Of Demons and Diamonds

Today whilst I was marking the Year 6 Hinduism assessment there was a question about the story of Rama and Sita. Rama and Sita live in the forest after Rama is tricked out of his Kingdom by his mother-in-law, long story short, the ten headed Demon King Ravana desires Sita and kidnaps her, taking her to his Island. With the help of Hanuman the monkey God, and his brother Lakshman, Rama goes into battle, slays Ravana and takes Sita home. This is celebrated with fireworks at Divali, I'm told.

Anyway, asked about what happened in the story, one enthusiastic child has written 'Sita was taken by a diamond'

...Well, isn't almost every woman a little bit?

However it did get me thinking a little bit, for this little bit of phonetic consonance yielded a spelling which of course is much closer to the original Greek for demon 'daimwn' (daimon) or even the Koiné varient daimwnion which Wikipedia tells me has the more negative connotation associated with the english 'demon' today.

The word 'Diamond' itself ultimately derives (via Latin) from a rather different Greek word- 'adamaV' (adamas) which means unbreakable/inflexible. It seems also to lead to our word for 'adamant' (as can be seen from the genitive form 'adamantoV' (adamantos).

This is also the origin of the word 'adamantine' the mythical super-hard substance, which also crops up in Milton's Paradise lost, where Satan as it happens comes to the 'thrice threefold the gates; three folds were brass,/three iron, three of adamantine rock'

Milton's Paradise Lost, was you may recall the great inspiration behind Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, where he, coincidentally enough refers to everyone's personal 'daemon' reviving the older Greek usage of the daimon.

So there you go, it appears the two are by several leaps of logic, more closely intertwined than you might have originally thought.

Or, you know, you could just be amused by the mental picture of a lump of latticed carbon kidnapping a princess.