Myanmar Mogok Ruby Mines means Burmese ruby

Most of the ruby gem stones from Mogok, including star ruby and all varieties of Myanmar or Burmese rubies end up in Thailand and are put into beautiful jewelry items in Bangkok and in Chanthaburi.

Ruby jewelry

is usually enhanced with some diamonds around to get real good sparkling jewelry. In recent years Myanmar rubies lost quite some market share because of the political problems.

Interestingly rubies are sometimes less expensive in Thailand than in Myanmar, even with similar quality and the people still call the ruby, the king of precious stones. After a ruby miner at Mogok find a gemstone with some substantial value a mini pilgrimage leads to the Chanthargyi Pagoda on a small hill. The hill provides a great panorama of the town, lake and the surrounding hills.

The word Mogok

comes from the Bamar Moegokesetwaing, meaning horizon. In Shan language Mogok means a cold place with early sunset. According to legend, three Shan hunters lost their way in the jungle and as they made camp under a large fig tree, they found many fine rough rubies dislodged by a landslide from a nearby hill.

They gathered many red stones and brought them to their sawbwa at Momeik close by. This was the start of a bonanza and since then thousands of rubies, sapphires and other precious and semi precious stones have been found. Many people had some luck and got rich overnight that's the reason why there is a continuous flow of people coming in beside the harsh and rather primitive living conditions there. They work in over thousand mines spread over an area of about 5000 skm, this are open surface mines and underground mines.

Depending on the size and capital outlay for Mogok ruby mines, the gem bearing soil is excavated with some heavy excavator or manually. The earth is diluted with water mixed with water and moved through several metal sieves and inspected carefully as it is running through, gems are collected if there any, read more. Mogok, spread out in the valley bottom, the town of rubies, mist-clad, pricked with fire and out of the mist the shaped forms of mountains rise up in vague outline above the valley. Mogok miner suddenly grown rich, the gambler poised between the strokes of fate, the sorter dreaming of his fortune. The big Mogok ruby market is permanent and the market-place is full with traffic. Along the road to the Mogok market, market-women with great hats on their heads, and the produce of their gardens spread before them. Fruits and vegetables abound. Here are small tomatoes done up in little cane cylinders, through the pattern of which the red fruit glints, baskets of scarlet raspberries, piles of flowers, and a variety of strange products from mushrooms to bamboo-roots. Down these lanes the crow is laughing, talking, bargaining, While the sun burns down on Mogok and upon the gay colors of the clothes of the market women . It is the East, the real East ; clean, neat, and prosperous. Crescent silver neck lets, big again as the moon, about their throats. Some are of the Shan, with fair skin, with even a rosy flush in their cheeks. All are over-topped by the great hat,. here and there in the crowd is a Burmese damsel, in silk, velvet, pearls and a yellow translucent parasol, the comforter of some ruby king. Towering above the line of sight are Mogok houses of the prosperous trader, all of stone, very high ; and from its mid-storey protrudes the head of a retainer, pipe in mouth, his slit eyes restless, absorbing. At the window of a house in Mogok main street, barred like a leopard's cage, sit groups of  worker naked and intent, sorting the rubies which lie in gleaming trays upon their knees. Other Mogok people roll cigars by the hour, selling them to the passers-by. At intervals there are Chinese eating-houses, equipped with little tables and stools, and dressers fitted out with blue china, and chopsticks, and pewter spoons. The fare is varied and savoury, and pigs' legs, plump fowls, cabbages and ducks, hang from strings like a curtain. Mogok houses are filled with crowds of Myanmar's, Shan, Lisu and others who crowd round the little tables and feed in groups, bowl to chin, their feet perched high up on the narrow stools.

Mogok town of rubies, Mogok environ, Burmese ruby. Mogok ruby market, ruby extraction, Burmese ruby exploration. Mogok ruby mining selecting Burmese ruby. Mogok ruby mining Myanmar Burma, Lisu, Shan, Gurkhas, Kachin, Bamars, Chinese, Burmese ruby mining.

Mogok was the scene of the original immigration of the Tartar descending at some indefinite date before the sixth century B.C. from the direction of Tibet towards the foot of the Himalayas. Driven by attacks from the west to migrate in the direction of the Irrawaddy valley. All accounts agree that they came from the north-west, but whether they came via the Hukawng valley straight down the Upper Irrawaddy, or via the Chindwin valley, is uncertain. They founded their first im-portant capital at Fagaung on the east bank of the Irrawaddy.  In process of time the original settlers were surrounded and engulfed by incursions of the Shans, who in turn, after various vicissitudes, were subjugated by Alaung-paya and incorporated in the Burmese Kingdom of that time. Consequently, the riverside tract of this district, including the whole of the Tagaung Township and the major portion of the Thabeitkyin Township with the exception of the south-east portion thereof. Mogok, the headquarters of the district, is really a conglomeration of 12 villages which have been notified as a town for revenue purposes, but are administered under the Village Act. The area of the town is 2.68 square miles. The first settlements appear to have been at Uyin and Thapanbin. The Uyin villagers worked paddy in the valley, and as it was evening (me chok thi) before they got home the cultivators established a village near their fields, and named the valley Mogok. The original settlement was Shanzu, now Shandaw. The development of mining led to the annexation of the Stone Tract in Bodawpaya's time and the administration was in the hands of the so-thugyi appointed by the King. Under that official were two asitringyis or councilors who performed the practical work of Government, though in judicial matters they did not pass orders but submitted a report on which the so-thugyi. passed judgment. Under each asiyiugyi was an ein-u-saye, or chief clerk, who had no executive authority. Each separate village had its thugyi under the control of the so-thugyi, and in the centre of the group a "zay-thugyi" exercised authority over the three quarters of Shandaw, Myoma and Aleywa. None of the officials had any regular pay. The villages were assessed at what they could be made to pay, and each grade of official added a little to the demand on his own account. When the so-thugyi had levied his own contribution the balance went to the Royal Treasury. During the ten years that preceded the annexation of Burma by the British the mines were managed direct on behalf of the King by an official from Mandalay, but the last two, U Waik, 1880-82, and Nga Si (afterwards the Mogoung tam) 1882-85, left the so-thugyi a free hand so long as their dues were paid. After the annexation the myothugyi appointed by the Deputy Commissioner at first exercised jurisdiction over the whole of the Mogok so, but from 1895-96 his authority was confined to Mogok Town, and in 1904 the post of myothugyi was abolished. There were no private rights in land, the whole of the Stone Tract belonged to the King. Since then not much has changed only the King was replaced by the government.

