42 



The followinof notes are intended to show that in 

 ancient days the custom of wearing these peculiar orna- 

 ments was widely spread throughout the greater part of 

 India and that bangle-workshops, equally widely scat- 

 tered, stretched from Tinnevelly in the extreme south 

 to Kathiawar and Gujarat in the north-west, through a 

 lonof chain of factories located in the Deccan. The 

 general condition of the industry as it exists at the present 

 day in Bengal will be described together with such notes 

 as I have been able to gather with regard to the various 

 tribes and castes whose women now wear bangles made 

 from the chank shell. 



(i) THE ANTIQUITY OF THE INDUSTRY. 



{a) In the Tinnevelly District. 



Reference to ancient Tamil classics furnishes evidence 

 scanty but conclusive of the existence of an important 

 chank-cutting industry in the ancient Pandyan kingdom 

 in the early centuries of the Christian era. Similar 

 evidence is also extant of a widespread use of carved and 

 ornamented chank bangles in former days by the women 

 of the Pandyan country which may be considered as 

 roughly co-extensive with the modern districts of Tinne- 

 velly, Madura, and Ramnad, forming the eastern section 

 of the extreme south of the Madras Presidency. 



Among the more important references which prove 

 the ancient importance of this industry on the Indian 

 shore of the Gulf of Mannar, is one contained in the 

 '" Madiiraikkaiichi'' a Tamil poem which incidentally 

 describes the ancient city of Korkai, once the sub- 

 capital of the Pandyan kingdom and the great emporium 

 familiar to Greek and Egyptian sailors and traders and 

 described by the geographers of the ist and 2nd 

 centuries A.D. under the name of Kolkhoi. From the 

 purity of the Tamil employed in this poem and the 

 similarity of the names of the towns, ports and goods 

 mentioned incidentally with those employed by Ptolemy 

 and the author of the " Periplus of the Erythraean Sea," 

 we may date it as approximately contemporaneous with 

 the writings of these authors and certainly not later than 

 the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. 



In one passage ( LL. 140-144) the Parawas are 

 described as men who dived for pearl oysters and for 



