Gems of Siam (Thailand)
The earliest reference to the gems of Siam (Thailand) was that of the Chinese traveler, Ma Huan, in 1408 AD (Phillips, 1887; Gühler, 1947):
A hundred li (twenty miles) to the S.W. of this Kingdom there is a trading place Shang-Shui, which is on the road to Yun-hou-mên, [possibly a canal between Chanthaburi and Trat Provinces in eastern Thailand]. In this place there are five or six hundred foreign families, who sell all kinds of foreign goods; many Hung-ma-sze-kên-ti stones are sold there. This stone is an inferior kind of ruby, bright and clear like the seeds of the pomegranate.
In Manual de Faria’s (1617 to 1640 AD) description of Portuguese Asia it is stated that Siam has “mines of sapphires and rubies” (Ball, 1931). Nicolas Gervaise, writing in 1688, also mentions what may have been an occurrence of sapphire in Siam:
…there are blue stones found in certain parts of the jungle in the uplands. This stone resembles the Lapis which is usually found in gold mines.
Gervaise, however, seemed interested more in gold than precious stones, for this is his only reference to gems (Gervaise, 1688).
Ulrich Gühler (1947) has given us an authoritative account of the history of gems in Thailand, unfortunately in an obscure Thai journal, beginning with Ma Huan. From the fifteenth century onwards, various travelers to Thailand mention, in passing, that rubies and sapphires are found near Chanthaburi. Also included are the sometimes humorous descriptions of the gems, as well as the local people and their customs. Witness the statements of early French missionaries to Thailand (Cartwright, 1908) from before 1770 on the former Thai province of Laos:
In the province of Laos from whence the kingdom takes its name, there is a deep mine whence rubies and emeralds are extracted. The King possesses an emerald of the size of an ordinary orange.
De la Loubère (1693), French envoy to Siam in 1687, described Thailand as “abounding in mines of rubies and sapphires.” He added that the stones usually found their way into the possession of monks, who were secretive as to the gems’ origin, and who employed them as charms. A handful of rough sapphire from Chanthaburi’s Khao Ploi Waen mines.
Photo: Tarin Janobkatt/Thaigem.com
