The Moonstone

By Collins, Wilkie

Book Id: WPLBN0000002329
Format Type: PDF eBook:
File Size: 1.69 MB
Reproduction Date: 2005

Title:	The Moonstone
Author:	Collins, Wilkie
Volume:
Language:	English
Subject:	Literature, Literature & thought, Writing.
Collections:	Classic Literature Collection
Historic Publication Date:
Publisher:	World Ebook Library


Citation APA MLA Chicago Collins, B. W. (n.d.). The Moonstone. Retrieved from https://www.central.gutenberg.org/

Excerpt
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.

Table of Contents
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