The Moonstone

The Moonstone

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Moonstone
Author: Wilkie Collins
Release Date: January 12, 2006 [EBook #155]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
MOONSTONE ***

Produced by John Hamm and David Widger

THE MOONSTONE
A Romance
by Wilkie Collins

PROLOGUE
THE STORMING OF SERINGAPATAM (1799)
Extracted from a Family Paper
I address these lines--written in India--to my relatives in England.
My object is to explain the motive which has induced me to refuse the
right hand of friendship to my cousin, John Herncastle. The reserve
which I have hitherto maintained in this matter has been misinterpreted
by members of my family whose good opinion I cannot consent to
forfeit. I request them to suspend their decision until they have read my
narrative. And I declare, on my word of honour, that what I am now
about to write is, strictly and literally, the truth.
The private difference between my cousin and me took its rise in a
great public event in which we were both concerned--the storming of
Seringapatam, under General Baird, on the 4th of May, 1799.
In order that the circumstances may be clearly understood, I must revert
for a moment to the period before the assault, and to the stories current
in our camp of the treasure in jewels and gold stored up in the Palace of
Seringapatam.

II
One of the wildest of these stories related to a Yellow Diamond--a
famous gem in the native annals of India.
The earliest known traditions describe the stone as having been set in
the forehead of the four-handed Indian god who typifies the Moon.
Partly from its peculiar colour, partly from a superstition which
represented it as feeling the influence of the deity whom it adorned, and
growing and lessening in lustre with the waxing and waning of the

moon, it first gained the name by which it continues to be known in
India to this day--the name of THE MOONSTONE. A similar
superstition was once prevalent, as I have heard, in ancient Greece and
Rome; not applying, however (as in India), to a diamond devoted to the
service of a god, but to a semi-transparent stone of the inferior order of
gems, supposed to be affected by the lunar influences--the moon, in
this latter case also, giving the name by which the stone is still known
to collectors in our own time.
The adventures of the Yellow Diamond begin with the eleventh century
of the Christian era.
At that date, the Mohammedan conqueror, Mahmoud of Ghizni,
crossed India; seized on the holy city of Somnauth; and stripped of its
treasures the famous temple, which had stood for centuries--the shrine
of Hindoo pilgrimage, and the wonder of the Eastern world.
Of all the deities worshipped in the temple, the moon-god alone
escaped the rapacity of the conquering Mohammedans. Preserved by
three Brahmins, the inviolate deity, bearing the Yellow Diamond in its
forehead, was removed by night, and was transported to the second of
the sacred cities of India--the city of Benares.
Here, in a new shrine--in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof
supported by pillars of gold--the moon-god was set up and worshipped.
Here, on the night when the shrine was completed, Vishnu the
Preserver appeared to the three Brahmins in a dream.
The deity breathed the breath of his divinity on the Diamond in the
forehead of the god. And the Brahmins knelt and hid their faces in their
robes. The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched,
from that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end
of the generations of men. And the Brahmins heard, and bowed before
his will. The deity predicted certain disaster to the presumptuous mortal
who laid hands on the sacred gem, and to all of his house and name
who received it after him. And the Brahmins caused the prophecy to be
written over the gates of the shrine in letters of gold.

One age followed another--and still, generation after generation, the
successors of the three Brahmins watched their priceless Moonstone,
night and day. One age followed another until the first years of the
eighteenth Christian century saw the reign of Aurungzebe, Emperor of
the Moguls. At his command havoc and rapine were let loose once
more among the temples of the worship of Brahmah. The shrine of the
four-handed god was polluted by the slaughter of sacred animals; the
images