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performed by some of the better class Parawas, but the 
great majority, including naturally the whole of the 
poorer and the more ignorant sections of the community, 
continue to adhere strongly to the custom. The bangles 
are roughly fashioned and with the crudest of ornamen- 
tation; they are made by Muhammadans at Kilakarai, 
their chief settlement on the coast of the Gulf of 
Mannar. 
The evidence furnished by the Tamil classics of the 
existence of an extensive chank-bangle industry in the 
extreme south of India during the height of ancient 
Tamil civilization 1,200 to 2,000 years ago, has received 
unexpectedly conclusive corroboration within the present 
year (1912) through discoveries which I have made on 
the sites of the once famous Tamil cities of Korkai and 
Kayal (now Palayakayal). These cities are now repre- 
sented by mounds of rubbish adjacent to villages 
still bearing the appellation of their celebrated prede- 
cessors. The greatest find was at Korkai, which as 
already noted flourished from a date well antecedent to 
the Christian era down to some indeterminate date 
prior to 1000 A.D. when the accretion of silt at the 
mouth of the Tambraparni drove the inhabitants to 
build another city (IKayal) at the new mouth of the river. 
Here, on the landward outskirts of the village, I 
unearthed a fine series of chank workshop waste—-seven- 
teen fragments in all. The whole number were found 
lying on the surface of the ground ina place where old 
Pandyan coins have from time to time been dis- 
covered according to information gathered in the 
village. The fragments unearthed all bear distinct 
evidence of having been sawn by the same form of 
-instrument, a thin-bladed iron saw, and in the same 
manner as that employed in Bengal at the present day. 
Eight fragments represent the obliquely cut ‘ shoulder- 
piece,” six consists of the columella and part of the oral 
extremity of the shell and the remaining three are frag- 
ments of the lips—all show a sawn surface, the positive 
sign of treatment by skilled artisans. 
At Kayal or Palayakayal (i.e. old Kayal) as it is now 
termed, the daughter city of Korkai, which flourished in 
the days of Marco Polo and appears to have grown 
rich as Korkai gradually passed away as a sea-port 
