Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

The diamond was found in 1701 on the River Krishna’s banks by a miner working for a lessee. The stone, 410 carats before it was cut, as it was later assessed, was smuggled out by the finder in the bandages he had wrapped around his leg to protect a self-inflicted wound. Putting together the various stories about this smuggling, that sounds like the most plausible reconstruction of events.

The miner, described as a slave but probably what we would call bonded labour, escaped to the Coast and sought passage to Madras from an English skipper to whom he spoke of his escape with a diamond – presumably offering some of its proceeds for his passage to freedom. What happened to the miner thereafter is not known, but the uncut stone turned up with Jamchund, perhaps the biggest diamond dealer in the South. He bought it from the ship’s captain for £1,000, the story goes.

Pitt himself later recorded his negotiations with Jamchund – who was introduced to him by a free merchant, Samuel Glover, and who came accompanied during every visit in the course of the protracted negotiations by Venkata Chetti, one of the town’s leading Indian merchants. The bargaining began in December 1701 with Jamchund asking for 200,000 pagodas and Pitt offering 30,000. (It was about 2 1/3 pagodas to the pound sterling at the time.) Finally – and I skip all Pitt’s details of the hard bargaining that went on over a couple of months – Pitt bought the diamond for 48,000 pagodas “believing it must prove a pennyworth if it proved good”. Pitt cites Governor Richard Benyon as being a witness of sorts to the purchase. Glover, who expected to benefit from the transaction, did not receive the 3,000 pagodas Jamchund had promised him as the diamond merchant had not been “pleased with Pitt’s Transactions in the Matter.” Nevertheless, Jamchund and Pitt continued to do business with each other till the former Governor left for England.

Pitt sent the diamond to England with his son Robert, a free merchant in Madras, no sooner the deal was finalised in 1702. Till Robert reached England and his father received word of his safe arrival, Thomas Pitt remained a much-worried man in Madras, particularly as he had stated in the bill of lading that the diamond’s value was only 6,500 pagodas.

In London, the diamond was cut and polished at a cost of £5000, but the chippings and dust from the cutting fetched Pitt about £7500. In 1717, he sold the diamond, which had been cut to about 137 carats, to the Duke of Orleans, who was the Regent during the minority of Louis XV of France, for £135,000 – and the Pitt family became rich enough to fuel its political ambitions. The brokerage for the negotiations cost each party £5000.

In 1791, when the French Crown jewels were inventoried and valued, what was now the Regent Diamond was priced at £480,000. A year later it had been stolen, together with the greater part of the French Crown Jewels. An anonymous letter led to their being found in a ditch in an alley off the Champs Elysees.

The ‘Regent’ was later pledged by Napoleon to the Dutch Government to raise funds for his ambitions, then redeemed and returned to the French Treasury, where it has remained – a long way from the Krishna and Madras.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

---

---