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

  • Jackson, J. Wilfrid (John Wilfrid)
Date:
[1916]
Catalogue details

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 use of cowries as currency and as amulets or charms has been frequently discussed in ethnological memoirs. From this literature it is clear, though the fact has not always been realised or sufficiently emphasised by the authors, that cowries have been for ages regarded and even reverenced as charms in hunting and fishing, and as amulets against the evil eye. In fishing, especially in the Pacific Islands, they are attached to the nets to ensure luck, being misnamed “net-sinkers” by many writers on ethnology. They have been, and in many places are still, associated with marriage, with the object of securing communion with the spirit of fertility, supposed to be indwelling in the cowry. In like manner they are used in some places as offerings to rivers and springs in order to ensure that the rivers will run and springs flow. In the following pages an attempt is made to show some of the many uses of cowries in different parts of the world. The remarkable manner in which some of the customs, in which cowries play an important part, crop up in widely- scattered localities is very significant, and goes far to prove a common centre of origin for these practices. It is altogether unreasonable to assume that exactly similar customs of so peculiar and wholly arbitrary a nature and identical beliefs concerning the cowry could have arisen independently among isolated groups of people. The best and most comprehensive work on the subject of shell-money is that by Dr. O. Schneider, on “ Muschelgeld- Studien.”6 This work contains some 180 pages dealing with the subject, of which about 72 pages are devoted to an excellent summary of the extensive literature relating to cowry-currency. Some use has been made of this work in the compilation of the present communication, as will 0 Dr. Oskar Schneider, “ Muschelgeld-Studien ” (Nach dem hinter- lassenen Manuskript bearbeitet von Carl Ribbe). Herausgegeben vom Verein fur Erdkunde zu Dresden. Dresden, 1905.