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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 tor 

 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 makino- them fit vessels where- 

 with to offer libations to their o-ods. 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 Thibet, cut off from all 

 knowledge of the sea, esteem pearls and red coral, 

 tortoise-shell and amber, amono- 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 1 66. And when 

 the extreme rarity of a reversed or left-handed chank 

 found its way perhaps once in several centuries to the 

 primitive trading centres of the people of Hindustan — 

 to the people of the inland middle land, — can we wonder 

 at the enormous value they set upon it and the mystic 

 powers they endowed it with ? 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 sisrnal throuohout the aq-es 

 in India, and this custom has lasted almost to the 

 present day. Ancient Tamil and Rajput poems de- 

 scriptive 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 tliey led their forces to the 

 assault; even until the beginning of last century Marathi 

 and Pindari chiefs called their followers together and 



