65 
who found in the quartzite and trap rocks of the district 
more suitable material for their weapons and tools than 
the men to the southward where intractable gneiss 
constitutes all the rocky outcrops: Certainly in prehis- 
toric times, Bellary, Kurnul and Cuddapah were more 
thickly populated than the country to the south if we may 
judge from the evidence of the number of stone imple- 
ments found respectively in these two sections of India. 
The neolithic remains of these Deccan craftsmen show 
their makers to have been comparatively highly-skilled 
workers and with the discovery of the use of iron, he- 
matite ore being abundant in Bellary, the men of this 
district may reasonably be supposed to have developed 
special skill in the working of the new material into tools 
and in the manufacture of many articles, ornamental as 
wellas useful, with the aid of these improved tools. Add 
to this the natural conservatism of tribes isolated from 
the coast by hill ranges—the customs and manners of 
the Deccan tribes have been less changed by contact 
and intermixture with surrounding races than the majo- 
rity of the tribes or races living in the coastal plains. 
To these inland people the wonder of the great shell 
honoured by their gods would appeal vividly ; the 
mystery to them of its origin would confer added import- 
ance and, as we find the wild hill tribes of Thibet, Assam 
and Bhutan do at the present day, they would end by 
endowing ornaments made from it with mysterious powers 
of ensuring well-being and good luck, even as the 
Buddhist cartmen of Ceylon and their Hindu brethren 
throughout the Southern Carnatic adorn their bulls with 
a chank shell as an amulet against the evil eye. 
Chank shells for the Deccan bangle workshops may 
probably have come from the Tanjore coast, this being 
the nearest source of supply. The Tanjore fishery 
appears to have been fairly lucrative down to 1826 when 
economic changes caused a collapse of the industry. 
Tirumalavasal at the mouth of one of the northern bran- 
ches of the Kaveri is the centre of the chank fishery on 
this part of the coast and is not far from Kaveri-pattanam, 
once the chief port of the Chola kingdom and in the 
height of its prosperity in the early centuries of the 
Christian era. From Kaveri-pattanam to the inland 
districts of Kurnul and Bellary the transit of goods would 
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