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Dravidians who first employed the chank as a battle- 
conch and that this custom was adopted by the Aryan 
invaders as blood connections began to be formed in 
increasing numbers with the Dravidian nobility of the 
land and when certain of the Dravidian gods were 
admitted to the Aryan pantheon. The Aryans would 
be particularly eager to acquire fine conchs both for 
use and ornament; their deep-voiced boom would prove 
their utility as battle-trumpets to enspirit and to give 
signals, while their rare white beauty would appeal to 
the religious sense as making them fit vessels where- 
with to offer libations to their gods. To an inland 
people the beautiful products of the sea assume a double 
value from their strangeness and rarity and mysterious 
origin, To-day the people of Thibet, cut off from all 
knowledge of the sea, esteem pearls and red coral, 
tortoise-shell and amber, among the greatest treasures 
within their knowledge. The wild Nagas of the Assam 
hills equally prized the snow-white chank shell itself till 
some 3° Yeats ago, using it as part of their accepted 
currency at the rates enumerated on page 166. And when 
the extreme rarity of a’reversed or left-handed chank 
found its way perhaps once in several centuries to the 
primitive trading centres of the people of Hindustan— 
to the people of the inland middle land,—-can we wonder 
at the enormous value they set upon it and the mystic 
powers they endowed it with? As the Aryan hosts 
advanced into India they must have captured numbers 
of battle conchs from time to time and there can be no 
doubt they early adopted them in place of their own 
less sonorous cow-horns. Indeed the boom of the 
conch has been the battle signal throughout. the ages 
iielidia, “and this. Custom has lasted almost to the 
present day. Ancient Tamil and Rajput poems de- 
scriptive of battles and raids continually refer to the 
clamour of the conchs blown as the opposing parties 
approached each other; the etiquette of old Indian 
cnivalry required a prelude of challenging conca-biowing 
before the serious fight was begun; the long-drawn 
hollow sonorous note of the chank often greeted early 
British commanders as they led their forces to the 
assault; even until the beginning of last century Marathi 
and Pindari chiefs called their followers together and 