At the Mogok ruby mines they dig the soil, yellow and scarred with pits. Hill people in blue clothes and yellow parasol-like hats ; people in loose trousers, showing legs tattooed with tigers and dragons ; people small of stature with muscles of iron. The process of ruby mining is simple in Mogok . A straight bamboo pole twenty feet high stuck like a mast in the yellow soil. Near its top, through a slit, works another horizontally; at one end of it a make-weight, a basket filled with mud or stones, at the

other a long cane reaching down like the line of a fisherman ; last of all a bucket to hold water or mud, as the case may be. If it be water, the ruby miner stands at the little pit's mouth, lowers the bucket, lets it fill and come up again, the cane slipping through his fingers ; and on its emerging, tilts the water from it into a channel, down which it runs yellow and turbid to swell the stream by the roadside. If mud, the digger in the pit fills it with a spade and lets it run up to the man overhead, who empties it with a jerk of his wrist on to an adjoining mud-heap. When this heap has grown big enough it is washed, and the rubies are visible. At a corner, in the dazzling

sun of Mogok afternoon, a child stops, scraping the yellow earth from a dry heap into a shallow basket. A child at play it would seem. But when the little basket is laden she carries it away to where a woman in a dark blue kilt is at work, close to her figure as she sits, a pale yellow coat and pink silk bound about her coils of black hair. Her wide sleeves lift as she works,' revealing her slender arms. Her Mogok gem business in life so much at least as she transacts here - is to let the yellow stream run through each basket of earth, till all the concealing clay is washed away and pebbles alone survive ; from this remnant to pick out with precision rubies, which she slips under her tongue till her mouth is full. The occupation has its merits. Little streams of yellow mud run across the plain of Mogok, making pools and puddles where the ruby are extracted from, run in bewildering variety the. This is Mogok ruby-mining in its indigenous simplicity. In a very little space off Mogok main street and in the park, groups of people with wide hats are clustered close together, one is stricken with curiosity to know what they are about. You crush into the crowd and find yourself in the midst of the buyers and sellers of rubies.

Mogok ruby mine, Myanmar ruby digging, ruby extraction, ruby exploration, Mogok Myanmar ox cart Mogok Myanmar flower shop and Burmese ruby.

In the centre of each group there is a shining brass tray full of rubies and it looks like a disc of beaten gold in the sun. By it sits the buyer, ringed by satellites, each of whom believes himself an expert. Then there is a swaying in the crowd, and a miner edges in, picturesque in his wide trousers and great flapping hat, and subsides by the tray on his haunches. There is a little cloth bag in his hands, tied very tightly round the neck with string. Slowly he unwinds the suing and the masked eyes of the buyer glitter. No word is spoken.  The Mogok ruby seller is in no hurry. When at last the long string has been unwound and the hand clasping the little globe of cloth relaxes its amatory grip, the mouth of the bag is turned down, and from its interior there flows into the tray the red stream of ruby gemstones. Then the Mogok ruby buyer moves. His long delicate nervous fingers reach out swiftly, and in an instant the little pyramid of rubies is spread over the shining disc, each stone blinking in the light. For the next few seconds and still in silence, fingers are moving. The good and the bad stones are separated from each other, and formed into two little piles ; the bad rubies are being pushed back to the seller's end of the tray; the good rubies brought instinctively a little closer to the buyer. At this stage discussion starts. All the critics have their say ; the seller eloquent, the buyer cold and deprecatory. Thus the duel proceeds, there is a score of these trays, like suns in the close cluster of men, and that is nearly all there is to tell at Mogok. Like all that is truly Eastern, the process is simple in its character, limitless in its fascination. One can describe in a minute what one can look upon with interest for hours. Look at the Mogok buyers, they are backed by a hundred thousand dollar of capital. Many came to Mogok a few years ago as poor people. Some got some money into their fingers. After a while they lend it at high interest rates, on the security of gold and rubies. Then they change to the Mogok ruby trade and now some of them are the richest guys around. Gem Market at Mogok There is plenty of gem trading but no Jewelry shops, business is done in the park, the whole atmosphere is very similar to Chanthaburi in Thailand where most of the precious stones found in Mogok are ending up for sale. Here in Myanmar is only the first stop on the way to some beautiful ruby jewelry elsewhere, usually in India, China, Singapore, Bangkok just name it. Jewelry, rubies, sapphire, jade, jewelry, precious stones. Mogok ruby gem uncut Myanmar Burma, Burmese ruby Around Mogok Myanmar is typical rural and very interesting to watch how life is going on, notably considering that many different ethnicities live in that area without conflict since there are no external sides to steer up conflicts means English and other colonialists.