A royal affair: Ancient adornments and bespoke bijoux 

Editor’s note: Crown jewels, colonialism and craftsmanship together make up the exquisite story of precious stones and their settings in South Asia. We explore the fascinating tales of royalty, conquests and violence to trace the history of some of the celebrated jewels from the subcontinent. Yes—the coveted Koh-i-noor features in this first instalment:) Part two brings you the Patiala ruby choker, the Patiala necklace of yellow diamonds and the iconic Toussaint necklace, made famous by ‘Ocean’s 8’.

This article originally appeared on the MAP Academy website. All images that appear with the MAP Academy articles are sourced from various collections around the world, and due image credits can be found on the original article on the MAP Academy website. The MAP Academy is a non-profit online educational platform committed to building equitable resources for the study of art histories from South Asia.

Central to traditional costumes and ceremonies in South Asia, elaborate jewellery has a long history in India. Ornaments, especially of gold, form a significant part of Indian family heirlooms to this day. Creativity and excellence in craftsmanship were fostered in Indian jewellery as the associated traditions of meenakari, thewa, ivory-carving, gem-cutting and others received royal support and patronage. 

Royal families through the ages have commissioned unique accessories that have gone on to become culturally significant objects—often by design, as these objects were custom-made to symbolise the wealth, influence and resources of their owners. As the only known source of diamonds until the early eighteenth century, the Indian subcontinent also has a uniquely long and violent history of these and other gemstones changing hands as spoils of war.

A pair of gold earrings from the first century BCE — extraordinarily large and heavy by modern standards—is among the oldest jewellery discovered in the subcontinent. Associated with deified rulers, it finds representation in ancient Buddhist sculpture. More recent examples such as the Toussaint Necklace, the Pearl Carpet of Baroda, the Patiala Necklace and the Patiala Ruby Choker, serve as testament to the wealth and access, if not political power, that certain Indian royal families enjoyed under British rule. 

Often designed and set by leading jewellery firms in Europe, these commissions also embody the aesthetic fusions of East and West being explored in these elite circles at the time. For later generations of royalty, these iconic pieces of jewellery became reliable ways to avoid bankruptcy, through distress sales.

Royal jewels have changed hands not only through sales, inheritance and gifts but also often through war and theft—perhaps most famously in the case of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, which had already seen several conquests in its legendary history by the time it was handed over to the British Crown through the Treaty of Lahore. Many such objects have been part of a complex global—and not always legal—trade in precious goods, as much for their historical significance as for their intrinsic value. 

The provenance and mystique of these jewels—many of which disappeared from the historical record for decades at a time, or were modified with changing fashions—add to their rich legacy.

Deep blue: Star of India

Considered the largest blue star sapphire in the world, the Star of India was found in the alluvial deposits of Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), likely in the Ratnapura area historically renowned for its precious stones. When the sapphire was located by George F Kunz in the 1890s, the mineralogist estimated its discovery to have taken place at least three hundred years previously, and there is no information on the initial ownership or polishing of the rough stone. Given that the sapphire has no recorded connections to India, its name is a misnomer and is often attributed to a colonial-era conflation of the regions of the Indian subcontinent.

Weighing 563.35 carats, the cabochon-cut gem is a slightly oblong dome with a flat base and a diameter of about 4 centimetres. Thought to have been formed one to two billion years ago, the sapphire contains minute crystals of a titanium mineral called rutile, which gives it its milky greyish-blue appearance. The needle-like rutile formations also reflect light in a star pattern, an effect known as asterism. The Star of India is distinctive in that its prominent six-pointed asterism is visible from both top and bottom.   

Kunz, who was a prominent consultant for the US Geological Survey and vice-president at the jewellery house Tiffany & Co., included the Star of India in the collection of important gemstones he curated under the commission of American financier JP Morgan. After exhibiting the collection at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Morgan donated all the gemstones, including the Star of India, to the American Museum of Natural History.

