152 
hole is bored or broken in the back and the rope passed 
through this and out at the mouth of the shell. The 
surface is generally roughly engraved in a coarse spiral 
or scroll pattern. 
Used probably for a similar purpose may have been 
the handsomely engraved large chank shell obtained in 
an oblong sar cophag us of red pottery found in the 
prehistoric burial site at Perambair in the south of 
Chingleput district. The size is much greater than any 
[ have ever seen used to decorate ordinary cattle ; no 
ordinary person owned it we may be cer tain —probably 
it decorated the forehead of a bull or possibly of an 
elephant belonging to a man of great local importance. 
From the same tombs came three other handsomely 
decorated chank ornaments, two of which were probably 
ornaments for the hair (see p. 162 for further particulars). 
Nowhere have I ever seen more than a single shell 
hung round the neck of any animal, but that in ancient 
times a different habit at least occasionally prevailed is 
possible, to judge from the string of 16 small chank 
shells from a barrow near Guntakal junction in the 
Anantapur district, now to be seen in Madras Museum. 
All these shells have had the apices broken in and partly 
rubbed down and each has the thickest part of the body 
perforated from side to side so permitting them to be 
strung together. They appear to have formed a 
necklace but whether t they were suspended round the 
neck of a bull or may be hung like a chain of office round 
the neck of some person of importance we have no means 
of determining. 
In Malabar the chank is little in evidence, but Logan 
(Malabar Manual, 1887, vol. I, p. 175) records a belief 
there prevalent that a cow will stop giving milk unless a 
shell (not necessarily a chank) is tied conspicuously about 
her horns and at Tanur, Malabar, I have seen valuable 
sheep with shells other than chanks hung round the neck. 
Further north, in the coast villages of South Canara, 
south of Mangalore, rings made from Strombus shells 
but known locally as chank rings are employed by 
parents to avert the evil eye from “their young children. 
At Kasargod, Bekal and the adjacent villages I have 
found the custom especially common among ‘the Muku- 
vans, a caste of immigrant Malayali fishermen. Children 
