408 
J. HORNELL ON 
exists at the present day in Bengal will be described with such notes as I have been 
able to gather with regard to the various tribes and castes whose women now wear 
bangles made from the chank shell. 
I. The Antiquity of the Industry. 
(a) Its existence in Tinnevelly at the beginning of the Christian era. 
Reference to ancient Tamil classics furnishes evidence scanty but indubitable of 
the existence of an important chank-cutting industry in the ancient Pandyan 
kingdom in the early centuries of the Christian era. Similar evidence is also extant 
of a widespread use of carved and ornamented chank bangles in former days by the 
women of the Pandyan country which may be considered as roughly coextensive 
with the modern districts of Tinnevelly, Madura and Ramnad, forming the eastern 
section of the extreme south of the Madras Presidency. 
Among the more important references which prove the ancient importance of 
this industry on the Indian shore of the Gulf of Mannar, is one contained in the 
“ Maduraikkanchi,” a Tamil poem which incidentally describes the ancient city of 
Korkai, once the sub-capital of the Pandyan kingdom and the great emporium fami- 
liar to Greek and Egyptian sailors and traders and described by the geographers of 
the ist and 2nd centuries a.d. under the name of Kolkhoi. From the purity of the 
Tamil employed in this poem and the similarity of the names of the towns, ports and 
goods mentioned incidentally with those employed by Ptolemy and the author of the 
“ Periplus of the Erythraean Sea,” we may date it as approximately contemporaneous 
with the writings of these authors and certainly not later than the 2nd or 3rd cen- 
turies A.D. 
In one passage (EE- 140 — '144) the Parawas are described as men who dived for 
pearl oysters and for chank shells and knew charms to keep sharks away from that 
part of the sea where diving was being carried on. Another passage depicts the city 
of Korkai, then a seaport at the mouth of the Tambraparni, as the chief town in the 
country of the Parawas and the seat of the pearl fishery, with a population consist- 
ing chiefly of pearl-divers and chank-cutters. The great epic, the Silappathikdram 
or “ Eay of the Anklet,” written about the same period by a Jain poet, gives further 
information about Korkai from which we gather that on account of the great value of 
the revenue derived from the pearl fishery, this city was a sub-capital of the Pandyan 
realm and the usual residence of the heir-apparent, boasting great magnificence and 
adorned with temples and palaces befitting its wealth and importance. 
Another valuable reference to the chank trade is contained in two Tamil stanzas 
which chronicle a passage at arms between a Brahman and Nakkirar, the celebrated 
poet-president of the Madura Sangam in the reign of the Pandyan king, Nedunj 
Cheliyan II, who flourished probably about the beginning of the 2nd century a.d. 
The Brahman, named Dharmi, presented to the Sangam a poem purporting to 
be composed with the aid of Siva. Nakkirar, the President, in spite of its alleged 
divine origin, criticized the poem mercilessly, and rejected it as unworthy of literary 
recognition. The Brahman took revenge by presenting another poem also purport- 
