Collins uses intense, austere, and sometimes even paradoxical visual language in the first Prologue to show the splendor and scale of the Moon God's temple in India. He goes on to allegorize the British conquest of the subcontinent in the same passage. The anonymous narrator tells the reader that "Here, in a new shrine – in a hall inlaid with precious stones, under a roof supported by pillars of gold – the moon-god was set up and worshipped." The fragment of the sentence that describes the temple here appears in em-dashes, which separate it from the rest of Collins's writing. It is as if even the description's language is too splendid to be surrounded by other normal words.
The Moonstone diamond itself, which is intended to adorn the forehead of the Moon God's statue, is a sacred object to the people of Benares. Its setting has to be impressive and solemn. The "breath of divinity," a supernatural force breathed into the stone by the God, is apparently palpable. The Brahmins cannot even lay their eyes upon the stone, it's so splendid: they "hide their faces" from its blinding, divine brightness.
Paradoxically, Collins then says that the deity "commanded that the Moonstone should be watched, from that time forth, by three priests in turn, night and day, to the end of the generations of men." The deity has given these people an impossible task, as they must forever watch over something they cannot even look at directly. This paradox evokes the Moonstone's extreme splendor and its quality of irresistible attractiveness: one cannot look at it, and yet one must.
Although it is surrounded by images of towering golden pillars and floors inlaid with other gems, these structures are just framing for its extreme resplendence. In this description of the temple, Collins also refers to a British stereotype about India as a secretive, mysterious, and opulent land of riches. The entire building that houses the moonstone is made of treasure. India, as the place which actually holds the Moonstone, is symbolically also represented as a highly prized and valuable "temple" that the British have despoiled and plundered.
The theft of the Moonstone from Benares and its eventual confinement in the underground clutches of an evil British Army officer is an allegory for the conquest of India by Britain. It also refers to the spiriting away of many of India's sacred treasures to languish in museum vaults, lock-boxes, and private homes in England. The Moonstone is removed from its sacred resting-place and is sacrilegiously set into the handle of an ornamental dagger by its first thief. Having had its religious purpose obscured—as many holy objects did when they were seized by people who didn't understand their significance—it is then stolen from India and brought back to Britain by Colonel John Herncastle after the "taking of Seringapatam."
