THE DIAMOND

A Study in Chinese and Hellenistic Folk-Lore

Introductory. — Of all the wonders and treasures of the Hellenistic-Roman Orient, it was the large variety of beautiful precious stones that created the most profound and lasting impression on the minds of the Chinese. During the time of their early antiquity the number of gems known to them was exceedingly limited, and mainly restricted to certain untransparent, colored stones fit for carving; while the transparent jewel with its qualities of lustre, cut, polished, and set ready for wearing, was a matter wholly unknown to them. Only contact with Hellenistic civilization and with India opened their eyes to this new world, and together with the new commodities a stream of Occidental folk-lore poured into the valleys of China. That a chapter from a series of discussions devoted to Chinese-Hellenistic relations 1 is taken up by a detailed study of the history of the diamond, is chiefly because this very subject affords a most instructive example of the diffusion of classical ideas to the Farthest East. The mind of the Chinese offered a complete blank in this respect, being unacquainted with the diamond, and was therefore easily susceptible to the reception of foreign notions along this line. 2 India was the distributing-centre of diamonds to western Asia, Hellas and Rome, on the one hand, and to south-eastern

1 Two other contributions along this line have thus far been published: The Story of the Pinna and the Syrian Lamb (Journal of American Folk-Lore, Vol. XXVIII, 1915, pp. 103-128) and Asbestos and Salamander (Toung Pao, 1915, pp. 297-371).

1 Geerts (Les produits de la nature japonaise et chinoise, p. 201) stated in 1878 that the diamond had not yet been found in China or Japan. Diamonds have been discovered in Shan-tung Province only during recent years (compare A. A. Fauvel, Les diamants chinois, Comptes-rendus Soc. de Iindustrie miniire, 1899, pp. 271-281; Chinese Diamonds, Mines and Minerals, Vol. XXIII, 1902-03, p. 552). The late F. H. Chalfant (in the work Shantung, the Sacred Province of China, ed. by Forsyth, p. 346) gives this account:Fifty-five /* south-east of I-chou-fu he the diamond fields. The stones are found on the low watershed between two streams, distributed through a very shallow soil over a reddish sandstone conglomerate. A determined effort was made by the same German company that operated the gold mine near I-chou, to develop the diamond field, but the enterprise was not a commercial success. It is the opinion of the German experts that the stones were deposited in their present position by the action of water at the time when, according to the theory, there was a connection between the two rivers. It is supposed that the source of the supply is somewhere in the mountains of M6ng-yin. Meanwhile, diamonds, some of them of very good quality, are constantly picked up at the locality described and occasionally at other points." The mines were abandoned by the





Asia and China on the other hand. Nevertheless the ideas conceived by the Chinese regarding the diamond do not coincide with those entertained in India, but harmonize with those which we find expounded in classical literature. This fact is due to the direct importation of diamonds from the Hellenistic Orient to China; but it has been entirely unknown heretofore, and this is another reason which will justify this investigation now made for the first time. Its significance lies not only in the field of Chinese research, but in that of classical archaeology as well. The copious and reliable accounts of Chinese authors advance our knowledge of the subject to a considerable degree beyond the point where the classical writers leave us, and elucidate several problems as yet unsettled. It will be seen on the pages to follow that the use of the diamond-point in the ancient world, doubted or disowned by many scholars, now becomes a securely-established fact, and also that the ....