128 



and Bengal resorted every year to trade with the rich 

 Hindu and Muhammadan merchants Hving there, a 

 definite statement which shows that there was even then 

 no difficulty in forwarding supjDiies of chanks direct by 

 sea to the Dacca workshops. 



Barbosa also tells us that at the time of his visit the 

 fishery off this coast belonged to the king of Koulam 

 (Ouiloninthe southern part of Travancore) who gene- 

 rally resided at Kayal and who farmed the pearl-fishery 

 to a wealthy Muhammadan.* The chank-fishery so 

 far as we know has always been an adjunct to the more 

 romantic pearl-fishery and must almost certainly have 

 been treated in a similar manner, both fisheries being 

 considered everywhere in India from immemorial times 

 as prerogatives of the sovereign. About 1524, the Portu- 

 guese seized the Tinnevelly pearl-fishery, stationing a 

 factor and guard boats on this coast — the Pescaria or 

 fishery coast as it soon became termed. In 1563, Garcia 

 da Orta speaks of the trade with Bengal having declined 

 owing to the unrest caused by Muhammadan invaders 

 in that country, but in 1644, Boccaro in a detailed report 

 upon the Portuguese ports and settlements in India 

 records that a large quantity of chanks fished off Tuti- 

 corin were exported to Bengal " where the blacks make 

 of them bracelets for the arm." He adds rather 

 quaintly the name of another Tuticorin production — "the 

 biggest and best fowls in all these eastern parts. "f Exactly 

 how the Portuguese conducted this trade and what pro- 

 fits it yielded them are not known to me ; the Dutch, so 

 far as they were able, destroyed the Portuguese archives 

 in Tuticorin as well as in Ceylon, and we must await 

 further research among the records at Lisbon before we 

 can gain any further information. 



The Dutch, keen to distinguish the substance from 

 the shadow, paid great attention to the development of 

 the chank-fishery as distinguished from the pearl-fishery 

 whereof one of their most able local Governors, Baron \'an 

 Imhoff, once queried (1740) whether the latter ''is not 

 more glitter than gold as so many things are which 



* /''zV/,^ Yule's «' Ilobson-Jobson," article " Chank." 



f Fide Yule, " The Book of Ser Marco Polo," \'ol. II, p. 307, London, 1871. 



