Ii8 



when the Aryan invaders were fighting their way into 

 the Punjab against wild and semi-savage tribes, in 

 appearance and customs probably much like the Santals 

 50 years ago, the men of the south were then or shortly 

 later engaged in commercial relations with Babylon and 

 the coastal districts of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea 

 and partly through the stimulation received from this 

 intercourse with these seats of ancient civilization and 

 partly from indigenous effort, these southern Dravidians 

 were evolving a language unsurpassed for its richness 

 and fiexibility and its power to express with perfect 

 felicity the highest fiights of imagination which poets 

 and philosophers can reach, together with a material 

 civilization of no mean order. It is to these coastal 

 Dravidians settled in the prosperous sea-ports situated 

 on the western shore of the Gulf of Mannar or to men of 

 the same race living on the Kathiawar coast that the 

 first use of the chank must be traced. Both localities 

 are the seats of pearl fisheries and the centres whence 

 much oversea traffic flowed coastwise to Semitic lands 

 and to Egypt. The chank and the pearl-oyster are 

 usually associated in Indian waters, the chank on the 

 sandy stretches interspersed with the rocky patches 

 which form the habitat of the pearl-oyster ; pearl fishers 

 often bring chanks ashore and thus the beauty of their 

 snowy white porcelain-like massive shells would early 

 become familiar to the merchants gathered from many 

 lands to purchase pearls. But this accounts in no way 

 for their employment as a religious symbol. 



The earliest notices of the use of the chank are 

 entirely of a secular nature and this fact and the context 

 of these earliest references can be made, I believe, to 

 furnish the required key. These first notices occur in 

 the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the 

 Mahabharata. In these we get frequent reference to 

 the employment of the chank as a martial trumpet by 

 'the great warriors whose more or lessmythical exploits are 

 recounted. Particularly is this the case in the Maha- 

 bharata, where in the Bhagavat-Gita we find the heroes 

 heartening their forces to the fight with loud blasts on 

 their battle-conchs. Each hero has his famous conch 

 distinguished by some high-sounding name, just as the 

 famous swords of European legendary heroes were 



