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The occult virtues of the pearl were highly esteemed in the early ages. They were supposed to be brought forth by being boiled in meat, when they healed the quartan ague; bruised, and taken with milk, they were good for ulcers, and cleared the voice. They also comforted the heart, and rendered their possessor chaste. Powdered pearls were considered as an invaluable medicine in several complaints. The Greeks and Romans wore pearls made into crowns as amulets. Pope Adrian, wishing to secure all virtues in his favour, wore amulets composed of a number of things, including a sun-baked toad and pearls.
Marco Polo, in the thirteenth century, writing of the island of Chipanga, says: "The inhabitants have pearls in abundance, which are of a rose colour. When a dead body is burnt, they put one of these pearls in the mouth."
In old India the red pearls were highly esteemed, and formed one of the seven precious objects which it was incumbent to use in the adornment of Buddhistic reliquaries, and to distribute at the building of a Dagopa.
The famous Venetian traveller, Polo, also mentions a famous "rosary" of pearls and rubies belonging to the King of Malabar, "who wears round his neck a necklace entirely of precious stones, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and the like, insomuch that this collar is of great value. He wears also, hanging in front of his chest, from the neck downwards, a fine silk thread, strung with one hundred and four large pearls and rubies of great price. The reason why he wears this cord with the one hundred and four great pearls and rubies is (according to what they tell), that every day, morning and evening, he has to say one hundred and four prayers to his idols. Such is their religion and their custom. And thus did all the kings, his ancestors, before him, and they bequeathed the string of pearls to him who should do the like. The prayer that they say daily consists of these words, 'Pacauta, Pacauta, Pacauta,' and this they repeat one hundred and four times.
"The king aforesaid also wears on his arms three golden bracelets, thickly set with pearls of great value, and anklets also of like kind he wears on his legs, and rings on his toes likewise. So let me tell you, what this king wears, between gold, and gems, and pearls, is worth more than a city's ransom. And 'tis no wonder, for he hath great store of such gear; and besides, they are found in his kingdom. Moreover, nobody is permitted to take out of the kingdom a pearl weighing more than half a saggio, unless he manages to do it secretly. This order has been given because the king desires to reserve all such to himself; and so, in fact, the quantity he has is almost incredible. Moreover, several times every year he sends his proclamation through the realm, that if any one who possesses a pearl or stone of great value will bring it to him, he will pay for it twice as much as it cost. Everybody is glad to do this, and thus the king gets all into his own hands, giving every man his price."
"In all the portraits of the Sassanian monarch" (observes the Rev. Mr. King), "the eye is immediately struck by the huge pearl hanging from the right ear, the artist evidently considering it an essential point in his image of the sovereign. This reminds us of the romantic tale, related by Procopius, of that pearl of unrivalled magnitude, obtained at the urgent entreaty of King Perozes, by the daring diver, from the guardianship of the enamoured shark, but with the sacrifice of his own life. How vividly does he bring before us the final catastrophe, when disappeared for ever from the world this inestimable miracle of nature: when the great king, resplendent in all his jewels, at the head of his mail-clad chivalry, charged the flying hordes of the Ephthalite Huns, and in the very moment of falling into the vast pitfall, into which he had been entrapped by their feigned retreat (which engulfed him, his son, and his bravest nobles), tore from his right ear this glory of his reign, and cast it before himself into the abyss, there to be eternally lost, amidst the hideous chaos of crushed man and horse-comforted in death with the assurance of thus cheating the foe of the most glorious trophy of the victory. Nor could the Huns, although stimulated to the search by the enormous offers of his Byzantian rival in similar ostentation, the Emperor Anastasius (who promised five hundred weight of gold pieces to the finder), ever succeed in recovering from the pit of death the so highly coveted jewel." |
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Precious Stones Vol 11
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