74 
Janmiashtam? festivals in honour of Krishna, kept by all 
Bengali Vaishnavas. Sankharis burn their dead, mourn 
for thirty days, and perform s7@ddh in the orthodox 
fashion. 
In point of social standing the Sankharis rank with 
the Navasakha, and Brahmans will take water and 
certain kinds of sweetmeats from their hands. Their 
own rules regarding diet are the same as those of the 
highest pave of Eee: Many of them indeed are 
vegetarians, and abstain even from fish. Taken as a 
whole, the caste have been singularly constant to their 
hereditary occupation—a fact which is due partly to the 
smallness of their number, and partly to the steady 
demand for the articles w hich they produce. .. . Of 
late years, however, a certain proportion of the Sankharis 
have become traders, writers, timber and cloth mer- 
chants, and claim on that account to be superior in social 
rank to those who manufacture shell bracelets.” 
Dacca became the manufacturing centre of the chank- 
bangle trade in modern times chiefly owing to its geo- 
graphical situation at the present-day centre of bangle- 
wearing. To-day the wearing of chank bangles is 
V irtually confined to Lower Bengal and to the hill tribes 
to the north and east of Eastern Bengal. The custom 
ranges from the home of the Santals in the west of 
Bengal to Assam and Manipur on the east, from the 
Sunderbands in the south to the Himalayas and_ the 
Thibetan plateau on the north. From Dacca the 
Brahmaputra and its branches enable the peddlers of 
bangles to penetrate to the trading posts of the wild 
Naga, Bhutea, and Khasi tribes w hile the river network 
of the Ganges delta gives cheap transit to the westward. 
The importance conferred upon Dacca by the Emperor 
Jehangir when he made it, in the seventeenth century, 
the capital of Bengal was a contributing factor, the 
importance whereof we can judge by the strensth of the 
tendency, apparent at the present time, of the centre 
of the manufacturing section of the industry to shift 
to Calcutta in the wake of the import trade now concen- 
trated wholly at the latter port. 
As a consequence of the centralizing influence which 
from reasons of economy tends to create factories at or 
near the port of import, Calcutta now ranks next to Dacca 
