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THE BOOK OF THE PEARL
I
PEARLS AMONG THE ANCIENTS
The richest merchandise of all, and the most soveraigne commoditie throughout the whole world, are these pearles.
Pliny, Historia naturalis.
Lib. IX, c. 35.
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P
ERFECTED by nature
and requiring no art to enhance their beauty, pearls were naturally the
earliest gems known to prehistoric man. Probably the members of some
fish-eating tribe—maybe of the coast of India or bordering an Asiatic
river—while opening mollusks for food, were attracted by their luster.
And as man's estimation of beauty developed, he found in them the means
of satisfying that fondness for personal decoration so characteristic
of half-naked savages, which has its counterpart amid the wealth and
fashion of the present day.
Pearls
seem to be peculiarly suggestive of oriental luxury and magnificence.
It is in the East that they have been especially loved, enhancing the
charms of Asiatic beauty and adding splendor to barbaric courts
celebrated for their display of costume. From their possession of the
rich pearl resources it is natural that the people of India and of
Persia should have early found beauty and value in these jewels, and
should have been among the first to collect them in large quantities.
And no oriental divinity, no object of veneration has been without
this ornament; no poetical production has lacked this symbol of purity
and chastity.
In
a personal memorandum, Dr. A. V. Williams Jackson, professor of
Indo-Iranian languages in Columbia University Slates, that it is
generally supposed that the Vedas, the oldest sacred books of the
Branmans, contain several allusions to pearl decorations a millennium
or
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