THE CHANK BANGLE INDUSTRY. 
423 
would end by endowing ornaments made from it with mysterious powers of ensuring 
well-being and good luck, even as the Buddhist cartmen of Ceylon and their Hindu 
brethren throughout the Southern Carnatic adorn their bulls with a ehank shell as a 
charm against the evil eye. 
The chank shells for the Deccan bangle workshops may have come from theTanjore 
coast, this being the nearest source of supply. The Tan j ore fishery appears to have 
been fairly lucrative down to the middle of the 19th century when economic changes 
caused a collapse of the industry. Tirumalavassal at the mouth of one of the northern 
branches of the Kaveri is the centre of the chank fishery on this part of the coast 
and is not far from the site of Kaveri-pattanam , once chief port of the Chola kingdom 
and in the height of its prosperity in the early centuries of the Christian era. From 
Kaveri-pattanam to the inland districts of Kurnul and Bellary the transit of goods 
would be comparatively easy and safe ; coasters would be used to the mouth of the 
Kistna, 350 miles to the north, whence river craft would ca-rry the goods direct to their 
destination, 200 miles inland. Or it may be that the shells required in the industry 
were fished further south, in the neighbourhood of Adam’s Bridge, for we have the 
statement of Cosmas Indicopleustes, circa 545 a.d., of place called Marallo, on the 
continent opposite Ceylon, where a shell called by him Kitovs (Kochlious) 1 was 
produced in quantity. Again, a chank fishery, the most productive in the world, exists 
to-day off the N.W. coast of Ceylon and direct communication by means of large native 
craft has existed from time immemorial between the north of Ceylon and the port of 
Masulipatam, for centuries the Eastern sea-gate of the Deccan. The cause of the 
cessation of chank industry in the Deccan, Gujarat, and Kathiawar is probably to be 
looked for in the constant strife which kept India in a welter of blood through the six 
centuries of Muhammadan dominance in the land. From the days of Mahmoud of 
Ghazni, in particular the northern and central portions of India were harried by ,suc- 
cessive waves of fanatic invaders sweeping down through the North-west passes, and 
from the thirteenth century onwards to the end of the seventeenth the story of India is 
that of an unceasing contest between Muhammadan and Hindu for power on the part 
of the former and for existence and religion on that of the latter. Well may certain 
old Hindu customs have disappeared ; during the worst periods when the intolerance 
of the conquerors was at its height their influence was often exerted towards the sup- 
pression of Hindu customs, and this, combined with the dislocation of trade consequent 
upon the general insecurity of the country and the frequent recurrence . of raids and 
widespread warfare, may be considered the main reasons for the decay of the chank- 
bangle industry in the Deccan and Cambay provinces, as well as in Tinnevelly in the 
South. A striking confirmation of this conclusion is afforded by Garcia da Orta , a Portu- 
guese writer of the sixteenth century, who says : — ‘ ‘ This chanco is a ware for the Bengal 
trade, and formerly produced more profit than now and there was for- 
merly a custom in Bengal that no virgin in honour and esteem could be corrupted 
unless it were by placing bracelets of chanco on her arms ; but, since the Pathans 
came in, this usage has more or less ceased and so the chanco is rated lower now.’ ’ 
1 In the Norman-French dialect still spoken in Jersey and the other Channel Islands, the common whelk (Bnccimun), 
which is the European representative of the Eastern chank, is known as coqueluclie. 
