The use of cowry-shells for the purposes of currency, amulets, and charms / by J. Wilfrid Jackson.

  • J. Wilfrid Jackson
Date:
[1916]
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Licence: In copyright

Credit: The use of cowry-shells for the purposes of currency, amulets, and charms / by J. Wilfrid Jackson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    the Turkish Crescent’' {op. cit., p. 253, pi. 25), figures and describes two curious head-dresses worn by the Ja-luo of Kavirondo, one consisting of ram’s horns and cowries, the other of reed-buck’s horns and cowries. These remind us, Ridgeway remarks, of the combination of boars’ tusks and cowries in Greece {supra p. 18). Captain R. F. Burton gives us an interesting account of the cowry-trade of the regions north of the ‘Land of the Moon,’ in his description of “ The Lake Regions of Central Equatorial Africa.613 The cowries, he reports, are collected from various places between Ras Hafun and Mozambique, the trade being in the hands of Moslem hucksters. They are purchased on the mainland by a curious specimen of the ‘ round- trade’; money is not taken, so the article is sold measure for measure of holcus grain. From Zanzibar the use of cowries spreads in two directions ; one to the regions north of the ‘ Land of the Moon ’ where they form the currency, though they are also occasionally in demand as an ornament in Unyamwesi ;67 the other to the West African coast. That the collecting of cowries on the East African coast dates from ancient times is evident from the list of articles of export at Rhapta in the first century A.D. Among the articles mentioned in the “ Periplus ”68 as exported from this place—the Quiloa or Kilwa of modern times—is an item, Ndv7r\io$ oX/yo? (///. little sea- shell), a term which has given rise to some discussion. Vincent69 says : “ It seems to be an inferior tortoise-shell from the context” (which he translates, “tortoise-shell of superior kind, but not equal to the Indian ; and a small 60 /burn. Roy. Geog. Soc. Loud., vol. 29, 1859, p. 448. 07 See Ratzel, op. cit., II., plate facing p. 533, fig. 1, for cowry orna¬ mented head-dress of Wanyamwesi. cs Vincent, “The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean/’ London, 1807, vol. ii., p. 172. 09 Ibid., p. 748. ,
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