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Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v2.c43.s3.t8: Chalcedony Group of Gems

Minerals and Metals in Ancient India v2.c43.s3.t8

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Chalcedony Group of Gems

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Before we narrate the Sanskrit nomenclatures, let us briefly mention the modern scientific definitions of the chalcedony group of minerals. Common chalcedony is hydrated silica of faint unifom colour, low hardness (6-1/2), low specific gravity (2.60), somewhat porous and consisting of very thin layers of hydrated and cryptocrystalline silica. When such layers are prominent and concentric or wavy, the material is known as agate. When the bands are plain, parallel and alternately light and dark, the variety is called onyx.

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If the colour of chalcedony is uniformly red, it is called carnelian; sard is yellowish-red or brown. Yellowish colour is due to hydrated ferric oxide, and the red due to dehydrated ferric oxide. Iron-containing light yellow chalcedony, agate or sard, when exposed to sun or heat, loses water from the hydrated ferric oxide, and gets converted into red carnelian. This technique must have been practised in the Indian quarries of agate and carnelian over several millennia.

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Uniformly dark green chalcedony is plasma, and when spotted with red, it is known as heliotrope, or blood-stone. Now let us come to the Sanskrit literatures on the subject.

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Tagore (1879: 510-11) has quoted a Sanskrit text describing gandhaśasya which is ‘red dashed with white, white dashed with red or perfectly red’ and could be agate-carnelian in different stages of ripening. Piṇḍa is reddish, pale-red or green, and is remarkably hard. Tagore added in the foot-note (p. 511) that ‘the rich of India make pestles and mortars out of this stone, for pulverising medicinal pills’. The material was most likely agate, which was named during the Muslim period of the Indian history as akik.

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Lohitākṣa in AS, 2.11.35, rājamaṇi in Bṛ. Saṃ., 80.4 and rājamaya in MM, 442 could have meant ferruginous jasper or carnelian. We have already said that jyotīrasaka in AS, 2.11.35 and Bṛ. Saṃ., 80.5, and muktajyotirasa in MM, 441 could mean rock crystal and its ray-focusing lens. An alternative suggestion is that these terms could mean light carnelian or agate, reddening on exposure to the warmth of the sun-rays.

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Finot (1896: 55) has equated rudhirākṣa (rudhirākhya in Bṛ. Saṃ., 80.4) mentioned by Buddhabhaṭṭa with cornaline (French) or carnelian, and we think this correlation is justifiable.

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Buddhabhaṭṭa’s description is as follows: नर्मदायाम् . . . चिनादिभूमिषु इन्द्रगोपनिभम् . . . प्रकट प्रीलु समान देहम् . . . रुधिराक्षमुख्यम् narmadāyām . . . cinādibhūmiṣu indragopanibham . . . prakaṭa prīlu samana deham . . . rudhirākṣamukhyam (RP, 243-245)

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‘Rudhirākṣa (red-eyed) gem is available on the Narmadā valley, in China, etc. It is like indragopa or cochineal insect (honey-coloured) and pīlu, the ripe berry of salvadora persica which is said to be dark red. Buddhabhaṭṭa has also alluded to the occasional greenish and bluish shades of rudhirākṣa, which we are unable to explain. In Rayaṇaparikkhā, Pherū mentioned that in the thirteenth-fourteenth century AD, India was importing from Yemen some low-price akik or carnelian which had the colour of pīlu (ripe berry, Salvadora persica):

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यमनदेशे अकीकं लघुमूल्यं पीलुसमरंगम् *yamanadeśe akīkaṃ laghumūlyaṃ pīlusamaraṅgam* (RYP, 104)

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Aqīq or akīk is loosely translated as agate, but the material from Yemen is certainly cornelian or carnelian of deep red hue, which belongs to the agate family as we have explained earlier. (Sarma, 1984: 71)

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Sard and carnelian have always been popular in the ancient world. The name ‘sard’ was derived from the Arabic sered meaning yellow. ‘Carnelian’ was derived from *corneus* (raw flesh) or the French *cornaline* (the cornel cherry), which explains the often-used spelling cornelian. Carnelian was extremely popular with the Greeks and used in cameos by the Graeco-Romans. Ben Mansur divided the carnelian into seven classes.

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But no country in the ancient world adored carnelian as much as India, which mined, processed, used and exported this gem mineral for three to four millennia since the Pre-Harappan era. India has ever been famous for the quarries of carnelian and agate (from which carnelian is made by simple heating) situated (a) in the neighbourhood of Ratanpur, on the lower Narmadā river, in the (former) state of Rājapipla, (b) in the country north of Rājkot, in the Kāthiāwār peninsula, and (c) in the Rājamahal hills in the east where the Ganges bands. The lapidaries in Broach, Cambay, and Jabalpur, using materials of the above areas, such as carnelian, agate, moss-agate, heliotrope or blood-stone, have been world-famous.

