11th May 1997

Of Pearls and Pearl fisheries: Part One

The symbol of the soul

Apart from its value down the ages as an object of adornment, the pearl has provided the human race with a potent symbol of the soul. In the Chinese tradition it is equated with ‘genius in obscurity,’ while for Muslims it symbolises heaven, since their belief is that the blessed are enclosed in one.

Meanwhile psychoanalysts have alleged that the function of the pearl is to represent the mystic centre.

Because of its far-reaching significance for the human race it is of relevance that until the early part of this century, Sri Lanka enjoyed unrivalled fame as a prime source of this much-treasured gift of nature.

Throughout history pearls have been associated, by reason of their appearance, with the raindrop and the tear. In ancient China pearls were thought to be liquid globules expelled from the mouth of the sky dragon, the traditional rain god, and even in the West, as Pliny indicated, they were believed to be the product of raindrops that had fallen from the sky into open oyster shells, where they became solidified.

Some believe the pearl is the tear drop of an angel that rolled into an oyster, and so it is valued as a magic charm to ward off evil. Pearls are also said to be found in the stomachs of elephants, and Hindus in particular, prize such discoveries highly for use as amulets. There are Indian stories which mention the "Talisman Pearl" that gives enlightenment to those who hold it in their hands. And in past ages warriors have been known to edge their shields in pearl to protect them from injury and death.

The pearl has been an indispensable trapping of kings and queens since the beginnings of royalty. In the East, monarchs were usually powdered with gold-dust and seed pearls at their coronations, while in the West, it is known that pearls encrusted the crowns of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England. However, it was not until the Middle Ages that pearls found their way into Europe in large quantities, when returning Crusaders brought them home as spoils of war.

Soon afterwards, the wives of the nobility began to wear huge ropes of pearls. It also became fashionable for upper-class women to sew pearls onto gowns to form pretty and intricate patterns. In England the pearl reached its zenith as an object of adornment in the Tudor period, when it embellished the gowns of noblemen and noblewomen alike.

There has been a long-standing belief that there exists an affinity between pearls and their wearers, the one reacting on the other.

For example, it was once held that pearls would cloud if their owner fell sick, or would lose their lustre when the owner died. There is another tradition that pearls lost one hundredth part of their lustre with every passing year.

During past ages the pearl was believed to possess medicinal properties. Because it existed in the heart of the oyster shell it was recommended for heart disease. It was administered to the insane in powdered form in order to clarify their minds. A solution of pearls dissolved in lemon juice was recommended for the treatment of epilepsy and hysteria. Pearls ‘bruised and mixed with milk’ were supposed to dissolve stomach ulcers, improve the quality of the voice - and preserve chastity! As it was thought to add lustre to the skin, powdered pearl was popular among aristocratic ladies in 16th century France.

The pearl is linked inextricably to romance and sensual delight. Alexander the Great received gifts of pearls from his bride Roxanne during his conquest of Persia. These gifts were sent back to Greece where they created an insatiable desire for pearls.

Cleopatra was said to have dissolved two extremely valuable pearls in wine to seduce the Roman general Antony. The pearl was the favourite jewel of Venus, and the Romans decorated their hair with them to ensure success in amorous pursuit. Meanwhile the "pearl among women", one of the seven royal treasures of the King of Kings of pre- Buddhist China, was a girl who had attained the beauty of a goddess.

Muslims assert that in Paradise a believer will have a tent of a single hollowed pearl, 60 miles long, with a family in each corner which are visited in turn. Another common belief is that the faithful can look forward to an eternity of bliss in the arms of a beautiful houri, or nymph of Paradise, secreted within the very heart of the pearl. This has obvious connections with Plato’s androgynous "Spherical man", who is both primordial and final. Muslims also believe (confirming the parallel with the Platonic spherical man) that the pearl is a product of the conjunction of fire and water.

Of course the pearl has always had strong religious connotations. The Third Eye of Buddha is a pearl representing the highest essence of wisdom.

The concept of a precious gem enclosed within a rough outer shell made the pearl an obvious symbol of the soul. Because of its purity it is also associated with Christ and the Virgin Mary, while heaven itself is guarded by pearly gates. A similar association of ideas can be seen in the concept of the pearl as symbolising the mystic centre of the personality.

