$JES 921 Book of Compassion Reverence For All Life Reference Book

Author(s): Pramoda Chitrabhanu, Pravin K Shah
Publisher: JAINA Education Committee

Page 56

10-STORY OF PEARLS
solution and discovered the method of commercial pearl culturing in Japan.
A painful journey of the oyster begins. Mikimoto patented a way of tricking small akoya oysters into producing pearls. The process begins with divers searching for young oysters in the deep ocean. A technician then takes a round bead made from the shell of the fresh water mussel. This bead is called the nucleus that
substitutes the foreign particle and is inserted into the oyster., Then a tiny piece of mantle (oyster's fleshy lip) is cut from the same oyster and inserted next to the nucleus. All this is done without anesthesia. This nucleus causes pain and irritation to the inside of the oyster for years. This pain causes the mantle to secrete the nacre that coat the nucleus until it has formed into a pearl. Such "seeded" pearls are consistently rounder and more luminous and more importantly, they can be produced in larger quantities for human greed and passion. For years the oyster suffers the hurt and soreness until the oyster is split open alive to get the pearl. Many a times an oyster may yield nothing at all and the life is ended.
After knowing the process of the real and cultured pearls the belief that pearls do not involve any violence turns false. Many believe that cultured pearls are man-made, simulated or fake pearls made in machine. The truth proved otherwise: they are made and produced solely by oysters and obtained by killing millions of oysters each year mercilessly.
THE BOOK OF COMPASSION
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