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There are evidences that the inhabitants of ancient India were familiar with onyx and moss agate. Onyx, as we have explained, is agate with plain and parallel bands, alternately dark and light-coloured. Buddhabhaṭṭa provided an incomplete description of the gem-mineral *śeṣa* (*RP*, 175-178) which occurred with emerald, and was said to be striped white and green alternately. Finot equated *śeṣa* with onyx. *Maṇimālā* provided another name *pālaṅka* for onyx, and a Sanskrit text:

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कृष्णं हरिल्लोहित शुभ्ररेखाय्याप्तश्च पालंक्म भंगुरम् तत्
*kṛṣṇam harillohita śubhrarekhāvyāptaśca pālaṃkam bhaṅguram tat*
Pālaṅka or onyx is brittle and has black, green, red or white lines or bands (Tagore, 1879: 510-11)

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Onyx was widely mentioned in the Greek and Hebrew literature, the name coming from a Greek word denoting ‘a nail’. A Greek mythological story narrated that Cupid, with the sharp point of his arrow, cut the nails of the sleeping Venus, which fell into the Indus, and became metamorphosed into onyx. This story suggests that onyx was widely mined and processed in India, and then exported to Greece and other countries. In fact, the materials onyx and sardonyx were widely used for jewellery purposes, for signet rings and like agate and carnelian, for making cups, vases, sword, handles, etc.

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Mocha-stone, also known as dendritic or moss agate is a white or grey chalcedony, showing brown, red or black dendritic markings resembling trees and plants. These have been formed by the percolation of a solution containing iron or manganese through fine cracks of the stone, and the subsequent deposition of the colouring matter originally held in solution. The brown and red markings are caused by oxides of iron, and the black by oxide of manganese. Mocha-stone came from the neighbourhood of Mocha in Arbia, hence the name. Mocha could also be a corruption of moschas or moss-stone. It has been principally obtained from several places in India such as the Deccan traps, Rājkot, Kāthiāwār peninsula, the beds of Godāvarī, Narmadā and Jamunā etc. Tagore (1879: 512-13) has quoted a Sanskrit text which says that ‘a gem coloured like moss or onion, and freckled like the branched fibrous root of a tree, is called a gañja or mocha-stone:

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शैवाल श्रुद्रप्रिय(पलाण्डु)तुल्यरूपम् गंञम् शिफावत् चिरचिह्नयुक्तं
śaivāla śrudrapriya(palāṇḍu)tulyarūpam gañjam śiphāvat circihnayuktam

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Plasma is dark leek-green or apple-green chalcedony, the colour arising due to intimate and uniform inclusions of green-earth, a chloritic or micaceous substance in the matrix of hydrated silica. Heliotrope (Greek equivalent of sun-turning) or blood-stone is plasma streaked with fine blood-red spots. A famous sculpture executed in heliotrope, preserved in the National Library at Paris, represents the scourging of Christ, the red marks of the heliotrope representing drops of blood on the raiment. As a matter of fact, there is a post-Christian tradition that Christ’s blood fell on dark-green plasma, and thus arose heliotrope.

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Plasma and heliotrope were mined extensively from the Indian sources. Plasma occur in the volcanic rocks of the Deccan, specially south of the Bhīma river, as pebbles around the rivers of Kṛṣṇā, Godāvarī etc. Heliotrope has been available in the district north of Rājkot, west of Cambay, around Pune and the Rājmahal hills on the Ganges, along with agate, carnelian and plasma — all these materials having been used in rings, pins, brooches, and similar ornaments.

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Tagore (1879: 512-13) has quoted a Sanskrit text in which jyotirasa has been described as a ‘dark blue, hard and beautiful gem marked with red (blood) spots’:

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ज्योतिरसं मेचकम् अस्रविन्दुव्याप्तं दृढं सुन्दरकान्तियुक्तं *jyotirasaṃ mecakam asravinduvyāptaṃ dṛḍhaṃ sundarakāntiyuktaṃ*

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Mecaka is dark blue (green also?) and asra means blood. *Jyotirasa* in this passage, was rightly equated by Tagore as blood-stone or heliotrope. It should also be noted that *Arthaśāstra* mentioned *jyotirasaka* (AS, 2.11.35) and *Bṛhatsaṃhitā* mentioned *jyotirasa* (Br. Saṃ., 80.5) without explaining what these materials were, and we have taken the liberty of suggesting that in different contexts these could have meant lens-grade rock crystal or agate-carnelian complex. *Lohitākṣa* and *jyotirasaka* in AS, 2.11.35 could mean either carnelian or heliotrope (as suggested by Tagore).

Linked texts (3)