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when the Aryan invaders were fighting their way into 
the Punjab against wild and semi-savage tribes, in 
appearance andl customs probably much like the Sones 
50 years ago, the men of the south were then or shortly 
later engaged i in commercial relations with Babylon and 
the coastal districts of the Persian Gulf and Red Sea 
and partly through the stimulation received from this 
intercourse with these seats of ancient civilization and 
partly from indigenous effort, these southern Dravidians 
were evolving a language unsurpassed for its richness 
and flexibility and its power to express with perfect 
felicity the highest flights of imagination which poets 
and philosophers can See together with a material 
civilization of no mean order. It is to these coastal 
Dravidians settled in the prosperous sea-ports situated 
on the western shore of the Gulf of Mannar or to men of 
the same race living on the Kathiawar coast that the 
first use of the chank must be traced. Both localities 
are the seats of pearl fisheries and the centres whence 
much oversea traffic flowed coastwise to Semitic lands 
and to Egypt. The chank and the pearl-oyster are 
usually associated in Indian waters, the chank on the 
sandy stretches interspersed with the rocky patches 
which form the habitat of the pearl-oyster ; pearl fishers 
often bring chanks ashore and thus the beauty of their 
snowy white porcelain-like massive shells would eariy 
become familiar to the merchants gathered from many 
lands to purchase pearls. But this accounts in no way 
for their employment as a religious symbol. 
The earliest notices of the use of the chank are 
entirely of a secular nature and this fact and the context 
of these earliest references can be made, I believe, to 
furnish the required key. ‘These first notices occur in 
the two great Indian epics, the Ramayana and the 
Mahabharata. In these we get frequent reference to 
the employment of the chia asa martial trumpet by 
the great warriors whose more or lessmythical exploits are 
recounted. Particularly is this the case in the Maha- 
bharata, where inthe Bhagavat-Gita we find the heroes 
heartening their forces to the fight with loud blasts on 
their battle-conchs. Each hero has his famous conch 
distinguished by some high-sounding name, just as the 
famous swords of European legendary heroes were 
