Top Highlights

• This growing fame was partly the result of Ranjit Singh’s preference for diamonds over rubies – a taste Sikhs tended to share with most Hindus, but not with the Mughals or Persians, who preferred large, uncut, brightly coloured stones. Indeed in the Mughal treasury, the Koh-i-Noor seems to have been only one among a number of extraordinary highligh...
• On Krishna’s triumphant return to Dwarka with the Syamantaka, King Satrajit – ‘hanging his head in great shame’ – was so overcome with remorse at having falsely accused Krishna that in recompense he offered him the hand of his beautiful daughter, Princess Satyabhama. It was a happy marriage but the Syamantaka continued to generate envy and bloodshe...
• Even Buddhist literature, despite its austere embrace of poverty and asceticism, is pervaded with gemmological imagery:
• According to an early Tamil text called the Tirukkailaya-nana-ula, a lovely woman at the peak of her youthful beauty should never be entirely naked, even in bed; instead her body’s beauty should be enhanced with gems:
• She adorns her feet with a pair of anklets And stacks her wrists with heavy bangles   Thickly encrusted with gems. She decks her hair with an impeccable garland   Strung with gold thread And enlivens her shapely neck with jewels, Thus is she a match for Shri herself.