THE CHANK BANGLE INDUSTRY. 
425 
in Bulletin No. i of the Madras Government Museum, 1894, and paragraph references 
of the same type and brevity in official and other works dealing with the commercial 
products of India. My first enquiries on reaching Calcutta were to verify this appa- 
rent lack of definite knowledge concerning the course and details of the industry. It 
was not difficult to do so, for from enquiries made at the Indian Museum (Economic 
Section) I found that this trade had never before formed the subject of Government 
inquiry, that the exhibits in the Museum are limited to examples of shells as fished 
at Tuticorin and elsewhere and to finished specimens of the commoner types of brace- 
lets and armlets in use in N.E. India ; and that the longest published notice is one of 
a page in length in Sir George Watt’s volume on ‘ ‘ Indian Art at Delhi, 1903.’ ’ This 
last is not of any importance ; it has apparently been compiled from notes made upon 
an exhibit by a Dacca manufacturer at Delhi. Save for giving an illustration of a 
Dacca shell-cutter at work, it does not throw any further light on the subject, and on 
several of the few details mentioned I have found the statements erroneous, e.g. that 
where it says " asa rule only one bracelet can be cut from each shell. ’ ’ 
( b ) Present Centres of the Trade. 
Tavernier in his travels through India in the seventeenth century noted the 
existence of an extensive trade in cutting bracelets and charms from ‘ ‘ sea-shells as 
large as an egg.” According to V. Ball’s translation of this work (Eondon, 1899), 
Dacca and Patna were then the centres of this industry, Tavernier stating that it gave 
employment to more than 2,000 persons in these towns. Dacca to-day remains 
the chief working centre, but the mention of Patna was a mystery to me till I found 
that another busy and long-established working centre exists near the district town 
of Pabna. No industry of this nature exists at Patna, and I have no hesitation in 
concluding that the Patna of Tavernier’s “ Travels ” is an editor’s misrendering of 
the name of the less well-known town of Pabna. 
At the present day almost all the shells of the common chank or conch used in 
the bracelet-making industry are imported into Calcutta in the first instance. A few 
go occasionally to Chittagong, where bracelet cutting is carried on by Muhammadan 
workmen for supply to the neighbouring hill tribes. With this exception Calcutta 
is the sole emporium for chank shells. 
The importers and wholesale merchants in Calcutta are chiefly men closely identi- 
fied with the Dacca shell-cutters ; they are either Dacca born or belong to Dacca families 
who have settled in Calcutta for trade reasons. Most of these chank importers are 
related to one another, their families for generationshaving followed a similar vocation. 
They are indeed the representatives of lines of hereditary middlemen. The majority 
have establishments in Dacca for the cutting of shells and the manufacture of bangles, 
but their chief profits arise from wholesale dealing. A few Muhammadans from the 
Tamil coast (Eabbais) are also concerned in the wholesale trade, having been admitted 
thereto as their special local knowledge is of much value to their Calcutta partners 
or principals as the case may be ; these men act as local experts and buying agents at 
the fishery centres in Ceylon and South India. 
