The Sacred Chank Of India

Author : James Hornell
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330311226
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (112 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Indian Conch written by James Hornell and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Indian Conch: And Its Relation to Hindu Life and Religion To all Hindus the important position occupied by the Sacred Conch (Turbinella pyrum, Linn.), the Sankha of Sanscrit literature and the Sanku or Chanku of Tamil speech, in their religion is a commonplace of everyday knowledge; few, however, are aware of the intimate relationship it bears to a hundred common incidents in the ordinary life of the people in many localities and among widely sundered races, tribes, and castes. In the following pages an attempt will be made to survey this little known by-way in the life and history of the Indian world, to show how superstition looks upon the Sankha as an amulet against the powers of evil, how this belief is among the oldest and most tenaciously held by Animist and Hindu, by Muhammadan and by Buddhist; to indicate the way this belief has brought the shell into prominence in the Hindu religion, and to detail how it subserves as well, a hundred different uses in the daily lives of millions of Indians - how it is associated with infancy, marriage and death, and finally how its employment in the form of ornamental bangles was once the subject of an important industry in several widely separated parts of India, prominent being Kathiawar and Gujarat where to-day all memory of it has vanished. In connection with this latter point I trust that the attention now drawn to it, may result in the revival in Kathiawar of an industry that has more good things than usual in its favour if we consider other aims than that of mere money-making; no objects manufactured in India are more artistic and pleasing than the handsome milk-white bangles made in Dacca workshops for the ladies of Bengal. In the course of collecting the materials for this essay, difficult problems have taken form. Some we can solve, but others remain obscure; among the latter may be mentioned the unknown cause for the cessation and disappearance of the chank bangle industry in Kathiawar, Gujarat and the Deccan, and the question whether the use of chank bangles among a few sections of several castes in South India is in the nature of a survival of a once universal custom. Another point to which I wish to draw attention is the bearing upon the antiquity of trade relations between India and the Persian Gulf in the recognition I made last year of several exhibits in the Louvre as consisting of objects carved from the shell of the Indian conch. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.