The Jewel of the Sun

The sages told the Pandavas of the Syamantaka jewel, and of how a false accusation against Krishna was cleared by the patient pursuit of the truth - a tale of greed, suspicion, and a king of bears who remembered the Lord across the ages.

In Dwaraka there lived a Yadava noble named Satrajit, a great devotee of the Sun god, Surya. Pleased with his devotion, the Sun gave Satrajit a wondrous gem called the Syamantaka - a jewel of dazzling brilliance, blazing like a piece of the sun itself. It was no ordinary stone: it produced a great quantity of gold each day, and so long as it was kept by a virtuous owner in a virtuous land, it warded off all calamities, famines, and misfortunes from that place. But it was said that the jewel would bless and protect only a pure and righteous keeper; in unworthy or greedy hands it would bring not blessing but ruin. Satrajit wore the brilliant gem about his neck, and it shone so brightly that when he walked through Dwaraka, people were dazzled and some even mistook him, in his blaze of light, for the Sun god come down to earth.