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JANUARY, 1987
of Muslim experts also who were well versed in Islamic gemmology. The quartermaster-general was such an expert, so was the court poet Amir Khusrau. Under these circumstances, one would expect that Pheru's treatise would (i) present Indian theories of gemmology, (ii) describe some of the rarest gems in the royal treasury, and (iii) display some acquaintance with Islamic gemmology, in particular with the Arab discoveries about the specific gravity of gems.
But Pheru's aim was modest, namely to provide his son with a practical handbook containing the contemporary tariff of prices along with some amount of the traditional theory and lore of gems. Therefore, he paraphrases the earlier writings--sometimes indiscriminately on the mythology, properties and sources of gems. About the sources, he is most careless, repeating often the same lists of places enumerated by the earlier
sometimes even misunderstanding them. But unlike the earlier writers who mention the price of each gem separately along with its description, Pheru has an entire section where he quotes the prices very systematically, first in verses and then in tables for easy reference. Though the royal treasury might be overflowing with gems of large size, the prices quoted are only for gems weighing up to 18.35 metric carats. Perhaps gems beyond this weight were not offered for sale in the market but were surrendered to the royal treasury.13
Besides this innovation of a separate section on the price tariff, there is another aspect where the Ratnaparikṣā distinguishes itself. It is the description of the gems imported from Persia (spinel, cornelian and turquoise). Pheru was the first Indian gemmologist to describe these gems, and his information is quite precise and accurate as can be seen from the contemporary Arabic works on gemmology.14
Though the Ratnaparikşā cannot be counted among Pheru's best works, it exemplifies certain characteristics of Pheru as a writer. These characteristics are as follows; (i) Where there exists a corpus of traditional literature on a subject, he is content to follow the traditional framework and to present the material in Prakrit (as in the description of gem (ii) However, he makes innovations in the traditional framework if practical considerations demand them (e.g. the price tariff; see also 2.4 below).
13 Fernao Nuniz reports in the sixteenth century that in the kingdom of Vijayanagara
all diamonds exceeding 25 ct. were to be given to the king's treasury. See Robert
Sewell, A Forgotten Empire : Vijayanagara (reprint), Delhi 1962, p. 369. 14 Cf. Eilhard Wiedemann, Aufsaetze zur arabischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte, hrgg.
Wolfdietrich Fischer, Hildesheim/New York, Vol. I, pp. 835-53.
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