The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-04-02
London Correspondence of the New Yo

London Correspondence or the New hork
 Sun.
 THE keepers of the British crown,
 jewels are making preparations for.
 \ their safe transport from London to Delhi in readiness for the great dur- bar at which King George will crown himself Emperor of India. Those who' attend this durbar will have chance. to see such a display of precious stones as the eye of no living man has ever gazed on.
 The British crown jewels. fine as they are, cannot, with tue exception of few individual gems, compare with some of the great Indian collections. The princes, rajahe and maharajahs of India have the accumulated wealth of generations in vested in countless dazzling gems, whose value is incaculabe. But if every Indian rajah had as great and as valuable a collection as the aggregate of all their collections even then, in the eyes of 1n- dia, the British crown jewels would sur pass them all. And this, for the sake of one stone, the Kohinoor.
 Compared with either of the stars of Africa as the Cullinan diamonds are now called the Kohinoor is but a splendid pebble It's history is what appeals to the Indian mind. Long years ago it was the chief jewel of the Mogul emperors and remains to this day the symbol of imperial authority in India.
 The history of the Kohinoor is fairly well known, but there are periods around of elf was brought to England after the Sikh wars, and at once met with strange if somewhat unromantic adventure. --ne official who brought it over sent it to the wash in his waistcoat pocket. At :nat time it's weight was 1S6 karats, which was subsequently, reduced to 106 by the recutting ordered by the prince consort.
 When it belonged to the great Moguls the Kohinoor was a far greater stone. The French jeweler, Tavernier, who saw it in the seventeenth century, described it as 7S7la karats in weight, uncut, or merely "fatted' on one side. He com pared it to an egg cut in half. Horten- sic Borgio, a dishonest or unskilful Iral- ian diamond cutter, was then called in and reduced it to 26S karats He nearly
 
 lost his head when the Emperor saw
 Many experts consider that tic Orloff karats in weight, and also a large frag ment of 132 karats. may have both been cut from the remains of the Mogul dia-' mond. But the Kohinoor. which Ranjit Singh used sometimes to wear in the socket of his blind eye, continued to rep resent, the original gem, and when it is seen in the crown of George V at Delhi, next December. for every native present it will be the symbol of imperial author ity.
 Historically the return of the Kohinoor to India will in native eyes set the nnal seal upon the great ceremony at Delhi.
 But some of the other gems in the British regalia will certainly produce their effect upon people so accustomed to symbolism. There is the great Agin- court ruby, won in, the battle from which it takes it's name before the Moguls IT, troduced splendor of life into the ini- perial places they built so lavishly It will certainly be watched with keen ill., terest by Rajput eyes as it glows from tle Ct0tTdl CIOSS OI lle E1SllSn cfOWn.I
 Then there is the pale sapphire in the topmost cross above the orb. That will surely make it's appeal, for it came from the Confessor's tomb in Westminster ab- bey and has 90o-year-od record behind
 it. And beyond all question the new, un-. historied Stars of Africa will have their triumph. In way they will bring home tc the native of India the majesty of the occasion better than proclamations, processions, gaol deliveries or the sound of guns The two gigantic South African stones will have begun their careers of symbolism when they blaze out unriv- alled and unchallensed oyer what Will probably be the most stppendous assem- blages of gems that Europe or Asia has ever seen. te.
 None can estimate the huge wealth that lies hidden in Indian treasuries in the