The Chanh Bangle Industry ; its Antiquity and present Condition. 
By Jambs Hornebb, F.R.S., 
Superintendent of Pearl and Chunk Fisheries to the Government of Madras. 
INTRODUCTORY. 
At the present day the general use of bangles made from sections sawn from the 
shell of the sacred Indian chank or conch ( Turhinella pyrum , Uinn.) is confined to the 
people of Bengal and of certain of the adjacent provinces. In India proper the cus- 
tom does not appear to range further west than Behar, nor further south than 
Orissa. On the north and east the limits are less determinate as there the peoples 
are wilder and the means of obtaining articles of ornament difficult and uncertain. 
We may say, however, that throughout Thibet from Tadakh in Kashmiri Thibet to 
the Kham country in the east, the women, whenever their means and opportunities 
permit, wear heavy and coarsely-made bangles manufactured from this shell. In 
Assam and Bhutan the same custom is observable, but owing to the diversity in 
origin and to the differences in the manners of the tribes in this region, the custom is 
sporadic ; in one valley all the women may wear these ornaments ; in the next valley 
or in the adjacent hill villages none may be seen. 
The women of Bengali race are the main observers of this practice, and were the 
fashion of wearing chank bangles to become obsolete among them, the industry 
would languish and probably soon die out. It is they alone who provide a market 
for richly carved and highly polished chank bangles ; their humble sisters among the 
Santals, Kochhi, Thibetans, and Maghs are satisfied with plain or rudely carved 
bangles without polish — they prefer strength and quantity to ornamental designs 
and fine finish. 
The industry of bangle-cutting, as will be detailed in the following paper, is 
located at the present day almost entirely in Bengal. Dacca is the chief centre of 
the manufacturing trade, Calcutta the emporium where the raw material is gathered 
from the different chank fisheries in the south of India and in Ceylon and whence 
the shells are distributed to Dacca and numerous local centres scattered throughout 
the length and breadth of Bengal. 
The following notes are intended in part to show that in ancient days the custom 
of wearing these peculiar ornaments was widely spread throughout the greater part 
of India and that bangle- workshops were equally widely scattered, from Tinnevelly 
in the extreme south to Kathiawar and Gujarat in the north-west, through a long 
chain of factories located in the Deccan. The general condition of the industry as it 
