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Excerpt from section 3 of the exhibition
DIAMOND IS FOREVER
THE POWER OF LIGHTNING
Historians concur that the earliest reference to diamond - a term that already indicated its association with flashing brilliance and power - was made in India.
The Sanskrit word for diamond is vajra, “thunderbolt,” or indrayudha, “Indra’s weapon”; Indra was the Hindu warrior god who wielded a thunderbolt.
As early as the 4th century BCE, a Sanskrit manuscript described in minute detail the ideal vajra: a fine octahedron. Diamond was already highly valued.
FROM INDIA TO THE MEDITERRANEAN
When was the Greek word adamas first used to describe diamond? Hard to say, even though we know that ancient India was already in contact with Mediterranean peoples. The presence of diamond in Rome by about 100 CE is confirmed by the writings of Pliny the Elder, by sapphire engravings, and by talismanic diamond rings.
From the 4th century on, diamonds gradually disappeared from Europe following the rise of Christianity: Roman talismans and Eastern magical stones were not viewed favourably by the rising new religion. Simultaneously, Persia and the Middle Eastern states gained control over the diamond trade, and diverted any diamonds that might have come from India.
Despite its physical absence from Europe for close to a thousand years, diamond survived conceptually! For the Middle Ages witnessed a rediscovery of early writings on stones. Medieval lapidaries detailed the qualities of stones as medicines, antidotes or poisons!
By the 13th century, the first land and sea routes to India had opened, bringing diamonds to all of Europe. The early diamond trading capital was Venice, where diamond cutting probably also originated sometime after 1330.
At the very end of the 15th century, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope,* thus opening up a route to the East and providing Europeans with an end-run around the Arabic peninsula, an impediment to the trade of diamonds!
* The southernmost tip of Africa
The diamond-rich region of Goa, on the Malabar Coast of India, soon became a major Portuguese diamond trading centre. From Goa to Lisbon to Antwerp, Europe fell under the spell…
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