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CHAPTER XII
DIAMONDS IN LEGEND, SUPERSTITION, AND SENTIMENT
The groping mind of ancient man, seeking vainly to tear aside the veil between the knowable and the unknowable, created its own conception of many things. Even inanimate objects and phenomena, especially if they were rare or extraordinarily beautiful or terrifying, assumed personality, were given an aura of mystery, while to some of them were ascribed powers of good and evil.
A
precious stone, for instance, was beautiful, but its meaning and the
secret of its beginnings were elusive. So the primitive mind supplied
its own answers and storytelling became a habit of the human race.
Later the semi-civilized mind improvised and amplified these stories
and modern civilized man, even if in skepticism and cynicism, has
perpetuated them.
The
diamond is a case in point. Its source of light and beauty and
brilliance, its significance (if it had one) in a world of men and
animals and earth and water, bewildered those who came in contact with
it. And so about it were created many tales, legendary, superstitious,
sentimental.
One
of the most curious of these legends—yet until a century ago accepted
not as legend but as fact—concerns a mysterious "Valley of Diamonds,"
which many believed to be a deep gorge in the mountains of Serendib
(Ceylon)
(199)
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