While already well-known for its large size, asterism and near-flawless nature, the sapphire garnered attention again after it was stolen from the museum along with twenty-one other gems in 1964. The thieves were apprehended within days and most of the gems recovered from a bus station locker, where they had been hidden. The Star of India was returned to its display at the museum in 1965. 

At the time of writing, the sapphire is exhibited in the Allison and Roberto Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. 

The coveted Koh-i-noor

A large diamond with a long history, the Koh-i-Noor is famously associated with conquests and the shifting balance of power among rival empires between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. Said to have been named Koh-i-noor—meaning ‘mountain of light’ in Persian—by Iranian conqueror Nader Shah, the diamond has changed hands many times, usually as a spoil of war.

Its owners include the Kakatiya dynasty of South India, the Delhi Sultanate, the Mughals, the Afsharids of present-day Iran, the Durranis of present-day Afghanistan, and maharajas of the Sikh empire, before the British East India Company acquired it. Housed in Britain since 1849 as Crown property, today it is the subject of criticism, international tensions and debates surrounding the colonial appropriation of goods.

Weighing about 190 carats through its early history, the oval diamond in its present form weighs 105.6 carats, and is 3.6 centimetres long, 3.2 centimetres wide and 1.3 centimetres deep.

The diamond’s origin and its history before the seventeenth century are uncertain. According to most modern scholarship, it is thought to have been discovered in the thirteenth century, sifted from alluvial deposits in the Krishna–Godavari river delta in present-day Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in India—the site of the later-established Kollur mines, famous for the Golconda diamonds. This put the stone in the possession of the ruling Kakatiya dynasty until it was, by most accounts, paid as tribute to the Delhi Sultanate when Alauddin Khilji’s forces subjugated the Kakatiyas c.1310. 

The diamond shifted hands among the various dynasties of the Delhi Sultanate for the next two centuries, including the Khiljis, the Tughlaqs, the Sayyids and the Lodis. When Babur defeated Ibrahim Lodi in the Battle of Panipat in 1526, the diamond passed to him, receiving the epithet ‘Diamond of Babur’, and remained with the emperors of the Mughal dynasty for the next two hundred years.

Babur’s account in his memoir Baburnama suggests an alternative provenance for the diamond, stating that it had previously been in possession of the king of Gwalior. According to other accounts, it may have been housed in the kingdom of Malwa before it was taken by the Delhi Sultanate. Weighing roughly 190 carats, the Koh-i-noor was at the time one of the largest diamonds in the world.

In Hindu mythology and popular imagination, the Koh-i-Noor is considered to have a history dating back millennia. The precious stone Syamantaka described in the Bhagavata and Vishnu Puranas as endowing magical powers on its owners — which included the mythical Surya, Satrajita, Krishna and Jambavan — is sometimes interpreted as the Koh-i-Noor. However, these literary narratives are understood in scholarship to conflate several distinct historical gems.

The first verifiable record of the Koh-i-Noor appears in Muhammad Kazim Marvi’s biography of Nader Shah, in which it is described as being embedded in Shah Jahan’s Peacock Throne. In 1628, Shah Jahan commissioned an exceptionally opulent throne as a symbol of his power, featuring the forms of two peacocks. Covered in gold and silver and studded with numerous precious stones including the Koh-i-Noor (then known as the Diamond of Babur), the Akbar Shah Diamond and the Timur Ruby, it served as a symbol of the extravagance, luxury and power that the Mughal empire epitomised at the time.

Based on seventeenth-century French jeweller Jean Baptiste Tavernier’s account, it is sometimes theorised that the Koh-i-Noor was cut from the Great Mughal Diamond under Aurangzeb’s rule. However, this theory has generally been discredited in light of recent research.

When Afsharid Persian conqueror Nader Shah invaded Delhi in 1739 he brought the Peacock Throne, among many other Mughal treasures, back to Iran—removing, however, the Koh-i-Noor and the Timur Ruby from the throne to wear on an armband. While the throne was later dismantled for the value of its component materials and gems, the armband with the Koh-i-Noor came into the possession of Ahmad Shah Durrani, who succeeded Nader Shah after the latter’s death in 1747, soon establishing and ruling what is present-day Afghanistan. 

