BP-2026.013.1
Delhi Purple Sapphire
- Claim
- 4 of 5
Animals and crops destroyed, or lasting harm to the body, livelihood or estate. - Evidence
- 2 of 5
One retelling, publication or sale listing. - Provenance
- 3 of 3
An unbroken chain to the event it is named for.
These three figures are kept separate and are never combined into a single score. How grave the claim is, what it rests on, and whether the object can be traced are different questions. How the register reads them.
Asserted
Accounts attributed to a source. The register does not adopt them.
That it ruins those who own it. The stone is said to have been looted from a temple during the rebellion of 1857 and to carry the curse of the deity it was taken from. The officer who brought it to England is said to have lost almost everything and to have fallen ill; friends he lent it to are said to have suffered likewise, and a singer to whom it was lent is said never to have sung again. Thrown into a canal, it was dredged up months later and returned to him.
- C10
material misfortune
- C19
financial ruin
- C21
illness
- T1
passes with ownership
- T2
passes by contact
- T14
returns after disposal
- H9
subject of a ritual or curse
index v0.8: Subject of a ritual, curse or blessing
- H18
taken from a protected or sacred site
- H19
unlawfully obtained
- X4
bound to an accompanying instruction
index v0.8: Bound to an accompanying text or instruction
reported by: since 1890
Recorded
Established by the register, or received with the object.
File
- Register number
- BP-2026.013.1
- Entry type
- Object entry
- Opened
- 2026-09-16
- Coded against
- Claim Index v0.8
Object
- Type
- mounted gemstone
- Materials
- amethyst, silver
- Date
- mounted late nineteenth century
- Origin
- India, England
- Whereabouts
- held by an institution, London. Despite its name the stone is an amethyst, not a sapphire
Custody
No custody record has been entered.
On what grounds
A letter written by a later owner and sealed with the stone. Reported since 1890. Evidence is capped at 2: the only source for the earlier misfortunes has a fictional purpose.
Counter-indications
What weighs against the claim. These are never subtracted from a figure; the lowest applicable ceiling is applied instead.
- CI8
the only source has a fictional purpose
- CI20
all claims trace to a single reporter
- CI23
the reporter had an interest in it
The owner who sealed the stone away wrote weird fiction, and staff at the holding institution consider that he devised the misfortunes to draw attention to a short story of his own about a purple gem.
Register findings
- MT18
physically restrained or immobilised
- MT19
modified to contain or neutralise the claim
- MT22
access restricted
- MT23
a written instruction accompanies the object
- MT26
exhibited publicly
- MT29
catalogued by another register
The stone was set in a silver mount in the form of a two-headed snake, with scarab beads and the signs of the zodiac, expressly to turn its working. It was then placed in seven nested boxes in a bank vault with instructions that it not be opened until years after the owner's death, and a letter advising the next holder to throw it into the sea. The instruction requires the warning to be read aloud before anything is done with the stone.