At 
Pak bi tre GHANK BANGLEANDUSTRY— 
iS sANTIOULLY AND PRESSE Na 
CONDITION. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
At the present day the general use of bangles made 
from sections sawn from the shell of the sacred Indian 
chank or conch (7 urdbinella pyrum, Linn.) is confined to the 
people of Bengal and of certain of the adjacent provinces. 
In India proper the custom does not appear to range 
further west than Behar, nor further south than Orissa. 
On the north and east the limits are less determinate as 
there the people are wilder and the means of obtaining 
articles of ornament difficult and uncertain. We may 
say however that throughout Thibet from Ladakh in 
Kashmiri Thibet to the Kham country in the east, the 
women, whenever their means and opportunities permit, 
wear heavy and coarsely made bangles manufactured 
from this shell. In Assam and Bhutan the same custom 
is observable, but owing to the diversity in origin and 
to the differences in the manners of the tribes in this 
region, the custom is sporadic; in one valley all the 
women may wear these ornaments ; in the next valley or 
in the adjacent hill villages none may be seen. 
The women of Bengali race are the main observers 
of this practice and were the fashion of wearing chank 
bangles to become obsolete among them, the industry 
would languish and probably soon die out. It is they 
alone who provide a steady market for richly carved and 
highly polished chank bangles; their humble sisters 
among the Santals, Kochhi, Thibetans, and Maghs are 
satished with plain or rudely carved bangles without 
polish—they prefer strength and quantity to ornamental 
designs and fine finish. 
The industry of bangle cutting, as will be detailed in 
the following paper, is located at the present day almost 
entirely in Bengal. Dacca is the chief centre of the 
manufacturing trade, Calcutta the emporium where the 
raw material is gathered from the different chank fisheries 
in the south of India and in Ceylon and whence the 
shells are distributed to Dacca and numerous local 
centres scattered throughout the length and breadth of 
Bengal. 
