Vala was a demon god that overthrew the Vedic pantheon. For example, Sapphire is known as a stone that makes you favorable in the eyes of God. In fact, it could be this very story that inspired many of the known metaphysical properties of Sapphire. This is further supported by the origin story for precious gemstones found in Vedic texts, which say that when the demon god Vala was defeated his organs turned to gem seeds of different colors wherever they landed with some being yellow and some being blue. However, because of the prevalence of Corundum in ancient India, Knuth believes that most Indian lore refers to what we know as Sapphire today. For this reason, some texts refer to what we know today as Lapis Lazuli as “Sapphire”, making it difficult at times for historians to determine which stone was actually being described.

Knuth in his book Gems in Myth, Legend, and Lore. In ancient times, the terms sapphirus, sappheiros, sappir and sanipriya were applied to many opaque blue stones, especially in western civilizations according to Bruce G. The red variety of Corundum is known as Ruby from the Latin ruber meaning “red.” Every other color of Corundum is known as Sapphire, even the pink ones! Regardless of what causes the color, Corundum can be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white and any color in between. For example, a combination of titanium (Ti) and iron (Fe) produce the well-known Blue Sapphire. However, because this mineral is allochromatic sometimes coloring agents known as chromophores can substitute in for some of the Al and cause different colors.

In its purest form, Corundum would be white (if opaque) or colorless (if translucent) because aluminum (Al) and oxygen (O) are both colorless. To provide some disambiguation Sapphire can occur in many colors and belongs to the Corundum (Al2O3) family.

Ruby and sapphire corundum