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DIAMONDS IN LEGEND
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mountainside. One belief is that Teifashi really was referring to diamonds rather than rubies and sapphires.
Another
curious legend, still current in India, has to do with a mammoth
diamond throne. George Frederick Kunz, in his Curious Lore of Precious
Stones, speaks of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim, Heuen Tsang, who
visited India between 629 and 645 a.d. and
told of a throne which once stood near the tree of Knowledge. This
throne was constructed in the age called "Kalpa of the Sages." It
measured 100 feet in circumference and was made of a single gem. When
the whole earth was hit by storm or earthquake, the throne was
immovable, but as the earth passed "into the present and last age, sand
and earth completely covered the throne, so that it cannot longer be
seen by the human eye." The Indians believe that this throne was a
solid diamond and the source of all the diamonds flowing along the
Godavari, Kistna, and other rivers.
Some
believed that "the philosopher's stone," the dream of many, was the
diamond. But the medieval alchemists had a different conception of it.
They did not know precisely what the philosopher's stone was, but they
believed that if they could possess it, common flints could be
transmuted from it to create diamonds and other precious-stones, as
well as gold. The belief that diamonds could be "created" by man is
something more than legendary. It has been attempted in recent years by
men of intelligence, but the results have been negligible. Man has not
yet been able to do in a year, a decade, or a century what it has taken
Nature millions of years to achieve.
Yet
the gullibility of man persists. It was only as recently as 1905 that
an audacious swindle was carried out in London when one Henry Lemoine
of Paris visited Sir Julius Wern-her, of the London firm of Wernher,
Beit & Co., large
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