9 GEMSTONES (Navaratnalu)

CORAL are the product of tiny living beings which settled in enormous colonies in the depths of warm seas long before our time.Corals do not necessarily have to be red, even if red is thought of as their typical colour. Corals grow in Nature in a wide range of colours from red to white and from blue and brown to black. The most popular are the red hues such as pale pink or salmon, all the way out to a deep dark red. Black corals and gold corals are very much in fashion, whilst the blue ones are extremely rare.

GARNET are available in a wide variety of colors spanning the entire spectrum. The rarest of these is the blue garnet, discovered in the late 1990s in Bekily, Madagascar. It is also found in some parts of the United States, Russia and Turkey. In daylight, their color ranges from shades of green, beige, brown, gray, and blue, but in incandescent light, they appear a reddish or purplish/pink color. Because of their color changing quality.

CAT'S EYE is found in many colours. Cats eye has white lines over it and looks similar to the eye of a cat. Cat's eye gemstone is found in south India, Ceylon, Brazil, China and many other countries. Cat's eye is found in yellow, black, dark or smoky-green, and white. Cat's-eye shines like the eye of a cat in darkness, but it does not shine in total darkness. Fine cat's eyes should be of a distinctive colour and be as transparent as possible. The most popular ones are those of a beautiful honey yellow and those with fine green tones.
SAPPHIRE Blue is the most popular color for sapphire but sapphires can be found in nearly every imaginable color.These stones are called "fancy sapphires"and come in shades of purple and black."Royal blue" is the typical color of Burmese sapphire from Mogok it is slightly violetish blue. Most of the sapphires currently in the market are coming from Madagascar and Sri Lanka but Thailand(Kanchanaburi), Cambodia (Pailin), Australia and China are also important producing areas.

RUBY is the red variety of the mineral corundum, one of the hardest minerals on Earth.The most important thing about this precious stone is its colour. It was not for no reason that the name 'ruby' was derived from the Latin word 'rubens', meaning 'red'. The red of the ruby is incomparable: warm and fiery. Two magical elements are associated with the symbolism of this colour: fire and blood, implying warmth and life for mankind.

EMERALD are fascinating gemstones. They have the most beautiful, most intense and most radiant green that can possibly be imagined emerald green. Fine emeralds are even more valuable than diamonds. The name emerald comes from the Greek 'smaragdos' via the Old French 'esmeralde', and really just means 'green gemstone'. The green of the emerald is the colour of life and of the springtime, which comes round again and again. But it has also, for centuries, been the colour of beauty and of constant love. The fascination exuded by a fine emerald is simply unique.

PEARLS are organic gems, created when an oyster covers a foreign object with beautiful layers of nacre. Today, pearls are cultured by Man. Fine pearls do not have any flaws or spots in the nacre: it has an even, smooth texture. Other factors which affect value are the regularity of the shape, size, and colour: rose tints are the most favoured. Freshwater pearls are cultured in mussels, mostly in China. Cultured and natural pearls will feel slightly rough, like fine sandpaper, because of the texture of natural nacre.
TOPAZ It is a fluorine aluminium silicate and comes in yellow, yellow-brown, honey-yellow, flax, brown, green, blue, light blue, red and pink ... and sometimes it has no colour at all. The colour in which the topaz is most commonly found is yellow, and that is the colour in which it occurs in one of the major German gemstone rocks, the Schneckenstein (a topaz-bearing rock said to resemble a snail) in Saxony.It cannot be proved conclusively whether the name of the topaz comes from the Sanskrit or the Greek, though the Greek name 'topazos' means 'green gemstone'

DIAMOND Fancy coloured diamonds are not a mass-market product such as those which are advertised everywhere and sold by numbers. They have more personality than that. Fancy coloured diamonds are almost as much fun as coloured gemstones! Like coloured gemstones, each one is different. They come in fabulously expensive pale pinks and blues, pale to bright yellows, oranges, greens, and all those brown colours that are now given names like cognac and champagne.