Part 1 - Characteristics of Diamond (vajra or hiraka)

Diamond (vajra or hiraka) is increaser of longevity. It makes its good qualities felt quickly. It is nutritious, pacifier of the three doshas, and curer of all the diseases. It improves the quality of the consolidation and killing of mercury, is an increaser of the power of digestion, is an enemy of death, and is like nectar itself.

Colour of Diamonds.

Diamonds are of four different colours, viz, white, red, yellow, and black. The white variety is beneficial in all respects, and is a rasayana or curer and preventer of diseases and senile decay. The red variety also is, to a certain extent, a rasayana. The yellow variety is a giver of wealth (if worn with a ring), and is useful in alchemical operations, The black variety is a destroyer of diseases and a preventer of senile decay.

Another Classification of Diamonds.

(a) Diamonds are of three kinds, viz. (1) masculine, (2) feminine, and (3) neuter. The former have six or eight angles or eight faces. They are very bright, and resemble, in lustre, rain drops falling at the time of the appearance of a rainbow in the sky. They are flat-shaped, whereas feminine diamonds are cylindrical, depressed at the extremities, and are slightly heavy.

(b) Masculine diamonds are well-rounded, well-faced, bright, comparatively big in size, and devoid of lines and spots.

Feminine diamonds have six angles and are full of spots and lines. The neuter diamonds are three-angled, thin, and elongated.

Merits of different kinds of diamonds.

Masculine diamonds are the best of all. They are able to help the transmutation of metals and to consolidate mercury. Feminine diamonds bring happiness to women and enhance their beauty. Neuter diamonds are impotent, useless, and devoid of essence.

Feminine diamonds are to be worn by women, neuter ones by hermaphrodites, but masculine diamonds may be worn always by any person, male, female, or hermaphrodite. A woman who wants to give birth to a son should on no account wear a diamond.

Characteristics of good Diamond.

(a) Vajra or diamond is the best of all gems, whereas gomeda (zercon) and pravala (coral) are inferior to the rest. None of the gems, except pearl and coral, can be scratched by iron, or even by stones, generally. None of the gems, except pearls and corals, undergoes decay. Heaviness is generally an indicator of preciousness in gems; but the case is quite the reverse with diamonds. Diamonds of superior quality are so light as to float on water. They are free from the five defects (to be described below) and are as soothing as moon’s rays.

(b) Diamond of an excellent quality is that which cannot be worn out by being rubbed with the surface of even a very hard touch stone; which cannot be cracked even by the sharp edges of other stones, iron instruments, etc; which can easily create a crack on other substances; and which can be rent asunder by another diamond only. Such diamonds are of a high order and very precious.

Characteristics of bad diamonds.

Diamonds of the following description are bad:—

(1) Those which are of ash colour; (2) those which have got spots of the shape of a crow’s feet, (3) those which are marked by lines, (4) those which are cylindrical, (5) those which darken or soil their foils or receptacles, (6) those which have got spots, (7) those which have got cracks, (8) those which are rent asunder, (9) those which are of blue colour, 10) those which are flat-shaped, and (11) those which are coarse.

Such diamonds are to be avoided.