16 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY PART II 



of Harivansa and a cousin to Krishna, has a conch as his emblem and is represented 

 in Jain statues as being of a black colour. The black image of Nemi in the Nemnath 

 temple on Mount Girnar in Kathiawar is a well-known example. The dark hue under 

 which Vishnu and Krishna are always represented by Hindus and the black colour 

 of his cousin Nemi, the Jain Tirthankar, go far to show that these gods and teachers 

 belonged not to the Aryan race but to nations of Dravidian origin in the forefront of the 

 earliest indigenous civilization in North India or Hindustan. With them in particular, 

 is the conch most definitely associated ; there is strong presumption on this and other 

 grounds already referred to, to believe that it was the Dravidians who first employed 

 the chank as a battle-conch and that this custom was adopted by the Aryan invaders 

 as blood connections began to be formed in increasing numbers with the Dravidian 

 nobility of the land and when certain of the Dravidian gods were admitted to the Aryan 

 pantheon. The Aryans would be particularly eager to acquire fine conchs both for use 

 and ornament ; their deep-voiced boom would prove their utility as battle-trumpets to 

 enspirit and to give signals, while their rare white beauty would appeal to the religious 

 sense as making them fit vessels wherewith to offer libations to their gods. To an inland 

 people the beautiful products of the sea assume a double value from their strangeness 

 and rarity and mysterious origin. To-day the people of Tibet, cut off from all know- 

 ledge of the sea, esteem pearls and red coral, tortoise-shell and amber, among the greatest 

 treasures within their knowledge. The wild Nagas of the Assam hills equally prized the 

 snow-white chank shell itself till some 50 years ago, using it as part of their accepted 

 currency at the rates enumerated on page 43. As the Aryan hosts advanced into 

 India they must have captured numbers of battle conchs from time to time and there can 

 be no doubt they early adopted them in place of their own less sonorous cow-horns. 

 Indeed the boom of the conch has been the battle signal throughout the ages in 

 India, and this custom has lasted almost to the present day. Ancient Tamil and 

 Rajput poems descriptive of battles and raids continually refer to the clamour of the 

 conchs blown as the opposing parties approached each other ; the etiquette of old Indian 

 chivalry required a prelude of challenging conch-blowing before the serious fight was 

 begun ; the long-drawn hollow sonorous note of the chank often greeted early British 

 commanders as they led their forces to the assault ; until the beginning of last century 

 Marathi and Pindari chiefs called their followers together and heartened them for the 

 fray by loud blasts on conch-horns. Even in very recent days the chank 's voice has called 

 our enemies to the attack, and this too by other foes than Hindus. The graphic pen of 

 Percival Landon in his " Lhasa "an account of the British Mission to Thibet in 1903-4, 

 in describing a night cannonade of the British Commissioner's post outside of Gyantse 

 by the Thibetans, paints a word picture worthy of quotation: " As one peers out into 

 the warm night a long monotone is faintly droned out from the darkness ahead. 

 It is one of the huge conch shells in the Jong and it may only mean a call to prayer the 

 ' hours ' of Lamaism are unending but as the moaning note persists softly and steadily 



