Ruby

Ruby

The lore and legend of ruby and sapphire are best left as received, attempts to disentangle them needing access to serious collections of material from Myanmar (in particular) if repetition of oft-quoted tales is to be avoided. The best sources to begin with are the oriental collections of The British Library, which include some, at least, of the reports of Burma Ruby Mines Ltd. The 5th and 6th editions of Edwin W. Streeter’s Precious Stones and Gems (1892 and 1898) [Sinkankas, Gemology, an Anno- tated Bibliography, 1993, #6399, #6400] contain not only an early if not the first attempt in English to describe the ruby mines of the then Burma but also an account of Streeter’s own short connection with the mines.

The most complete early geological description of the ruby mines of Myanmar is Barrington Brown and Judd, 1896, The Rubies of Burma and Associated Minerals. This appeared as Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London, series A for 1896, 187, 151–228 [Sinkankas 957]. The paper was published separately and gives a great deal of inform- ation on the geology and mineralogy of the area and (to quote Sinkankas,

Ruby

 

op. cit.) ‘establishes the fact that alluvial rubies derive from decay of host rock (marble)’. Harbans Lal Chibber’s The Mineral Resources of Burma (London, 1934) describes mining methods, production and fashioning and the ruby deposits themselves. Another book, with a promising title, is A.N. Iyer’s The Geology and Gemstones of the Mogok Stone Tract, Burma, published in 1953 as Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India, vol. 82 [Sinkankas #3152]. Sinkankas regrets the comparative lack of space devoted to gemstones, despite the title; the book does provide a descrip- tion of the crystalline Mogok marble, however, and some of the gem sources are discussed.

One of the earliest accounts of corundum as it was known in the eighteenth century is the Count de Bournon’s Description of the Corundum Stone and its Varieties, commonly known by the names of oriental ruby, sapphire, etc. This account was published in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 92, 1802, pp. 233–326. Separate copies were published [Sinkankas #824]. Here we find notes on proper- ties, crystallographical observations and nomenclature problems. It is the first paper in English to describe the contents of the Ceylon gem gravels.

Peter Bancroft’s Gem and Crystal Treasures (1984; ISBN 0961346116) gives an illustrated description of ruby mining in the Mogok area, and a more recent account by Ted Themelis, Mogok, Valley of Rubies and Sapphires (2000; ISBN 0940965208) gives readers an excellent overview of the history and mining in the region with attractive photographs.

In 1945 D.N. Wadia and L.J.D. Ferrnando published Gems and Precious Stones of Ceylon, forming Professional paper no. 2 of Records of the Department of Mineralogy of Ceylon, pp. 13–44 with two tipped-in maps [Sinkankas #6952].

Until the publication in 1968 of E.J. Gübelin’s Die Edelsteine der Insel Ceylon [Sinkankas #2575], surprisingly no other serious monograph on Sri Lankan gem minerals has been published.

Wadia and Fernando give a reasonable account of Sri Lankan gem- stones with useful notes on native methods of cutting and on geology of gemstone occurrences. As expected, corundum locations are noted and the map at the end of the text shows where many deposits are. Some major specimens are mentioned. The Gübelin book which, despite its date, still cries out for an English translation from the German as the text gives a profusion of detail on mining, including prospecting, and on gemmological properties of the stones. This is a rare book, apparently published at the author’s expense rather than through a commercial publisher.

Indian Precious Stones, by Iyer and Narayana, 1942 [Sinkankas #3148],

Records of the Geological Survey of India 76, Bulletins of economic minerals

 

no. 6, gives useful accounts of gem species found in India, Sri Lanka and Burma; a revised edition by Iyer and Thiagarajan, 1961 [Sinkankas #3150] gives considerable detail on Indian deposits alone. This formed no. 18 of the Series A, Economic Geology, of Bulletins of the Geological Survey of India. A recent study of Indian corundum is Panjikar, Comparative Study of Gem Minerals, Beryl and Corundum from various Indian occurrences (2004: 8190122208).

I have listed these works in some detail as more modern publications dealing with gem and especially corundum mining in south Asia draw from one another. One major source must have been the seventeenth- century traveller Jean-Baptiste Tavernier whose book ‘Les six voyages de Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’ was first published at Paris in 1676. The best account of the history and content of this work is given by Sinkankas, 1993; as far as I know, writing in late 2004, there is no modern version in English. The book was usually re-published in two parts though the orig- inal edition was in three parts, the third volume containing no material on gemstones. In 1889 Valentine Ball of the Geological Survey of India made an English translation which has remained the best, perhaps the only, version published since that time.

While Tavernier remains the best account of Indian diamonds, other gemstones also find a place. In the second volume of Valentine Ball’s translation (1889), an appendix describes the ruby mines of Burma. Sinkankas numbers for the major editions of Tavernier are: #6499 for the first edition 1676, #6533 for the Valentine Ball edition of 1889.

In 1996 Dr Nandkishor R. Barot published a two-volume reprint of Mani-Mala: A Treatise on Gems (Nairobi: no ISBN). The original work, by Raja Sourindro Mohun Tagore [Saurindramohana Thakura] was published in 1897 and is one of the rarest of all books on gemstones. By now the reprint will also be hard to find. The original is described, under #6475, by Sinkankas (1993). Much of the text is taken from the Puranas and other classics of Indian literature, and, to quote Sinkankas again, the major text of part 22 is an amazing pot-pourri of information, derived from both oriental and western sources, which includes sections on gemstone genesis according to ancient Sanskrit sources and many remarks on curious lore. It is now one of the rarest of all gemmological treatises.

In the first four editions of Gems (1962–1975) Webster presents some information both on early corundum mining and on lore and legend. None of it appears to be attributed and sadly no attempt seems to have been made to provide anything more than a book list rather than a bibliography. For this reason it is not easy to separate wheat from chaff but at this distance in time perhaps such work is best left to scholars. In Corundum (1990) Hughes draws more successfully on some of the older sources and, fortunately, cites them in end-of-chapter references