Rough blue moonstone held between two fingers

Field Note - Moonstone In Sri Lanka's South - Lunar Gems, Meetiyagoda

Down from the hills and across to the coast, to the one village on earth where the blue moonstone comes from. A day at Lunar Gems, Meetiyagoda, with Nalin Liyanarachchi.

Meetiyagoda, Sri Lanka · August 2026 · Read it below, or watch the film (7 min)

Rough blue moonstone held between two fingers against green leaves
Rough from the pit, before the wheel. The blue is already in it.

Chapter one

The drive down

The morning after Blackpool we left the hills the way the tea does. Down. Through Ella, where the road hangs off the side of the mountain, and then, in about twenty minutes, the whole country changes. Flat. Hot. Dry. The southern province.

A switchback road below Ella with the southern plain hazy beyond the hills
The last bend below Ella. Everything beyond it is flat and hot.

By the afternoon we were on the coast road, looking for a village called Meetiyagoda. It sits a few kilometres inland, between Ambalangoda and Hikkaduwa, and there is one reason to look for it. Under it is the only blue moonstone on earth.

A map of Ceylon from about 1914 with Galle and the south-west coast legible
Ceylon, c.1914. Meetiyagoda is the tiny gap between Ambalangoda and Hikkaduwa on the south-west coast. Public domain.

Chapter two

Lunar Gems

This is Lunar Gems: Nalin Liyanarachchi's yard, his workshop, and his gallery. Fourth generation on this ground. The house sits back from the road under big trees, with an open-sided workshop behind it and the garden around that, and the mine is out the back. It has been, on and off, for a hundred and twenty years.

An open-sided pavilion with a tiled roof and a birdbath in a gravel yard
The yard, from the gate.
The outdoor workshop: a red-tiled floor under a roof, cutting wheels on a bench
The workshop, open to the garden.
The pit head: a timber frame over a shaft with a blue pump barrel, under palms
The pit head at the back of the property, with the pump that keeps it a mine rather than a pond.

Chapter three

The well

Moonstone is a feldspar with a blue light moving inside it. The Romans thought it was moonlight, set. The pale kind turns up in a few places. The blue kind comes from one village, and this is it.

A polished piece of blue moonstone on black, the sheen moving across it
Meetiyagoda moonstone, polished. Géry Parent, public domain.
Rough moonstone still in its dark matrix rock
The same stone in its matrix. Géry Parent, public domain.

Gems left this island through Galle for a thousand years, in the hands of the Moor traders, the descendants of Arabs who settled the coast and ran the trade from the ports. A handbook of Ceylon printed in 1907 says it flatly: the trade in gems is almost entirely in the hands of the Moormen.

An 18th-century chart of the Indian Ocean with a dashed route drawn from the Arabian coast to Galle
The route the stones went back along. Bellin's chart of the Mer des Indes, 1746. Bibliothèque nationale de France, public domain.
Sea Street, Galle, in 1901: bullock carts along the bay
Sea Street, Galle, 1901. Keystone View Co. Library of Congress, no known restrictions.
Two Moor traders in fez and turban, a studio portrait from about 1890
Moor traders, Ceylon, c.1890. Skeen & Co. Rijksmuseum, CC0.

1906

Nalin's great-grandfather bought this land about a hundred and twenty years ago. His name was Hikkaduwa Liyanage Daniel. He wanted a shop. A shop needs water, so he dug a well. Twenty metres of white clay. And then the stones.

While digging a well to secure water for a shop he intended to build, he discovered moonstones.Nalin Liyanarachchi
A diagram of Meetiyagoda in section: kaolin clay over the moonstone pegmatite, with a well and a timbered mine shaft cut through it
Meetiyagoda in section. The white clay the Galle traders came for sits on top of the pegmatite that holds the stone, and a well goes straight through it.

Nobody in the village knew what they were. They went out as gifts, as decorations, and as doorstops.

The villagers did not realize that moonstones were a type of gemstone. They used them for decorations, gifts, and even as doorstops.Nalin Liyanarachchi
Thatched pit-head sheds under big trees, with spoil heaps, in 1907
Gem pits in the Ratnapura district, 1907, the same year, the same timber-and-thatch pit head. Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon. Public domain.

The traders from Galle knew. They came for the clay and took the stones in barter. One of them made a friend of Daniel, and invited him to a party at his house in the city. It ran late. Daniel stayed the night. And when he stepped outside in the dark, there was a lamp on in a shed, and men on the floor, cutting and polishing his stones.

