For millennia, red coral has been widely used in Indian jewelry. Not a mineral, coral jewelry is an organic substance manufactured by living, minute, soft polyps who multiply by budding and who live in colonies supported by a solid, medial, internal core required for growth and created by extracting calcium carbonate from seawater. Coral is in effect the internal skeleton, which in time develops a treelike form, permanently cemented to a rock or other solid at the sea bottom. If allowed to live to maturity, under favorable conditions up to thirty years, the main coral trunk can achieve a diameter of around two inches, although pieces of this size have always been rare.
Even, there is a interesting phenomenon in India. The popularity of coral jewelry wholesale in India is a curious phenomenon because, although some exists in Indian waters, it was not regularly fished here. What probably attracted Indians to coral initially, as in the case of carnelian, was its auspicious deep red color. Other red stones include the ruby, which is rare, very expensive, and beyond the means of most people.
Among Southwest Indians, esteem for coral is second only to that for turquoise. In this eighteen-strand necklace, Victor Beck combined coral beads with inlaid gold and turquoise beads, a 14-karat gold ring bead, as well as turquoise, gold agate, and onyx beads.
Equally active in the popularity of red coral jewelry is its long established place in Indian folklore. It is connected with one of the nava-grahas (nine planets), namely Mars (Mangala in Sanskrit), and associated with Karttikeya, the god of war. (The word mangala also refers to anything that is regarded as auspicious, such as an amulet.) Coral is believed to have the power to dispel the malignant effects of the evil eye, which accounts for its very popular use.
Nowadays, Coral is known to be used as a gem since prehistoric times. Coral is not a true gemstone, but a product of marine life. Its color ranges from white to red. It grows in branches that look like underwater trees. Most coral is found in the Mediterranean Sea or in the Pacific off Japan and Taiwan. When you say the word coral, most people think of the coral reefs in the South Pacific like the Great Barrier Reef off Australia. However, these coral reefs are formed by a different species than the coral traditionally used in coral jewelry Corallium rubrum and Corallium japonicum.
