Concerning the Great Province of Maabar, which is called India the Greater, and is on the Mainland

When you leave the Island of Seilan and sail westward about 60 miles, you come to the great province of MAABAR which is styled INDIA THE GREATER; it is best of all the Indies and is on the mainland.

You must know that in this province there are five kings, who are own brothers. I will tell you about each in turn. The Province is the finest and noblest in the world.

At this end of the Province reigns one of those five Royal Brothers, who is a crowned King, and his name is SONDER BANDI DAVAR. In his kingdom they find very fine and great pearls; and I will tell you how they are got.

You must know that the sea here forms a gulf between the Island of Seilan and the mainland. And all round this gulf the water has a depth of no more than ten or twelve fathoms, and in some places no more than two fathoms. The pearl-fishers take their vessels, great and small, and proceed into the gulf where they stop from the beginning of April till the middle of May. They go first to a place called Bettelar, and then go sixty miles into the Gulf. Here they cast anchor and shift from their large vessels into small boats. You must know that the many merchants who go divide into various companies, and each of these must engage a number of men on wages, hiring them for April and half of May. Of all the produce they have first to pay the king, as his royalty, the tenth part. And they must also pay those men who charm the great fishes to prevent them from injuring the divers whilst engaged in seeking pearls under water, one-twentieth of all that they take. These fishcharmers are termined Abraiaman; and their charm holds good for that day only, for at night they dissolve the charm so that the fishes can work mischief at their will. These Abraiaman know also how to charm beasts and birds and every living thing. When the men have got into the small boats they jump into the water and dive to the bottom, which may be at a depth of from four to twelve fathoms, and there they remain as long as they are able. And there they find the shells that contain the pearls, and those they put into a net bag tied round the waist, and mount up to the surface with them, and then dive anew. When they can’t hold their breath any longer they come up again, and after a little down they go once more, and so they go on all day. These shells are in fashion like oysters or sea-hoods. And in these shells are found pearls, great and small, of every kind, sticking in the flesh of the shell-fish. In this manner pearls are fished in great quantities, for thence in fact come the pearls which are spread all over the world. And I can tell you the King of that State hath a very great receipt and treasure from his dues upon those pearls.

The Travels of Marco Polo (Il Milione), volume II, chapter XVI (1298)

Marco Polo visited the Gulf of Manaar pearl fisheries around 1294. 

The Genii

Malignant tyrants! with vindictive ire,
The ocean heaving as your steps retire,
You trace the bark along the yielding main,
And smile, indignant – where your power was vain.
Hence, like the lightning’s flash, you rapid sweep
O’er the wild waters of the Atlantic deep,
Thro’ the long course of Orellana run,
To climes illumin’d by their parent fun;
Where, o’er Pacific seas, the tempests blow,
You rear your coral palaces below;
On crystal pedestals the emeralds raise,
And bid the sapphires on their summits blaze.
Your wat’ry reign no wanderer annoys,
Nor dares you deep retreats, or gloomy joys,

Save the poor Negro, on his dangerous way,
Thro’ the deep caverns of Panama’s bay,
While the black billows thro’ their fissures swell,
From fractur’d rocks to wrest the pearly shell.
As o’er the cliffs, he holds his slippery road,
To drag the treasures from their dark abode,
Your jealous eyes, tremendous rulers! spy
The fated victim you have doom’d to die.
Thus, when, all fainting with the tedious toil,
His weak frame loaded with the fever’d spoil,
He springs on high the surface to regain,
Repair his sinking strength, and breathe again;
From some wild gulf, that pours the sweeping storm,
The furious shark uprears his scaly form,
In awful hunger, rolls his flaming eyes;
The luckless sufferer turns, and shrieks, and dies.

Anne Bannerman, ‘The Genii’ (1800) , extract

Jo’s Boys

‘If you feel this, I can give you no better advice than to go on loving and studying our great master,’ she said slowly; but Josie caught the changed tone, and felt, with a thrill of joy, that her newfriend was speaking to her now as to a comrade. ‘It is an education in itself, and a lifetime is not long enough to teach you all his secret. Have you the patience, courage, strength, to begin at the beginning, and slowly, painfully, lay the foundation for future work? Fame is a pearl many dive for and only a few bring up. Even when they do, it is not perfect, and they sigh for more, and lose better things in struggling for them.’

Louisa May Alcott, Jo’s Boys (1886)

The words are spoken by the actress Miss Cameron, who is speaking of Shakespeare.