Two men on the floor working a bow-string grinding wheel beside bowls of rough moonstone, in warm lamplight
Grinding moonstones in Kandy, 1903, three years before that night. Underwood & Underwood. Library of Congress, no known restrictions.
It was then that he realized moonstones were semi-precious gemstones.Nalin Liyanarachchi

That was the end of the doorstops. His sons and grandsons mined the yard and sold rough to the same trade, for the better part of a century. Nalin took it on about twenty years ago and built the two things his great-grandfather saw through that shed door: a workshop, and a place to sell what came out of it.

Six men waist-deep in a river washing gravel in baskets, 1907
Washing gravel for gems, Ratnapura, 1907. Public domain.
A man washing a basket of gravel in milky water at the Meetiyagoda mine in 2006
Washing at Meetiyagoda, 2006. Wouter Hagens, public domain.

Chapter four

The motorcycle

Nalin's father died when he was five, and had never worked the mine. His grandfather had. At fifteen he wanted a motorcycle. His grandfather said no. He was afraid of the accident.

After some time he said he would give half of the amount, and I should earn the other half by myself.Nalin Liyanarachchi

So he washed the spoil from his grandfather's pit. Three weeks of it.

After 3 weeks I had earned the amount and I got my bike which I wanted, and was so happy.Nalin Liyanarachchi
Hands working a wicker basket of gravel in a tank of milky water
The wash. Same basket, same water, fifty years on.

At seventeen, with the country in a violent time, his family sent him abroad until things settled. He came back to hotel school. He tried for America and didn't get in. A family from Berlin he'd looked after at the hotel got him to Germany: cafés, restaurants, night clubs. He met his wife in one of the cafés.

After some time I couldn't bear the winter there, and we decided to go to Sri Lanka.Nalin Liyanarachchi

Back home he ran a company, and built a hotel for his Berlin friends. When it was finished, he and his wife took over the family mine. Two children, both born here. They live in Germany now, with his wife. He stayed with the yard.

That's how I ended up in Meetiyagoda.Nalin Liyanarachchi

Chapter five

The pit

Every inch of the property has been dug and filled back in. The pit has walked around the yard for a century. This year it's at the back, and when we were there, in the monsoon, it was full to the brim.

Nalin standing at the timbered pit head with a dog, looking down into the shaft
Nalin at the pit. "We get a lot of groundwater, rainwater, so we have to wait until the sun goes down."
Looking straight down the shaft: coconut-log timbering and black water at the bottom
Straight down. Coconut logs for the walls, and the water the pump has to beat.

The method is the one in the 1907 photograph. A shaft shored with coconut logs. Gravel up in baskets. A basket wash in the pond, turning the basket in the water so the light stones wash over the rim and the heavy ones stay. Quartz, feldspar, and, once in a while, the blue.

A rough stone in a wet palm over the wash tank
Gravel up. Wash. Look.
Three rough white and blue stones in an open palm
What comes up. The pale ones are quartz and feldspar. The one with the light in it is the reason.

Chapter six

The wheel

A bow wheel in Kandy, 1903. An electric one in Meetiyagoda, this August. Rough in. Cabochon out.

Three men grinding moonstones with bow-string wheels in 1907
Grinding moonstones in Kandy, 1907. H. C. White Co. Library of Congress, no known restrictions.
The cutter at an electric wheel with a saucer of cut stones
The cutter at the wheel, Meetiyagoda, August 2026.
A saucer of cut moonstone cabochons under a lamp beside the wheel
A saucer of cabochons off the wheel.
The setter's bench: tweezers, a dop stick, a lamp
The setter's bench.
Two rough lumps on a glass counter, one green and one white
Rough on the counter. The white is moonstone. The green is one of the other stones the pegmatite gives up.

Four generations. One yard. The same stone.

Blue moonstone, from the one place it comes from. His name is Nalin.

Credits and sources

  • Filmed at Lunar Gems, 565 Kahawa Road, Meetiyagoda, on 30 August 2026, with Nalin Liyanarachchi. Nalin's words are quoted from his own written account, used with his permission. The jewellery photographs are Lunar Gems' own.
  • Historical images: Underwood & Underwood (1903), H. C. White Co. (1907) and Keystone View Co. (1901) stereographs, Library of Congress, no known restrictions; plates from Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, 1907 (public domain); Skeen & Co. photographs c.1890, Rijksmuseum (CC0); Fort Galle c.1865, Rijksmuseum (CC0); Bellin's Carte de l'Océan Oriental ou Mer des Indes, 1746, Bibliothèque nationale de France (public domain); Meetiyagoda moonstone specimens by Géry Parent and the 2006 mine photographs by Wouter Hagens (public domain).
  • The cross-section diagram was drawn by Serendip Soul from published descriptions of the Meetiyagoda deposit. Dates and figures for the Moor gem trade are from the 1907 handbook; the discovery date of 1906 is the published one and matches Nalin's family account.
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