śankh (shankh, vallamberi shankh, śankha, cankam, canku) trumpet made from a whole conch (Xancus pyrum) shell, highly polished with a simple six petal flower design scratched into the surface.
The sound of this conch symbolises the primordial and sacred sound 'Aum'. The conch is almost exclusively a ritual instrument although it may be used to represent divine intervention in performances of the Kathakali dance drama of Kerala.
These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.
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