1A 



Janinashtami festivals in honour of Krishna, kept by all 

 Bengali Vaishnavas. Sankharis burn their dead, mourn 

 for thirty days, and perform sraddh in the orthodox 

 fashion. 



In point of social standing the Sankharis rank with 

 the Navasakha, and Brahmans will take water and 

 certain kinds of sweetmeats from their hands. Their 

 own rules regarding diet are the same as those of the 

 highest ranks of Hindus. Many of them indeed are 

 veoetarians, and abstain e^•en from fish. Taken as a 

 whole, the caste have been singularly constant to their 

 hereditary occupation — a fact which is due partly to the 

 smallness of their number, and partly to the steady 

 demand for the articles which they produce. ... Of 

 late years, however, a certain proportion of the Sankharis 

 have become traders, writers, timber and cloth mer- 

 chants, and claim on that account to be superior in social 

 rank to those who manufacture shell bracelets." 



Dacca became the manufacturing centre of the c hank- 

 bangle trade in modern times chiefly owing to its geo- 

 graphical situation at the present-day centre of bangle- 

 wearing. To-day the wearmg of chank bangles is 

 virtually confined to Lower Bengal and to the hill tribes 

 to the north and east of Eastern Bengal. The custom 

 ranges from the home of the Santals in the west of 

 Bengal to Assam and Manipur on the east, from the 

 Sunderbands in the south to the Himalayas and the 

 Thibetan plateau on the north. From Dacca the 

 Brahmaputra and its branches enable the peddlers of 

 bangles to penetrate to the trading posts of the wild 

 Naga, Bhutea, and Khasi tribes while the river network 

 of the Ganges delta gives cheap transit to the westward. 

 The importance conferred upon Dacca by the Emperor 

 Jehangir when iie made it, in the seventeenth century, 

 the capital of Bengal was a contributing factor, the 

 importance whereof we can judge by the strength of the 

 tendency, apparent at the present time, of the centre 

 of the manufacturing section of the industry to shift 

 to Calcutta in the wake of the import trade now concen- 

 trated wholly at the latter port. 



As a consequence of the centralizing influence which 

 from reasons of economy tends to create factories at or 

 near the port of import, Calcutta now ranks next to Dacca 



