mr. Streeter of 1882 is wisely ignorant of the lucubrations of the Mr. Streeter of 1877.
Unable to offer the slightest hint as to the fate of the Great Mogul we can only hope that some future day may reveal it, and until then we must put up with our ignorance as best we may. It came and went in a flash of glory, the Meteor of Diamonds.