42 
The following notes are intended to show that in 
ancient days the custom of wearing these peculiar orna- 
ments was widely spread throughout the greater part of 
India and that bangle-workshops, equally widely scat- 
tered, stretched from Tinnevelly in the extreme south 
to Kathiawar and Gujarat in the north-west, through a 
long chain of factories located in the Deccan. The 
general condition of the industry as it exists at the present 
day in Bengal will be described together with such notes 
as I have been able to gather with regard to the various 
tribes and castes whose women now wear bangles made 
from the chank shell. 
(1) THE ANTIQUITY OF THE INDUSTRY. 
(a) IN THE TINNEVELLY DisTRICT. 
Reference to ancient Tamil classics furnishes evidence 
scanty but conclusive of the existence of an important 
chank-cutting industry in the ancient Pandyan kingdom 
in the early centuries of the Christian era. Similar 
evidence is also extant of a widespread use of carved and 
ornamented chank bangles in former days by the women 
of the Pandyan country which may be considered as 
roughly co-extensive with the modern districts of Tinne- 
velly, Madura, and Ramnad, forming the eastern section 
of the extreme south of the Madras Presidency. 
Among the more important references which prove 
the ancient importance of this industry on the Indian 
shore of the Gulf of Mannar, is one contained in the 
‘“‘ Maduratkkancht,” a Tamil poem which incidentally 
describes the ancient city of Korkai, once the sub- 
capital of the Pandyan kingdom and the great emporium 
familiar to Greek and Egyptian sailors and traders and 
described by the geographers of the rst and 2nd 
centuries A.D. under the name of Kolkhoi. From the 
purity of the Tamil employed in this poem and the 
similarity of the names of the towns, ports and goods 
mentioned incidentally with those employed by Ptolemy 
and the author of the ‘‘ Periplus of the Erythrzean Sea,” 
we may date it as approximately contemporaneous with 
the writings of these authors and certainly not later than 
the 2nd or 3rd century A.D. 
In one passage (LL. 140-144) the Parawas are 
described as men who dived for pearl oysters and for 
