107 
finds detailed elsewhere in these pages, point to the use 
of chank bangles as having had a purely Dravidian 
origin and as having been acustom prevalent and solidly 
established among at least certain sections of the race 
throughout India anterior to the advent of the Aryan 
invaders and the rise of the Brahmanic faith. The cult 
of the chank would therefore appear to be one adopted 
(and modified) by the Brahmans from the religious beliefs 
which they found indigenous to India. 
Finally, in the hill tracts of Chittagong, we find the 
women of the Maghs, a race of Indo-Mongolian extrac- 
tion and Buddhists by religion, using very broad 
unornamented sections of chank shells as bracelets in 
similar manner as we shall next see is the habit in 
Thibet and Bhutan, inhabited by other Mongolian races. 
To supply the needs of the Maghs, bangle cutters are 
established in Chittagong ; these work-people are chiefly 
Muhammadans and the work they do is of the roughest 
and crudest description in conformity with the undeve- 
loped artistic taste of their customers who appear to 
wear these bracelets rather as amulets than as ornaments. 
Broad arm ornaments of similar simple form are used by 
the Papuans and by the wild inhabitants of several 
groups of the Melanesian islands; sometimes round the 
wrist, sometimes on the upper arm above the elbow. I 
do not know however, whether the shell employed in 
these instances be Turbinella or not. Among these 
island tribes it is the men who wear these ornaments. 
Outside of Bengal and Assam the only considerable 
demand for chank bracelets comes from Thibet and 
Bhutan. The trade is one of long standing for Taver- 
nier in 1666 found Bhutanese merchants taking home 
from Pabna and Dacca bracelets sawn from ‘“ sea-shells 
as large as an egg.” He also states that 2,000 men 
were occupied in these two places in making tortoise 
shell and sea-shell bracelets and “all that is produced 
by them is exported* to the kingdoms of Bhutan, 
Assam, Siam and other countries to the north and east 
of the territories of the great Moghul” (Joc. czt., p. 267). 
Now “ Bhot” happens to be the native name for 
the southern section of Thibet inhabited by a settled 
* Evidently a lapsus calam7 as the custom of wearing chank bangles was even 
more prevalent in Tavernier’s day among Bengali women than it is to-day, wede 
Orta, Joc. cit. 