In 1809, one of his successors, Shah Shujah, fled with the diamond after being overthrown, and was captured by the founder of the Sikh empire Ranjit Singh in Lahore, present-day Pakistan. Having refused to part with the diamond initially, he used it to negotiate his release in 1814. 

In Ranjit Singh’s possession, the Koh-i-Noor’s reputation grew further as a coveted marker of prestige and dominance. He displayed it on the front of his turban or wore it on his arm at important state events or festivals, as a symbol of the territorial power he had reclaimed from the Iranian and Afghan rulers since their siege of Delhi. At all other times, it was kept fiercely guarded. At Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, his head priest alleged that the king had willed the stone to the Jagannath Temple in Puri, Odisha. 

However, his treasurer secured it for the successors to the throne, maintaining that it was state property. While the British imperialists also wished to acquire the diamond, it remained with Ranjit Singh’s successors through a tumultuous period in the Sikh empire. In 1843, his youngest son Duleep Singh ascended to the throne at the age of five. In 1849, the British annexed the princely state of Punjab, forcing the ten-year-old Duleep Singh to sign the Last Treaty of Lahore, which required him to surrender his position and hand over the Koh-i-Noor to Britain’s Queen Victoria.

A pair of royal earrings

Dated to the first century BCE, a pair of large gold earrings speculated to be from present-day Andhra Pradesh is one of the oldest pieces of jewellery found in the Indian subcontinent. Classified as prakaravapra kundala in their form, the spiral earrings constitute the only surviving example of jewellery that is depicted in ancient Indian sculpture. They show highly sophisticated craftsmanship; this, together with their size and weight and the emblematic motifs they contain, indicate that they are likely to have been royal commissions.

Made entirely of gold, each earring, about 7.6 centimetres long and 4 centimetres wide, takes the form of a vine-like stem spiralling into a trumpet-shaped bud form at both extremities. The curving stem in the middle is decorated with gold granules in diagonal rows, with small rosettes between them. The surface decoration continues outward, with larger rosettes and petal shapes appearing at the base of the buds, which have a rectangular cross-section and convex end. 

On each end of the earring, one of the flat faces is adorned with a vase motif lush with fronds and other floral elements symbolising fertility and plenitude, and while otherwise identical, the two earrings show a slight difference in the design of these fronds. The adjacent face shows a saddled and harnessed elephant on one end, and a bejewelled winged lion on the other end. Both the repousse animals are emblems of royalty, and are elaborately decorated, covered entirely with granules and pieces of gold wire and sheets. 

The ear ornaments were worn so that they hung vertically with the vase motif facing forward, the lions facing inward and the elephants facing outward. As with many of the ancient ear ornaments depicted in Indian art, these too—weighing nearly two kilograms each—are likely to have considerably distended the wearer’s earlobes, and possibly rested on their shoulders. Depictions of the Buddha commonly show such earlobes, believed to have been elongated by jewellery during his early life as a prince. 

Earrings and other ornamentation of a similar style are seen on men and women in the sculptures of Bharhut and Sanchi. However, these earrings show a particularly striking resemblance to those seen in a first century BCE sculpture of the chakravartin (ideal or universal ruler) on a stupa at Jaggayyapeta in present-day Andhra Pradesh. As most jewellery from the ancient period in India is believed to have been melted down after the death of its wearer—possibly to avoid the passing on of their karma—this extant pair of ornaments is highly significant. 

Apart from demonstrating the quality and complexity of goldsmithing that existed in ancient India, it provides concrete evidence that the jewellery depicted in sculptures and terracottas of the time did in fact exist. Moreover, they indicate that such jewellery was more than decorative—the earrings’ material worth and the symbols they depict make them markers of royalty and power. 

The pair is housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, as part of the Kronos Collections gifted to the museum in 1981.

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