THE CHANK BANGLE INDUSTRY, 
429 
In the other Bengal local centres work proceeds on similar lines , varied only in 
detail to meet the particular demand or fashion prevailing among the women of the 
surrounding district. Generally the bulk of the work is in the hands of the Sankhari 
caste except where Muhammadan competition has become keen, or where the town 
is outside of Bengal proper. Such an example is Chittagong, where the chank-bangle 
trade is monopolized by Muhammadan cutters. At this centre large shells only are in 
demand as they are required for the production of the very broad massive bangles 
or armlets favoured by the hill tribes served from Chittagong. 
(c) Volume and importance of the Trade. 1 
Commercially important as the trade in chank shells and bangles still is, it appears 
to have been considerably greater in former times. Thus in Simmon ds’ ‘ ‘ Commercial 
Products of the Sea ” it is stated that “ frequently 4,000,000 to 5,000,000 of these 
shells are shipped in a year from the Gulf of Mannar. In some years the value of the 
rough shells, as imported into Madras and Calcutta, reaches a value of £10,000 or 
£15,000.” I have been unable to check the accuracy of these figures — the present- 
day production averaging not more than 2,500,000 — but from the considerably greater 
revenue derived by the Indian Government from the chank fisheries off the Tinnevelly 
and Tanjore coasts during the first half of last century, the estimate probably gives 
an accurate statement of the value of the fisheries 50 to 100 years ago. 
Overfishing in certain localities, decrease in the numbers of the diving community, 
and lessened demand for chank bangles are the chief causes of a decline that dates 
back beyond the acquisition of the royal monopoly of chank fishing by the Madras 
Government in the early years of the nineteenth century. Garcia da Orta has already 
been cited (p. 15) for the statement that in the sixteenth century the chank trade 
with Bengal ‘ ‘ formerly produced more profit than now,” his explanation of the decline 
being the lower rates given in his day owing to the custom of wearing chank bangles 
in Bengal having declined “since the Pathans (Muhammadans) came in.” 
In the second half of the seventeenth century Tavernier visited Dacca and records 
that more than 2000 persons were engaged in the chank-bangle trade in Dacca and 
Pabna, “ all that is produced by them being exported to the kingdoms of Bhutan, 
Assam, Siam, and other countries to the north and east of the territories of the Great 
Mogul ” (p. 267, Vol. II, English translation, Tondon, 1889). He further mentions 
the visits of Bhutan merchants to Dacca whence they took home for sale ' ‘ bracelets of 
sea-shells, with numerous round and square pieces of the size of our 15 Sol coins. 
Elsewhere (floe, cit., p. 285) he characterized this trade as ‘ ‘ large.” 
Besides the trade in chank bracelets, Tavernier ( loc . cit., p. 267) states that “ all 
the people of the north — men, women, girls and boys — suspend small pieces of the 
same shell both round and square from their hair and ears.” He also refers to a 
custom which prescribed that when a man dies “ all his relatives and friends 
should come to the interment, and when they place the body in the ground, the}’ 
take off all the bracelets which are on their arms and legs and bury them with the 
defunct,” 
