20 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY— PART II 



temples of the sacred land of Kathiawar, rich in its association with the later life of 

 Krishna ; while in Bet in 1906, I found richly ornamented sinistral chanks in the Shank 

 Narayan, Lakhsmi and Satya Bhamaji temples. (Plate I.) That in the last named is 

 a particularly large and handsome shell, probably the finest sinistral chank in existence 

 and consequently an almost priceless treasure. The shell possessed by the Shank 

 Narayan temple is a small elongated specimen offered at the shrine some twenty years 

 ago by a Bathia from Zanzibar ; that of the Laksmi temple is a short broad one of small 

 size with handsome arabesque ornamentation on the mounting — it has been in the 

 possession of the temple since Samvat 1890 (A.D. 1835). At Benares, temple treasures 

 include similar examples, while in the south of India, where opportunities to obtain 

 these shells are great, a considerable number of the temples of that devout land possess 

 one or more. Those at Rameswaram, Trichendur and Madura may be instanced. 



The temple at Rameswaram, one of the four most holy places of pilgrimage among 

 Hindus, possesses four shells ; of these three are very ancient and date from the days 

 when the munificence of the Madura and Ramnad rulers endowed this temple with a 

 share of the produce of the local pearl and chank fisheries. The shells in the Trichendur 

 Temple, a towering pile overlooking a sea where chank fishing still flourishes, are 

 derived likewise from a privilege share possessed formerly by the temple in this fishery. 



It is noteworthy that although Rama, an incarnation of Vishnu, is especially 

 associated with the Rameswaram temple, the actual deity represented in the inmost 

 shrine is the phallic lingam of Siva. On important religious festivals water is poured 

 into the sinistral chanks, and after Vedic chants have been sung and prayers offered, 

 the water thus consecrated is poured over the lingam. 



It is remarkable also and indicative that this custom has not originated with modern 

 Hinduism, that sinistral chanks are objects of adoration among northern Buddhists. 

 Sarat Chandra Das, the intrepid survey ofi&cer who spent some perilous years in Thibet, 

 mentions {Journey to Lhasa, London, 1902) that in the Sakya Monastery lying to the 

 south-west of Shigatze there is preserved in the temple a chank of this rare form. Its 

 history is invested with more than ordinary interest, for the monastic records state 

 that it was a present from Kublai Khan, the great Tartar conqueror of China and patron 

 of the Polos, to Phagpa, a hierarch of Sakya whom Kublai made ruler of Thibet in the 

 second half of the thirteenth century. Sarat Chandra Das mentions that this famous 

 shell is blown by the lamas only when the request is accompanied by a present of seven 

 ounces of silver, but to have it blown " is held to be an act of great merit." 



In Thibet these left-handed chanks are called Ya chvil dung-Jcar and in Chinese 

 Yu hsuan pai-lei. The people of both countries consider such shells as treasures of 

 inestimable value. In 1867, one was known to be kept at Fuchu by the Ti-tuh {Peking 

 Gazette, February 23rd, 1867) and one at Lhasa {fde an editorial note in Das, " Journey 

 to Lhasa," above quoted). 



At one time the value of these shells is said to have been assessed at their weight in 



