66 



be comparatively easy and safe ; coasters would be used 

 to the mouth of the Kistna, 350 miles to the north, 

 whence river craft would carry the goods direct to their 

 destination, 200 miles inland. Or it may be that the 

 shells required in the industry were fished further south, 

 for we have mention by Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 

 sixth century (circa 545) of a place called Marallo on the 

 continent adjoining- Ceylon, where a shell called by him 

 Kox^tovs (Kochlious)*^' was produced in quantity, and 

 Yule in " Cathay and the Way Thither " (London, 1866), 

 Vol. I., p. 81, suggests that this Marallo is the same word 

 as Marawa, the name of the ruling caste in the district 

 of Ramnad ; if this be accepted, the reference would 

 indicate the chank fishery carried on off the coast of the 

 Marawar country and now operated by lessees of the Raja 

 of Ramnad. Again, a chank fishery, the most productive 

 in the world, exists to-day in the shallow seas in the 

 neighbourhood of Jaffna in Ceylon and direct communi- 

 cation by means of large native era*!: having existed from 

 time immemorial between the north of Ceylon and the 

 port of Masulipatam, for centuries the eastern sea-gate 

 of the Deccan, this fishery may have been drawn upon 

 also to supply the needs of the latter locality. 



The cause of the cessation of the chank industry in 

 the Deccan, Gujarat, and Kathiawar is to be looked for 

 in the constant strife which kept India in a welter ol blood 

 through the six centuries of Muhammadan dominance in 

 the land. From the davs of Mahmoud of Ghazni, the 

 northern and central portions of India in particular were 

 harried by successive waves of fanatic invaders sweeping 

 down through the north-west passes, and from the 

 thirteenth century onwards to the end of the seventeenth 

 the storv of India is that of an unceasinof contest between 

 Muhammadan and Hindu for power on the part of the 

 former and for existence and religion on that of the 

 latter. Well may certain old Hindu customs have dis- 

 appeared ; during the worst periods when the intolerance 

 of the conquerors was at its height, their influence was 

 often exerted towards the suppression of Hindu customs 

 and this, combined with the dislocation of trade conse- 



* In the Norman-French dialect still spoken in Jersey and the other Channel 

 islands, the common whelk {Biiccimim), which is the European representative of 

 the Eastern chank, is known as coqueluche ! 



