70 



concludino' that the Patna of Tavernier's " Travels " is an 

 editor's misrenderino- of the name of the less well-known 

 town of Pabna. 



At the present day almost all the shells of the common 

 chank or conch used in ihe bracelet-making industry are 

 imported into Calcutta in the first instance. A few go 

 occasionally to Chittagong, where bracelet-cutting is car- 

 ried on by Muhammadan workmen for supply to the 

 neighbouring hill tribes. With this exception Calcutta 

 is the sole emporium for chank shells. 



The importers and wholesale merchants in Calcutta 

 are chieHy men closely identified with the Dacca shell- 

 cutters ; and are either Dacca born or belong to Dacca 

 families who have settled in Calcutta for trade reasons. 

 Most of these chank importers are related to one 

 another, their families for venerations havino- followed a 

 similar vocation. They are indeed the representatives of 

 lines of hereditary middlemen. The majority have estab- 

 lishments in Dacca for the cutting of shells and the 

 manufacture of bangles, but their chief profits arise from 

 wholesale dealing. A few Muhammadans from the Tamil 

 coast (Labbais) are also concerned in the wholesale trade, 

 having been admitted thereto as their special local 

 knowledge is of much value to their Calcutta partners or 

 principals as the case may be ; these men act as local 

 experts and buying agents at the fishery centres in Ceylon 

 and South India. 



Under ordinary conditions the chief Calcutta import- 

 ers have a business agreement among themselves, a form 

 of co-partnery or syndicate b)' which the purchases are 

 pooled and divided on a definite agreed basis. By this 

 means they are usually able to maintain a monopoly of 

 the trade and to a large extent to dictate their own terms 

 both to the owners of the various chank fisheries and to 

 the trade buyers in the Bengal manufacturing towns. 



All the Bengal chank-cutters orginally were Hindus 

 and their descendants claim that they belonged exclusively 

 to a professional sub-division of the Vaisya caste ; at the 

 present time the Dacca workers all claim to be \'aisyas 

 and are known throuohout the Presidencv either as 

 Sankhari Vaisyas or simply as Sankharis, or, as the word 

 is corrupted in Eastern Bengal, Shakharis. According to 



