66 
be comparatively easy and safe; coasters would be used 
to the mouth of the Kistna, 350 miles to the north, 
whence river craft would carry the goods direct to their 
destination, 200 miles inland. Or it may be that the 
shells required i in the industry were fished further south, 
for. we have mention by Cosmas Indicopleustes in the 
sixth century (circa 545) of a place called Marallo on the 
continent adjoining Ceylon, where a shell called by him 
coxdous (Kochlious)* was produced in quantity, and 
Yule in “ Cathay. and the Way Thither” (London, 1866), 
Vol. [., p. 81, suggests that this Marallo is the same word 
as Marawa, the name of the ruling caste in the district 
of Ramnad; if this be accepted, the reference would 
indicate the chank fishery carried on off the coast of the 
Marawar country and now operated by lessees of the Raja 
of Ramnad. Again, a chank fishery, the most productive 
in the world, exists to-day in the shallow seas in the 
neighbourhood of Jaffna in Ceylon and direct communi- 
cation by means of large native cra‘t having existed from 
time immemorial between the north of Ceylon and the 
port of Masulipatam, for centuries the eastern sea-gate 
ofthe Deccan, this fishery may have been drawn upon 
also to supply the needs of the latter locality. 
The cause of the cessation of the chank industry in 
the Deccan, Gujarat, and Kathiawar is to be looked for 
in the constant strife which kept India in a welter of blood 
through the six centuries of Muhammadan dominance in 
the land. From the days of Mahmoud of Ghazni, the 
northern and central portions of India in particular were 
harried by successive waves of fanatic invaders sweeping 
down through the north-west passes, and from the 
thirteenth century onwards to the end of the seventeenth 
the story of India is that of an unceasing contest between 
Muhammadan and Hindu for power on the part of the 
former and for existence and religion on that of the 
latter. Well may certain old Hindu customs have dis- 
appeared ; during the worst periods when the intolerance 
of the conquerors was at its-height, their influence was 
often exerted towards the suppression of Hindu customs 
and this, combined with the dislocation of trade conse- 
* In the Norman-French dialect still spoken in Jersey and the other Channel 
islands, the common whelk (aecizum), which is the European representative of 
the Eastern chank, is known as coqueluche ! 
