Ancient Roman writer Pliny (62- 1 13 AD) had written that there was a very large market for jewels and precious stones on the Secundra port in Egypt. Traders and merchants from Rome, Athens (Greece) and many other parts of the world used to gather there with their merchandise. Jewels and precious stones with all their intrinsic powers were mentioned, even much before these acknowledged trading centres came to exist, in the Holy Bible, about 200 years before the Christ, in Vishnu Purana.
We have read about the great hall in which legendary beautiful empress Cleopatra had received the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, was decorated with the rare furniture studded with yet rarer jewels and gems. Even many hundred years before them, India was considered to be the leader in exporting diamonds and such other high quality jewels, gems and precious stones as yellow sapphire, blue sapphire pearl to all these countries.
The Peacock Throne of the Mughal emperors was studded with gold, diamonds and pearls. That was one the main attractions of the Iranian emperor Nadir Shah for launching a violent aggression against India in 1739 and plundered the entire nation including enormous amount of jewels, gems and precious stones along with the invaluably expensive Mayur Sinhasan (Peacock Throne), orTakhht-e-Taus, before leaving this country.
The famous Greek writer Theophrastus who lived in the year 287 BC had written an
Authentic book on the diamonds and gems. After him, Roman Pliny (62-113 AD) wrote a voluminous Natural History in the concluding part of which he discussed about the gems in details. In the 13th century Marco polo had toured throughout India, China, Burma (now Myanmar), and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and wrote about treasures and jewels in these parts of the world in authentic details.
The famous French traveller and jeweler, Travernier (1605-1688) explored India, Turkey, Iran and West Indies. He had visited the Golkunda (Andhra Pradesh) mines of India during those days. Travernier was considered a great trader. He had started dealing in jewels at 32 and for 40 years onwards he travelled different countries to deal in jewels and gems before he died at the age of I 84. This great French jeweller wrote that about one million workers were engaged in the Golkunda mines those days. The mines, which during the 17th century were the lucrative destination for trading in jewels world over, have now been rendered into enormous pits. During those days, diamonds used to be found in the banks of Krishna, Godavari and nearby rivers including the areas in Madras (now Tamil Nadu).
However the times changed, and in 1725 in Brazil’s (South America) Diamontina diamond mines were discovered while search for gold mines was on. During the initial days when the uncut diamond pieces were found people used to reject them as ordinary stones, until the time when a trader in jewels spotted that those were the diamonds and eventually informed the government there. The government, it is heard, had honoured him with rich rewards. The world's largest diamond piece, weighing 3087 carat, was found in a Brazilian mine on 1795. Searches for diamond mines were made after that, in 1867, near the Aronge river in South Africa. The mines of diamond were discovered gradually at many places in Brazil and South Africa, which consequently had shaken Indian diamond trading prospects. Today Brazil and South Africa are the leading nations in the world for diamond trading. These destinations apart, diamonds today are also found in Australia, Borneo, British Guyana, Belgium, Congo and the famous treasure trove, the African jungles. In South Africa, they dig about eight-foot deep and three-foot wide ditches near the sea-shores to mine for diamonds.
(SOURCE-1.HISTORICAL NOTES ON GEM MINING
2. ROMAN BOOK OF PRECIOUS STONES
3. JEWELERY OF THE ANCIENT WORLD.)
