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Sanskrit manuals on gemmology by Buddhabhațţa, Agastya, Bphaspati and others. Secondly, Alauddin amassed enormous quantities of gems and precious metals during his campaigns, and his treasury must indeed have resembled an ocean full of gems. There can be no doubt that many of the gems were of a rare quality. An exquisite diamond said to have been acquired by Alauddin reached the hands of the Mughal emperor Babur in 1526. Babur states that "it is so valuable that a judge of diamonds valued it at half the daily expense of the whole world." Thirdly, Alauddin's court boasted 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 writers, 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.19
Besides this innovation of a separate section on the price tariff, there is another aspect where the Ratnapariksā 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
12 Memoirs of Zehir-ed-Din Muhammad Babur, tr. John Leyden and William
Erskine, London 1921. Vol. II, pp. 191-92. Many historians and gemmologists thought this diamond to be identical with the famous Koh-i-Nur, but this view is no more favoured. 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.
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