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him, fully decorated, he laughed and said that she was 
not as charming as she might be.» On this, she prayed 
that Siva would help her to become so. From his braid 
of hair Siva created a being who descended on the earth, 
bearing a number of bangles and turmeric paste, with 
which Parvati adorned herself. Siva, being greatly 
pleased with her appearance, told her to look at herself 
in alooking-glass. The being who brought the bangles, 
is believed to have been the ancestor of the Gazula 
Balijas.” 
The latter sub-division of the Balijas peddle glass 
bangles only at the present day, but it is reasonable to 
suppose that before the discovery of glass, their stock 
in trade consisted instead of chank- bangles. It is 
indeed probable that the introduction of ‘olass dealt a 
heavy blow to the employment of the chank-shell in 
feminine adornment in certain districts, particularly for 
instance in those where, as in Vizagapatam, glass 
factories being established, glass bangles were put on 
sale at a fraction of the cost of comparatively expensive 
chank ones, which require the expenditure of much time 
and labour to render them attractive. 
Another legend, prevalent among the Sangukatti 
Idaiyans, the great pastoral or shepherd caste of Tamil 
India, narrates that when Krishna desired to marry 
Rukmani, her family insisted on marrying her to 
Sishupalen. When the wedding was about to take 
place, Krishna carried off Rukmani and placed a bangle 
made of chank-shell on her wrist (Thurston, II, p. 354). 
These particular idaiyans belong to one of the sections 
of this caste which to-day require their married women 
to wear these bangles—now a very rare custom in 
South India. 
Indian sources give the barest indications of the 
traffic in: chank-shells that must have been brisk for 
3,000 years or more between the fisheries in the Gulf of 
Mannar and on the Kathiawar coast and the inland 
nations of the Deccan and Hindustan. In another 
section—that dealing with the chank-bangle industry, 
oroofs are given from archeological sources and from 
ancient Tamil writings of the great antiquity of this 
trade and industry. Apart from this evidence we have 
nothing of importance till we come to the sixth century 
