Use of Cowry-shells for Currency, Amulets, etc. 169 
distributed over India, not only’ over the plains of the 
north and north-west, but also along the east coast and 
even to the slopes of the Himalayas and to the Deccan 
plateau. 
Besides their use as money in India the same shells 
are employed to ornament the trappings of horses and 
elephants, as previously remarked. They are also strung 
like beads or sewed like buttons on the dresses of the 
Brinjari women of Nagpur province."” According to Dr. 
Curt Boeck, they are traded in Indian bazaars, especially 
for bordering the cloth-masks of shamans.” In many 
Indian places, e.g., Gahsi, Punjab, one still finds C. anudlus 
worn by the native women. The Todas of the Nilgirt 
Hills, S. India, wear a C. moneta on a heavy: silver collar 
(Schneider, of. cz¢., p. 117). According to Thurston, this 
same species is also worn by Toda women on their thread 
and silver armlets and necklets. As in Africa, cowries 
are associated with Toda death ceremonies. When a 
person dies, various objects such as rice, honey, and other 
food-stuffs, together with cowries, “ with which to purchase 
food in the celestial bazar,’ are burned with him. Like 
the Todas, the Kotas of the Nilgiris occasionally make use 
of cowries ; they are sometimes seen on the necklets of 
the women ; and at funeral ceremonies when the skulls of 
the deceased are brought to the funeral ground to be burnt, 
a pole, twenty feet long, decorated with cowries, is also 
burned in the case ofa male. The Nilgiri Irula women, too, 
sometimes have bead necklets with cowry-shells pendent.” 
Se TSYEI NIKE SI RY yh, (lay jd UAUile 
15 Stearns, ‘‘Ethno-conchology— A Study of Primitive Money,” 
Report U. S. Nat. Afus., 1887, p. 302. 
Eo SS SChnerdeimnopmcae Ope ILO 7 
137 KE. Thurston, Wadras Government Aluseum, Bulletin No. 4, 1896, 
pp. 154, 174 (Todas), 192, 198 (Kotas) ; vol. ii., No. 1., 1897, pp. I4and 16, 
pl. v. (Irulas). 
