58 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOOY— PART II 



bangles on the right wrist during their husband's hfe. They are assumed, however, before 

 marriage, and the putting on of the chank bracelet is not a part of the marriage 

 ceremonies. On the death of the husband the widow discards this with her other orna- 

 ments, but is permitted to resume them after a decent interval of mourning — three 

 months according to my informant. It is to be noted that the wife's ornaments are not 

 broken or destroyed at the husband's death as is the custom among the chank-wearing 

 Hinduised plains-people. At the woman's own death they are put to burn with her body 

 on the funeral pyre. The Kotas can adduce no special reason for the wearing of these 

 bracelets, except that their god Bhagawani long ago ordered that their women should 

 do so. 



From the foregoing it is seen tliat chank-bangle wearing is confined to tlie Tamil 

 districts in the south of the Madras Presidency. It is unknown in the central and 

 northern sections — the Madras Deccan and the coastal Telugu districts — except in respect 

 of the wandering Lambadis ; the Collector of Kurnul informs me that chank -bangles 

 for sale to the local representatives of this tribe are occasionally brought from the 

 Eaichur side (Hyderabad State), a significant fact as the Raichur Doab is one of the 

 localities where Mr. Bruce-Foote found numerous fragments of chank factory waste, 

 indicative of tlie former existence of a bangle-making industry in the vicinity of his 

 discoveries. Where these modern Raichur bangles come from I do not know, but I 

 should expect them to be of Bengal manufacture. 



(1) The Antiquity of the Chank-Bangle Industry, 

 (a) in the tinnevelly' district. 



Reference to ancient Tamil classics furnishes evidence scanty but conclusive of the 

 existence of an important chank-cutting industry in the ancient Pandyan kingdom 

 in the early centuries of the Christian era. Similar evidence is also extant of a wide- 

 spread use of carved and ornamented chank bangles in former days by the women 

 of the Pandyan country which may be considered as roughly co-extensive with the 

 modern districts of Tinnevelly, Madura, and Ramnad, forming the eastern section of the 

 extreme south of the Madras Presidency. 



Among the more important references which prove the ancient importance of this 

 industry on the Indian shore of the Gulf of Mannar, is one contained in the 

 " MaduraikkancM," a Tamil poem which incidentally describes the ancient city of 

 Korkai, once the sub-capital of the Pandyan kingdom and the great emporium familiar to 

 Greek and Egyptian sailors and traders and described by the geographers of the 1st and 

 2nd centuries A.D. under the name of Kolkhoi. From the purity of the Tamil employed 



