41 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY PART II 



much more valuable, the suffragettes will learn with pleasure, than a mere man was 

 worth as much as three cows and four or five charik-shells. Now a cow was valued 

 at ten chank-shells, a pig at two shells, a goat was the same rate, and a fowl at one 

 packet of salt. As a chank-shell was considered worth one rupee, a short calculation 

 will show that a male slave was worth Es. 13, and a female slave Rs. 34, or 34 shells. 

 The ransoms of villages captured during raids in these good old days were largely paid 

 in chank-shells, beads, cows, pigs and other portable wealth. Charik-shells and beads 

 were the chief items of currency, but even in Butler's time the inevitable invasion of 

 the rupee was already successful in the valleys most accessible to low-country traders. 

 At the village of Hosang-hajoo the chief remarked to Major Butler, with a show of con- 

 siderable pride, " since we became British subjects, we have paid revenue in coin and 

 with it we can procure anything we require ; we therefore no longer want shells and 

 beads." 



I see no reason to believe that chank currency ever extended beyond the hill peoples 

 of Assam and possibly some of the adjoining hill tracts. On some coins issued by the 

 ancient Pandiyan and Chalukyan dynasties of southern India a chank-shell appears 

 as the principal symbol (Thurston, I, 328) ; this might be held as evidence of a pre- 

 ceding currency consisting of the actual object so represented, whereof the memory 

 was perpetuated in pictorial form upon one face of the coins and tokens which came to 

 take its place as more convenient units of exchange. But there is much more reason to 

 believe that the chank was represented on such coins for a similar reason to that which 

 actuates the present-day States of Travancore and Cochin to adopt a similar symbol 

 on their current coins. In these two States, the homes of southern Hindu orthodoxy, 

 the chank-shell symbolises the religious belief of the ruling race and is their emblem 

 as the rose stands for England and the thistle for Scotland. Both these States utilised 

 it as a distinctive symbol on their earliest issues of local postage stamps in place of and 

 to the exclusion of the sovereign's head the customary pivot of design in European 

 stamps. 



Both the States of Travancore and Cochin also employ the chank in their recently 

 designed armorial bearings. In the case of Travancore, the arms described in heraldic 

 terms consist of : Argent, on a fesse azure, three reversed (sinistral) chank-shells or ; 

 Crest a sea-horse proper. Motto Dharmosmal Kaladevatam. In Cochin the shield 

 bears more numerous devices ; in addition to a left-handed chank, a palanquin, a brass 

 lamp and an umbrella are depicted, with elephant supporters as in the case of Travancore. 

 In all cases where these States use the chank symbol, it is necessary to note that it 

 should occur in the abnormal sinistral or reversed form, this being the Royal and Sacred 

 Chank the Chank of Vishnu. 



When the Maharaja of Travancore performs tulabharam, a coronation ceremony 

 wherein he weighs himself in scales against gold, special gold coins are struck called 

 tulabhara kasu (cf. our Maundy money). On one side a figure of a chank-shell appears, 



