no 



Lissus, a section of the Lolo tribe, mountaineers 

 living in the upper valley of the Mekong in Yun- 

 nan, employing chank shell discs to ornament their 

 Chinese caps. It may be that these Lissus and 

 cognate tribes represent those chank jewel wearers 

 whom Tavernier refers to as belonging to the kingdom 

 of Siam. In this latter country at the present day I 

 know of no utilization of chanks in personal adornment. 

 The chank is one of the eight lucky signs recognized 

 by Buddhists of the Northern cult and as such is con- 

 stantly reproduced in Buddhist ornamentation in Thibet 

 and Bhutan.* It may therefore be inferred that the use 

 of it in personal adornment has alike reason ; whether in 

 the form of a bangle, a cap or a hair ornament, a necklace 

 or a breast disc, it is employed as a talisman to ensure 

 good fortune, and possibly even as an amulet against 

 the evil eye, as is the chank shell placed on the forehead 

 of draft bulls in Southern India. 



(2) The Tribes and Castes which zvear Chank Bangles 



in the South of India. 



In the Madras Presidency and the associated native 

 states, the castes whose women systematically wear 

 chank bangles are few and if we except the wandering;- 

 tribes of the Lambadis (or Brinjaris), Koravars and 

 Kurivikkarans, the custom appears confined to a sub- 

 division of each caste or tribe. Whether it had a 

 totemistic orioin and siornificance as it still has amone 

 non-Hinduised tribes in Bengal, Behar and Chota 

 Nagpur is not at present clear. If it had, the original 

 tribal sept, usually exogamous, has become changed to 

 a caste sub-division, invariably endogamous. And 

 whereas among the septs of those animistic tribes in 

 Northern India which are named after the chank this 

 shell is taboo with them, it forms the characteristic 

 ornament of the women of the caste sub-divisions named 

 after it, in Southern India. 



Only in the Kongu country, which coincides roughly 

 with the present inland districts of Coimbatore arid 

 Salem, does the custom continue to flourish at all 

 strongly. Coimbatore is the great centre of the custom 



* J. Claude White, loc. cil., p. 46. 



