HORNELL— THE INDIAN CONCH 75 



upon this province being the only one in India where shell bangles are extensively used 

 by high and low among the female population. Even in Bengal itself shell-cutting 

 proper — the sawing of the shells into working sections — is restricted to a very few centres ; 

 this part of the work requires a great amount of skill such as can be acquired only after 

 a long and toilsome apprenticeship, begun at an early age ; shell-slicing calls for the 

 possession of a highly trained eye, perfect steadiness of hand and arm and an ironlike 

 capacity to sit for long hours in a position of great discomfort. As a consequence the 

 sawing of working sections is limited to a few centres and a good cutter is a valuable 

 asset to his employer. To retain a hold upon these men, employers willingly give large 

 advances in cash. 



The towns and villages where the working sections are fashioned into the bangle 

 patterns favoured locally are much more numerous than the sawing centres ; the bangle- 

 workers in the great majority of such places do not attempt to slice the shell itself ; 

 they depend upon the wholesale sawyers of Dacca and a few other great centres for their 

 working sections. Particularly is this the case with Muhammadan bangle-workers, 

 for these men are comparatively new recruits to the trade and therefore are employed 

 chiefly in the less skilled sections of the industry and in fashioning bangles of the simple 

 and crude patterns affected by the poorest and most ignorant of the population. 



In spite of the two great advantages possessed by the bangle trade in Bengal — (a) 

 location in the centre of the only province where chank-bangle wearing continues to be 

 widely prevalent, and (b) the possession of a caste of highly skilled hereditary chank- 

 bangle sawyers and carvers, there is ample scope for the establishment of a large chank- 

 sawing industry in those localities where the shells are fished extensively — in Kathiawar 

 and on the coast of the Gulf of Mannar. Indeed the proposition is one economically 

 sound. At present the whole shell has to be transported from the place of fishing to 

 Calcutta and Dacca, distances in lioth cases upwards of 1,200 miles, where the mouth 

 part, the apex, and the columella, constituting over 60 per cent, of the total weight, 

 are cut oi' broken away and thrown out as waste in the process of manufacture. Under 

 present conditions freight and handling charges have thus to be paid on more than double 

 the weight of the material actually employed. A radical change in the method of 

 preparing working sections would, however, be necessitated as the present hand-sawing 

 of the shell is an art too difficult for unskilled labour to acquire and I believe no Bengal 

 sawyers would leave their own districts to work elsewhere. The one alternative is to 

 adopt a form of machine saw capable of employment by comparatively unskilled 

 workpeople. A band saw working with emery, or preferably with carborundum powder, 

 probably would give satisfactory results, the motive power being either foot power 

 leaving the hands free to hold and to guide the shell or, preferably, a small oil engine 

 or else electric current in towns where the latter is available. The introduction of 

 a chank-cutting industry into Okhamandal is, I believe, eminently feasible and practical 

 and commercially sound. To begin with there is a considerable supply of shells available 



