20 
take. These fish-charmers are termed Adrazaman and 
their charm holds good for that day only, for at night 
they dissolve the charm so that the fishes can work 
misch‘efat their will. “Phese Abraiaman know also how 
t» charm beasts and birds and every living thing” (“ The 
Book of. Ser Marco Polo,” Yule, London, 1871). Marco 
Polo’s information on South Indian customs is so re- 
markably accurate in those points where we can check 
his statements that it becomes reasonably certain that 
the shark-charmers were Brahman priests (Abraiaman) 
during the days when the Parawas professed the Hindu 
religion. 
So long as catches are good, no people are less 
superstitious than these divers—their thoughts revolve 
around work and toddy alone; with poor results all 
manner of superstitions crop up—some one has laid 
a spell onthe weather out of spite or they have done 
some unchancy thing such as meeting a Brahman or a 
widow when leaving home. 
With the approach of the south-west monsoon in May 
a heavy swell and current from the south are frequently 
experienced on the chank beds. Not infrequently this 
current brings shoals of medusz and_ siphonophores 
into the Gulf, and these the divers dread even more 
than sharks. At times the water is alive with shoals 
of the frilly Ckhrysaora pulsating their way along 
or with myriads of the beautiful pur ple- blue floats of the 
Portuguese man-o’-war (Physatia), and when this hap- 
pens, good-bye may be said to any further fishing. 
But the chief difficulty experienced in the successful 
prosecution of a chank fishery arises when a pearl fishery 
takes place the same season. The divers can think of 
nothing else, and live for weeks beforehand a happy 
careless idle life on money borrowed in anticipation of the 
big gains to be had, honestly or otherwise, when the 
pearl harvest begins. Persuasion is vain under such 
circumstances and when the pearl fishery begins, the 
chank one has to be closed. Whether their gains be 
great or not, the divers at the end of a pearl fishery come 
home tired out and in no condition to resume the hard 
labour of chank fishing. The philosophic attitude is to 
view these interruptions as useful intervals when the 
chani population may raise up seed to themselves in 
