VI. AELIAN
Pearl-fishing
The Indian pearl-oyster (I have already spoken of the Erythraean kind) is caught in the following manner. There is a city which a man of royal extraction called Soras1 governed at the time when Eukratides governed the Baktrians,2 and the name of that city is Perimuda. It is inhabited by a race of fish-eaters who are said to go off with nets and catch the kind of oysters mentioned, in a great bay by which a vast extent of the coast is indented. It is said that the pearl grows upon a shell like that of a large mussel, and that the oysters swim in great shoals, and have leaders, just as bees in their hives have their queen-bees. I learn further that the leader is bigger and more beautifully coloured than the others, and that in consequence the divers have a keen struggle in the depths which of them shall catch him, since when he is taken they catch also the entire shoal, now left, so to speak, forlorn and leaderless, so that it stirs not, and, like a flock of sheep that has lost its shepherd, no longer moves forward against any incipient danger. As long, however, as the leader escapes and skilfully evades capture, he guides their movements and upholds discipline. Such as are caught are put into tubs to decay, and when the flesh has rotted and run off nothing is left but the round pebble. The best sort of pearl is the Indian and that of the Red Sea. It is produced also in the Western Ocean where the island of Britain is. This sort seems to be of a yellowish colour, like gold, while its lustre is dull and dusky. Juba tells us that the pearl is produced in the straits of the Bosporus and is inferior to the British, and not for a moment to be compared with the Indian and Red Sea kind. That which is obtained in the interior of India is said not to have the proper characteristics, but to be a rock crystal.
—Ancient India as described in Classical Literature, McCrindle pp. 143-4.