38 OKHAMANDAL MARINE ZOOLOGY— PART II 



(i) For personal adornment. 



In personal adornment, and apart from any uses it is put to in the form of amulets, 

 ttie chank-shell is employed principally as the crude material wherefrom beautiful 

 bracelets of many patterns are made for use in Bengal and the adjoining provinces ; 

 subsidiary uses to which it is put are to fashion from it finger rings, necklaces, disc 

 ornaments for headdresses and caps, and as a recent addition, coat and dress buttons. 



The bangle industry in all phases is treated separately and at full length in Section 

 II, to which the reader is referred for details. 



Rings actually made from chank-shell are not manufactured in any quantity ; 

 their place is taken largely by those made from a much smaller shell, a species of 

 Stromhus, found on the Ramnad coast of the Gulf of Mannar. So far as I can learn, 

 the industry is locahsed at Kilakarai, a seaport of Ramnad inhabited largely by 

 Muhammadan (Labbai) fishermen, pearl-fishers and chank-divers. The rings are usually 

 exported with a minimum of finish ; only the roughness of the edge is rubbed off and 

 nearly always the chestnut stippling is clearly recognisable. Many are sold in the 

 bazaars or by peddlers throughout the Tamil and Malayalam districts, usually as amulets 

 against the evil eye and against such minor ailments as pimples on the face and various 

 skin troubles. So far as I can ascertain, the only people who use these rings in personal 

 adornment are two tribes of low civilisation living in the Malayalam country — the Hill 

 Vedans of Travancore and certain sections of the Cheruman tribe in Cochin and 

 Malabar. The former I have not seen. They are described by Thurston (VI, p. 333) 

 as living in wretched huts and employed chiefly as rice-field watchmen. He states 

 that both the men and women of this tribe wear numerous bead necklaces interstrung 

 or otherwise associated with a few of these rings. In a photograph given by the same 

 authority (Vol. Ill, p. 177), a man is shown wearing numerous strings of glass beads 

 passed through eight Strombus rings. In the case of the women these necklaces hang 

 down as far as the abdomen. 



The Cherumans were formerly the agrestic serfs of Malabar, Cochin and Travancore 

 — ^the Malayalam country or Kerala. To-day they still remain largely in a servile 

 condition, carrying on for their masters the heavy labour of the fields ; they receive 

 their pay almost always in kind. They are divided into a considerable number of 

 endogamous sections differing in appellation in different districts — ^a sign of long- 

 continued residence in a country of difficult intercommunication. 



All Cheruman women are greatly addicted to the use of necklaces, particularly 

 of the showy strings of beads now put within the reach of the poorest by the enterprise 

 of Austrian and Italian manufacturers. Of other clothing they wear the scantiest — 

 a very dirty, once white cloth, pendant from the waist, being their usual garb. Certain 

 sections wear as a distinctive badge, in addition to numerous bead necklaces, a long cord 

 whereon are strung large numbers of Strombus rings {chanku modiram) — ^they believe 