Pearls in large numbers take on a different symbolic character. Despite their high collective value, they become mere beads, for when joined they correspond to the symbol of the necklace.

When they are scattered, however, they relate to the symbol of dismemberment, like all things that are dispersed.

In terms of popular superstition, the original and fundamental idea of the pearl as a representation of the tear has never been lost, and up until a hundred years ago a widow’s mourning ring was customarily set with pearls. Moreover, a gift of pearls is still thought to bring tears with it - although there is one loophole in that this does not apply if the pearls form a part of an ancestral inheritance.

It has been remarked that of the world’s great fisheries, none could compare either in point of antiquity or continuity of prosecution with the pearl fishery of the Gulf of Mannar.

Over 3,000 years ago the Tamil kings of Southern India considered it one of the principal sources of their enormous revenues. In Rome, in the days of Pliny, pearls from this part of the Indian Ocean were highly valued, and Pliny himself refers to this fishery as the most productive in the world. Furthermore, the Greeks, Venetians and Genoese all sought after the beautiful specimens harvested from these waters.

Pearl fishing was such an important industry that it became a Government monopoly even from the earliest times. In fact there were two distinct fisheries, one on the Southern Indian coast, and one on the coast of Lanka. (The anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythean Sea, circa 60 A.D., states that the Tamil kings of Southern India worked the fisheries with condemned criminals.) However, the fishery off Mannar was considered the more important. For example, Megasthenes, the Grecian Ambassador to the court of Chandra Gupta in the 3rd century B.C, asserted that this fishery produced larger, better quality pearls.

In Lanka the pearl fishery was first mentioned in the ancient chronicles. The Mahavamsa for instance, records the gift of pearls by Vijaya to his father-in-law, the King of Madurai. From the Rajavali we learn that in the 3rd century B.C., during the reign of Tissa Raja of Kelaniya, ‘the sea was seven leagues distant from Calany’, but because of an injustice to a Buddhist monk ‘the gods who presided over the destinies of Ceylon became enraged and caused the sea to deluge the land.’

Once before, during the epoch called "Duvapara yuga" a similar event had supposedly occurred, when, due to the wickedness of Ravana, a large land mass between Mannar and Tutucorin was submerged. In Tissa Raja’s reign, ‘100,000 seaports, 970 fishers’ villages, 400 villages inhabited by pearl fishers, making altogether eleven-twelfths of the territory which belonged to Calany, were swallowed up by the sea’.

References to pearls and the pearl fishery have appeared in the majority of travellers’ accounts of the island. While he was staying at Anuradhapura between 400 and 414 A.D. the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hien mentions that he saw there an image of blue jasper over 7 metres tall studded with many precious stones and holding in its hand a very large pearl.

It was supposedly on his return journey to Venice after 17 years spent in China that Marco Polo landed, in 1284, at one of the North Western harbour - cities of the island, met the king of the province, and witnessed a pearl fishery. Despite Marco Polo’s convincing description of the Northern part of the island, Frances Wood, in ‘Did Marco Polo Ever Go To China?, claims that the respected Venetian explorer may in fact never have travelled further east than Persia.

Wood puts forward a convincing argument: there are no records in China of Marco Polo’s stay despite his purported familiarity with Kublai Khan, he fails to mention the Great Wall, to describe tea drinking ceremonies, or comment on the practice of foot-binding, among other things. Furthermore, the account of his travels was written with the help of one Rusticello, a well-known writer of romance and extravaganza. Nevertheless, Marco Polo’s work is still of great historic interest, even if, as seems likely, he plagiarized Persian guidebooks and the accounts of Arab travellers.

Odoric, a Franciscan Friar who visited the island sometime between 1316 and 1330, wrote that, ‘In this Island are found as great a store of pearls as in any part of the world. And the king of that country weareth round his neck a string of 300 very big pearls, for that he maketh to his gods daily 300 prayers’. The possession of pearls stamps the owner as being the King of Jaffna, Arya Chakravarti.

In the Chinese text, Tao i Chih Lueh, the author Wang Ta Yuan, describes a visit he made to the island in 1333: ‘At a distance of some 80 li from Ti-san-chiang ("Third Harbour"), the sea goes by the name of Ta-lang ("Great Brilliance"), for at this spot it is extremely rich in pearl-oysters. At the season when these are gathered, the tribal chief slays a human being and about a dozen animal victims as a sacrifice to the sea-god’.

