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utilize these discs. In many cases they are employed 

 as ornaments to decorate headdresses, and in some cases 

 (Thibet) they are even attached or hung from the hair 

 reminding one of the custom of the wandering Lambadi 

 (Brinjari) women who sometimes hang ornaments from 

 locks of hair in front of the ears. 



The Nagas of Assam, lately brought to prominent 

 notice through the good work they did as carriers during 

 the Abor punitive expedition (19 12), employ these discs 

 both to form necklaces and to decorate the handsome 

 plaited cane helmets worn by the men. These latter are 

 conical in shape, about a foot high, and covered with a 

 layer of fur and hair, black or red in colour. When 

 decorated with chank-shell discs, these are arranged as 

 coronals, adding most effectively to the general design 

 (W. Crooke, " Natives of Northern India," p. 47, 

 London, 1907). As the Nagas are known to have set 

 much greater store by the chank in former times, say 

 prior to the middle of the nineteenth century, it is 

 probable that then the use of chank discs as items 

 of ornament was much more general amono- this race than 

 it is now. Still the custom is quite common, for Mr. 

 Stanley Kemp, who accompanied the Abor expedition as 

 naturalist, informs me that the Naga coolies employed as 

 carriers frequently wore necklaces formed of square 

 concave portions of chank-shell with a large cornelian 

 set en cabochon in the centre. Sometimes long cylin- 

 drical beads made from chank shell, tapered slightly at 

 either end, were used instead and cornelian beads were 

 often seen in conjunction. 



In the middle of last century Major John Butler 

 mentions (" Travels and Adventures in the Province oi 

 Assam," p. 148, London, 1855) that at sixteen years of age 

 a Naga youth " puts on ivory armlets or else wooden or 

 red-coloured cane ones round his neck. He suspends 

 conch shells with a black thread " (round his neck) " puts 

 brass ornaments into his ears and wears the black kilt ; 

 and if a man has killed another in war he wears three or 

 four rows of cowries round the kilt." From a specimen of 

 chank-shell necklace from the Naga hills contained in the 

 ethnological collection of the Indian Museum, Calcutta, 

 it appears that the shells before being used were bisected 

 longitudinally, each half being hung as a pendant by one 



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