Cutting and polishing diamonds

India has always been regarded as the natural and ancient home of the diamonds. Up to 1728 the whole world’s supply of diamonds was found in the deccan plateu in the valleys and on the beds of streams to a depth of twelve to sixteen feet of earth. Placed there by the gods as a gem endowed with magical qualities, Indians revered the diamond as far back as 1500 BC, the age of the Vedas.

During those ancient times, diamonds were not cut. The rough stones were mounted as such in jewellery, in helmets and on swords. This is why Indians who wrote on gems, such as Buddhabhatta, Thakkura Pheru describe the shape, and nature of rough diamonds in great detail. For example, Thakkura Pheru wrote in 1315 AD: “the best rough diamond has symmetric facets, free of impurities, sparkling, flawless and ligh in weight.”

Being the hardest known mineral in nature, only diamonds can cut or abrade other diamonds. Artisan used this property to best advantage; they rubbed one diamond against another for months to get the shape they wanted. They were expert in the art of grinding and polishing diamond crystals and kept gemstone shaping a family secret, not to be revealed to the outside world. It is likely that their techniques dated back thousands of years, but there is hardly any mention of this in Indian literature. Ancient texts state that while the diamonds was extremely hard and indestructible, it could easily be split by a light blow along certain directions and that the earliest diamond workers employed such techniques to remove heavy flows and cracks and to smooth the faces of crystals. Kautilya in this Artbhashastra wrote of the ability of diamond to scratch hard metals and other gemstones. It is possible that Indian workers tried to cut and polish diamonds with other diamonds as early as the first century BC. In Europe too, as early as 77 AD, engravers embedded diamond fragments in iron to make cutting tools. According to Pliny, these tools could in turn cut diamonds. During his travels in India in the eighteenth century Tavernier who wrote extensively on the gemstone industry in the country, found artisan in India were using iron wheels with diamond grit to remove flaws in diamond crystals. At the time of his visit, most Indians were merely polishing rough stones that had regular crystallized shapes. Faults like inclusions and grains were removed by grinding, but deep faults were sought to be hidden by a great number of small facets. Some European workers who had practiced diamond cutting in Europe but had settled in India were given the larger and more expensive stones for cutting. They were better at this work perhaps because they had already attained a higher level of perfection in their work. It has been recorded that as early as 1375 AD, diamond cutters in Germany were active and had even formed a guild in Nurenberg.