The Origin and Names of Gems
The mine of ruby is at Kankigayan in South India.
The ruby found from this mine is non-transparent, has
dark blue lustre and is soft. When cut into thin pieces,
there looks water in it. The ruby of Tagonic Africa has red
colour lustre, but some parts may have yellow lustre,
thus looking reddish-yellow.
The best quality ruby is found in Magok
of North
Myanmar and is popularly called the 'house of rubies',
Earlier, the kings had the sole rights to extract rubies
which was got done by prisoners.
When in 1885 Myanmar passed on
to the English
rule, mining ruby was overtaken by an English company.
Rubies found here are from rose red to dark red colour.
Rubies found in the mines of Siam are extremely bright
but are a little darker than those found in Myanmar .
Sri Lankan
ruby has less water and flexibility and is
yellow and spotted. Kabuli ruby is crispy but sometimes
good quality ruby too is found. Still, Myanmar ruby is
considered the best and precious.
Ruby is known by various names, such as-manikya,
lal, padmarag, lohit, shonratna, raniral, shonopal,
kuruvind, sogandhik, vasuratua in Sanskrint; rugal and
chunni in Hindi; Yakut in Urdu/ Arabic; etc.
Ruby is of five kinds
Neelgandhi
This ruby has blueness and is considered of the medium quality. It
is found in Sri
Lanka.
Jamunia
It is of bluish-black colour and is very
costly.
Padmarag
It glows like hot gold, is soft and
smooth. It has sunrays like lustre. It is considered to be
the best quality ruby and is rare. In international market
it priced higher than diamond. It is called lal.
In Myanmar there was found a ruby of 400 carats
which was cut into three pieces. Two (of 75 and 70
carats) were turned into jewels and the third one was
sold in Kolkata in its original shape for 7 lac rupees. In
1899, there was found a ruby of 77 carats in Myanmar
which was sold in India in 1904 for 4 lac rupees. After
English rule was imposed on Myanmar , there was found
a ruby of 18 carats which was cut to 11 carats and was
sold for 700 pounds.
Saugandhik
Its price is like that of jamunia and
its colour is like that of pomegranate seed.
Kuruvind
It is watery and small in size and light yellow shade appears
to be emanating from it.
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