CONCHOLOGY. 



supposed varieties, we arrive at another point of view in which the 

 history of this shell becomes no less important, or less worthy of our 

 consideration : the sacred character which from some superstitious 

 causes, remote beyond all research of the present race of men, this 

 shell has acquired in the Mythology of the Indian Nations : in the 

 rites and worship of the Indian Brahma. Among these people this 

 shell is called the Chank, or SacFcED Chank, the emblem of an 

 attribute of the divine power, and is constantly seen in one of the 

 hands of the Indian Deity Vishnu, as a type of the renovation of the 

 earth from the waters of the deluge. — The cause of this catastrophe 

 of the earth, the deluge, they attribute to the wickedness of mankind 

 in remote ages, which incensing the divine Brahma, he caused a 

 flood of the waters to overflow the earth and destroy every vestige 

 of the creation, animate and inanimate, that existed upon its surface. 

 After awhile the supreme Brahma disposed to restore creation, com- 

 manded Vishnu to deliver the earth from the flood of waters, and in 

 testimony of its deliverance Vishnu bears in his hand the Chank Shell, 

 the symbol of its renovation.* 



Without proceding at any considerable length into the history 

 of those mythological persuasions, it may be permitted to observe 

 that as a type of the divine power in reheving the earth from the flood 



*The Hindoos entertain the belief of a general deluge, not very dissi- 

 milar to that of the Mosaic records. They admit, however, many such 

 catastrophes of the earth, and subsequent renovations through the creative 

 power of this attribute of Brahma, which they denominate Vishnu. The 

 Chank Shell refers to a deluge of the earth, anterior to that which seems to 

 accord with the sacred writ. The deliverance of the earth from the Mosaic 

 deluge they term the lotos creation, the type of which is the expanded 

 flower of the lotos, the Indian pedma emerging above the surface of the waters 

 with Vishnu seated in its centre. 



