107 



finds detailed elsewhere in these pages, point to the use 

 of chank bangles as having had a purely Dravidian 

 origin and as having been a custom prevalent and solidly 

 established among at least certain sections of the race 

 throughout India anterior to the advent of the Aryan 

 invaders and the rise of the Brahmanic faith. The cult 

 of the chank would therefore appear to be one adopted 

 (and modified) by the Brahmans from the religious beliefs 

 which they found indigenous to India. 



Finally, in the hill tracts of Chittagong, we find the 

 women of the Maghs, a race of Indo-Mongolian extrac- 

 tion and Buddhists by religion, using very broad 

 unornamented sections of chank shells as bracelets in 

 similar manner as we shall next see is the habit in 

 Thibet and Bhutan, inhabited by other Mongolian races. 

 To supply the needs of the Maghs, bangle cutters are 

 established in Chittagong ; these work-people are chiefly 

 Muhammadans and the work they do is of the roughest 

 and crudest description in conformity with the undeve- 

 loped artistic taste of their customers who appear to 

 wear these bracelets rather as amulets than as ornaments. 

 Broad arm ornaments of similar simple form are used by 

 the Papuans and by the wild inhabitants of several 

 groups of the Melanesian islands ; sometimes round the 

 wrist, sometimes on the upper arm above the elbow. I 

 do not know however, whether the shell employed in 

 these instances be Turbinella or not. Among these 

 island tribes it is the men who wear these ornaments. 



Outside of Bengal and Assam the only considerable 

 demand for chank bracelets comes from Thibet and 

 Bhutan. The trade is one of long standing" for Taver- 

 nier in 1666 found Bhutanese merchants taking home 

 from Pabna and Dacca bracelets sawn from " sea-shells 

 as large as an egg." He also states that 2,000 men 

 were occupied in these two places in making tortoise 

 shell and sea-shell bracelets and " all that is produced 

 by them is exported* to the kingdoms of Bhutan, 

 Assam, Siam and other countries to the north and east 

 of the territories of the great Moghul " (/oc. cit., p. 267). 

 Now " Bhot " happens to be the native name for 

 the southern section of Thibet inhabited by a settled 



* Evidently a lapsus calami as the custom of wearing chank bangles was even 

 more prevalent in Tavernier's day among Bengali women than it is to-day, vide 

 Orta, loc. cit. 