The Spectator

Since on this Subject I have already admitted several Quotations which have occurred to my Memory upon writing this Paper, I will conclude it with a little Persian Fable. A Drop of Water fell out of a Cloud into the Sea, and finding it self lost in such an Immensity of fluid Matter, broke out into the following Reflection: ‘Alas! What an insignificant Creature am I in this prodigious Ocean of Waters; my Existence is of no Concern to the Universe, I am reduced to a Kind of Nothing, and am less then the least of the Works of God.’ It so happened, that an Oyster, which lay in the Neighbourhood of this Drop, chanced to gape and swallow it up in the midst of this humble Soliloquy. The Drop, says the Fable, lay a great while hardning in the Shell, ’till by Degrees it was ripen’d into a Pearl, which falling into the Hands of a Diver, after a long Series of Adventures, is at present that famous Pearl which is fixed on the Top of the Persian Diadem.

Joseph Addison, The Spectator, no. 293 (Tuesday, 5 February 1712), final lines

The Picture of Dorian Gray

A sea-monster had been enamoured of the pearl that the diver brought to King Perozes, and had slain the thief, and mourned for seven moons over its loss. When the Huns lured the king into the great pit, he flung it away – Procopius tells the story – nor was it ever found again, though the Emperor Anastasius offered five hundred-weight of gold pieces for it.

Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)

The original story is told by Procopius, the Greek historian, in his History of the Wars, book 1. Perozes was a Persian king.

Three Shadows

I looked and saw your eyes
In the shadow of your hair,
As a traveller sees the stream
In the shadow of the wood;
And I said, “My faint heart sighs,
Ah me! to linger there,
To drink deep and to dream
In that sweet solitude.”
I looked and saw your heart
In the shadow of your eyes,
As a seeker sees the gold
In the shadow of the stream;
And I said, “Ah me! what art
Should win the immortal prize,
Whose want must make life cold
And Heaven a hollow dream?”
I looked and saw your love
In the shadow of your heart,
As a diver sees the pearl
In the shadow of the sea;
And I murmured, not above
My breath, but all apart,—
“Ah! you can love, true girl,
And is your love for me?”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ‘Three Shadows’ (1876) 

Hope

And yet our lot is given us in a land
Where busy arts are never at a stand;
Where science points her telescopic eye,
Familiar with the wonders of the sky;
Where bold inquiry, diving out of sight,
Brings many a precious pearl of truth to light;
Where nought eludes the persevering quest,
That fashion, taste, or luxury suggest.

William Cowper, ‘Hope’ (1782), extract 

In Praise of Angling

Here are no entrapping baits
To hasten to too hasty fates;
Unless it be
The fond credulity
Of silly fish, which (worldling like) still look
Upon the bait, but never on the hook;
Nor envy, ‘less among
The birds, for prize of their sweet song.

Go, let the diving negro seek
For gems, hid in some forlorn creek;
We all pearls scorn,
Save what the dewy morn
Congeals upon each little spire of grass,
Which careless shepherds beat down as they pass;
And gold ne’er here appears,
Save what the yellow Ceres bears.

Blest silent groves, O, may you be
Forever mirth’s best nursery!
May pure contents
Forever pitch their tents
Upon these downs, these rocks, these mountains,
And peace still slumber by these purling fountains,
Which we may every year
Meet, when we come a-fishing here.

Henry Wotton, ‘In Praise of Angling’ (16??), last three stanzas

A Florida Ghost

Down mildest shores of milk-white sand,
By cape and fair Floridian bay,
Twixt billowy pines — a surf asleep on land —
And the great Gulf at play,

Past far-off palms that filmed to nought,
Or in and out the cunning keys
That laced the land like fragile patterns wrought
To edge old broideries,

The sail sighed on all day for joy,
The prow each pouting wave did leave
All smile and song, with sheen and ripple coy,
Till the dusk diver Eve

Brought up from out the brimming East
The oval moon, a perfect pearl.
In that large lustre all our haste surceased,
The sail seemed fain to furl,

The silent steersman landward turned,
And ship and shore set breast to breast.
Under a palm wherethrough a planet burned
We ate, and sank to rest.

Sidney Lanier, ‘A Florida Ghost’ (1877), first five stanzas 

The Sphinx

His long hair was nine cubits’ span and coloured
like that yellow gem
Which hidden in their garment’s hem the
merchants bring from Kurdistan.

His face was as the must that lies upon a vat of
new-made wine:
The seas could not insapphirine the perfect azure
of his eyes.

His thick soft throat was white as milk and
threaded with thin veins of blue:
And curious pearls like frozen dew were
broidered on his flowing silk.

On pearl and porphyry pedestalled he was
too bright to look upon:
For on his ivory breast there shone the wondrous
ocean-emerald,

That mystic moonlit jewel which some diver of
the Colchian caves
Had found beneath the blackening waves and
carried to the Colchian witch.

Oscar Wilde, ‘The Sphinx’ (1894), stanzas 45-49