Kollur

Kollur lies on the Krishna, on the old road from Golconda to Machilipatnam (then Masulipatam).¹ In the seventeenth century it was the most famous of the diamond mines of the Qutb Shahi kingdom.¹

In the mid-seventeenth century Jean-Baptiste Tavernier visited “another diamond mine, called Gani in the language of the country, and Coulour in the Persian tongue”.² He placed it seven days’ journey east of Golconda.² His editor V. Ball identified it with Kollur on the Krishna.² Ball explained the name Gani as the Persian Kan-i, “mine of”.²

The Kistna district manual of 1883 placed the mine “south of Pulichinta and west of Bellam Konda”.³ It noted that “Gani means a mine and is prefixed to the name of the locality”.³ See Golconda and Machilipatnam.

Tavernier’s account

Tavernier describes the mine as lying close to “a large town on the same river which I crossed when coming from the other mine”.⁴ It lay in a plain below high mountains “in the form of a cross”.⁴ He wrote: “The nearer one searches towards the mountains the larger the stones which are found”.⁴

He was told that the mine had been found only about a hundred years earlier.⁴ A poor man digging to sow millet had turned up a stone of nearly 25 carats.⁴ After that, “some persons of wealth in the town commenced to mine in this land”.⁵ Tavernier says that they “found, and … still find, large stones in greater abundance than in any other mine”.⁵

Among these stones, he says, was “the great diamond which weighed 900 carats before cutting, which Mir Jumla presented to Aurangzeb”.⁵ In a note, Ball corrected two details.⁵ The stone was given to Shah Jahan, not Aurangzeb, and it weighed 900 ratis (an Indian unit of weight), not carats.⁵

On his first visit, Tavernier writes, “there were close upon 60,000 persons who worked there, including men, women, and children”.⁶ See Mir Jumla. He came to the mine from Golconda by way of Lakkawaram.¹ The road, “especially as you approach Kollur, is rocky”.¹

Later

The Kistna manual found “ruins of extensive habitations at this now desolate spot on the river bank”.³ It also found many very old, abandoned diamond pits in the quartzite (a hard rock) east of the Pulichinta ridge.³ Its author thought the story of a chance discovery a hundred years before Tavernier was “the usual story in every locality”.³ He thought the mines were probably much older.³

Ball quoted an account in the Philosophical Transactions.⁵ In it the Kollur mine, called “Quolure”, was said to have been the first mine used in the kingdom.⁵ But it was said to be nearly exhausted by the 1670s.⁵

Footnotes

1. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. I (1889), pp. 172–174 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

2. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, tr. V. Ball, Travels in India, Vol. II (1889), p. 72 and notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

3. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (1883), p. 247 and note (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶

4. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. II (1889), p. 73 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

5. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. II (1889), p. 74 and notes (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸

6. Tavernier, Travels in India, Vol. II (1889), p. 75 (archive.org↗ (opens in a new tab)). ↩