34 Shells as evidence of the Migrations. 
already stated in previous pages, chank-trumpets are 
employed in connection with harvest rites. 
In the above prayer, and in the harvest rites, are 
thus embodied the very elements which make up the 
moon-cult of the Aztecs. Associated with the chank we 
have (a), the God of the Moon, and (4), Varuna, the Hindu 
god of the waters and of the west quarter, who is 
worshipped as one of the guardian deities of the earth, 
and in times of drought and famine. He is represented 
in paintings as a white man seated on Makara, a mythical 
crocodile. This god recalls 77/a/oc, the Mexican Rain 
God, who is sometimes associated with the crocodile, and, 
as previously mentioned, is depicted as emerging from 
the conch-shell. (c), Prajapati, “ the father of all creatures,” 
a personification of the sun, is emblematical of creation 
and birth. The snail or conch-shell, as we have seen, 
was also associated with conception and birth by the 
Mexicans. 
The offerings made to the chank of the fruits of the 
earth; the harvest rites accompanied by conch-shell 
music ; and the use of shell-trumpets in Hindu temple 
worship, have their counterparts in Mexican manuscripts 
in the figure of the God of Flowers and Food Supplies 
being carried in procession preceded by a priest blowing 
a conch-shell trumpet, and in references to the blowing 
of conchs in the temples at midnight as a signal for the 
priests to arise and mortify themselves, to sing, and then 
to go in procession to the bath, 
In India both the ordinary and the rare and highly 
prized sinistral forms of the chank are employed in 
temple-worship, and it is not a little curious to find that 
in the Mexican pictures both forms are also shown, It is 
quite possible that here, as in India, the sinistral form 
may have had a special significance. 