The Moroccan explorer, Ibn Batuta, had an audience with King Arya Chakravarti at Puttalam in 1344 in which pearls featured prominently: ‘I had entered his presence one day when he had by him a quantity of pearls which had been brought from the fishery in his dominions. The servants of the king were sorting the precious from those which were not so. He said to me, "Have you seen the pearl fishery in the countries whence you came?" "Yes," I replied, "I have seen it in the island of Kois and in that of Kech, which belong to Ibn Assaouamaly". "I have heard of them," answered he, and then took up some pearls and added, "Are there at that island any pearls equal to these?" I said, "I have seen none so good’!"

In the realm of the semi-legendary, it must be mentioned that ‘The Tales of the 1001 Nights contains the adventures of Sinbad the Sailor (reputed to be a merchant seafarer from Baghdad during the caliphate of Haroun-al- Rashid) who was supposedly shipwrecked on the island then known as Serendib. Subsequently, Sinbad had an audience with the King of Serendib who commanded him to deliver to the Caliph a goblet filled with fine pearls.

In the Balaramayana, Act 10, Vibhisana explains to Sita: ‘See in front of you the territory of the Sinhalas, which has the Ocean as the moat.... where the water of the Ocean, passing through the womb of the oyster, is transformed to the condition of the charming jewels which are adornments on the limbs of damsels.... people who produce the nectar of (sweet) speech, the Rohana Mountain which produces gems and the Ocean which produces pearls - these three are not found together anywhere else but in the Island of the Sinhalas.’

The Portuguese took control of the pearl fishery in 1524 by entering into a pact with the Parawas, a caste of sea- going Tamils who from time immemorial had managed the harvesting for the Kings of Southern India. Although the records of the pearl fisheries during Portuguese rule were destroyed, it appears that the revenue generated by them was considerable in the 16th century. However, due to corruption and malpractice the fishery languished thereafter.

When the Dutch expelled the Portuguese in 1658, they set out with characteristic thoroughness to develop the commercial resources of the island under the auspices of their East India Company. As a result, the pearl fishery was resumed in 1666 and conducted directly on behalf of the Company.

The size of the 1666 fishery can be judged from the estimation that 200,000 people turned up.

One description of the pearl fishery during Dutch times was provided by Johann Wolfgang Heydt in 1744.

‘The servants of the Company have at this time a stockade which lies somewhat high, and is a place surrounded by palisadings’ he wrote. ‘At this time the Company’s flag flies, and is hoisted or lowered when the signal is given with the cannon, and as long as it is hoisted, all vessels may remain at sea.

They live in houses made of cane and grass as long as the fishing lasts. The shore is for more than three hours distance beset with such huts. When the fishery is over, these are set on fire and burnt.’

Yet although the income from pearls was to become second only to cinnamon, imperfect prospecting resulted in lengthy intervals between fisheries. In 1746, after only 8 successful harvests during the entire Dutch administration, Governor van Imhoff decided that the fishery would be improved if it were rented out.

This system proved so satisfactory that it was employed from then on until a few years after the British ousted the Dutch in 1796. Indeed, the revenue from the 3 fisheries of 1796-98 was worth to the British the considerable sum of £396,000.

The Pearl Banks that yielded such riches stretch from the island of Mannar south to Chilaw and are located in depths ranging from 5 to 10 fathoms. The shallow undersea plateau on which the Banks occur varies in breadth from 20 miles in the north to 4 miles in the south. Each of the 50 or so Banks (or paars) was known by a distinctive name, the majority of Tamil origin, the most productive being the Cheval and the Moderagam.

Under the British administration of the l9th century this area was systematically examined twice a year by the Inspector of Pearl Banks to identify fishable beds of oysters and to estimate the numbers available.

Samples were collected and if the pearls were sufficiently numerous the Government proclaimed the fishery for the following February, March and April - the traditional fishing season. Advertisements were then published throughout the East to attract the necessary divers and pearl merchants, as the indigenous population was rarely involved in the industry.

To be continued next week.

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