72 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY— PART II 



Buddhist cai'tmen of Ceylon and their Hindu brethren throughout the Southern Carnatic 

 adorn their bulls with a chank shell as an amulet against the evil eye. 



Chank shells for the Deccan bangle workshops may probably have come from the 

 Tanjore coast, this being the nearest source of supply. The Tanjore fishery appears 

 to have been fairly lucrative down to 1826 when economic changes caused a collapse 

 of the industry. Tirumalavasal at the mouth of one of the northern branches of the 

 Kaveri is the centre of the chank-fishery on this part of the coast and is not far from 

 Kaveri-pattanam, once the chief port of the Chola kingdom and in the height of its 

 prosperity in the early centuries of the Christian era. From Kaveri-pattanam to the 

 inland districts of Kurnul and Bellary the transit of goods would be comparatively 

 easy and safe ; coasters would be used to the mouth of the Kistna, 350 miles to the north, 

 whence river craft would carry the goods direct to their destination, 200 miles inland. 

 Or it may be that the shells required in the industry were fished further south, for we have 

 mention by Cosmas Indico-Pleustes in the sixth century {circa 545) of a place called 

 Marallo on the continent adjoining Ceylon, where a shell called by him acoxXiou? 

 (Kochlious) 1 was prodv;ced in quantity, and Yule in " Cathay and the Way Thither " 

 (London, 1866), Vol. I, ]). 81, suggests that this Marallo is the same word as Marawa, 

 the name of the ruling caste in the district of Ramnad ; if this be accepted, the reference 

 would indicate the chank-fishery carried on off the coast of the Marawar country and now 

 operated by lessees of the Raja of Rfimnad. Again, a chank fishery, the most productive 

 in the world, exists to-day in the shallow seas in the neighbourhood of Jaftna in Ceylon 

 and direct communication by means of large native craft having existed from time 

 immemorial between the north of Ceylon and the port of Masulipatam, for centuries 

 the eastern sea-gate of the Deccan, this fishery may have been drawn upon also to 

 supply the needs of the latter locality. 



The cause of the cessation of the chank industry in the Deccan, Gujarat, and 

 Kathiawar is to be looked for in the constant strife which kept India in a welter of blood 

 through the six centuries of Miihammadan dominance in the land. From the days of 

 Mahmoud of Ghazni, the northern and central portions of India in particular were 

 harried by successive waves of fanatic invaders sweeping down through the north-west 

 passes, and from the thirteenth century onwards to the end of the seventeenth the 

 story of India is that of an unceasing contest between Muhammadan and Hindu for power 

 on the part of the former and for existence and religion on that of the latter. Well 

 may certain old Hindu customs have disappeared ; during the worst periods when the 

 intolerance of the conquerors was at its height, their influence was often exerted towards 

 the suppression of Hindu customs and this, combined with the dislocation of trade 

 consequent upon the general insecurity of the country and the frequent recurrence 

 of raids and widespread warfare, may be considered the main reason for the decay of 



1 In the Norman-French dialect still spoken in Jersey and the other Channel islands, the common 

 whelk (Bicccinum), which is the European representative of the Eastern chank, is known as coqueluche ! 



