The Shankha — known in Sinhala as the Hakgediya — is the shell of a large marine gastropod, prepared and used as a wind instrument in the traditional ritualistic and religious folk art-music of Sri Lanka. It belongs to the class of instruments called aerophones, or Susira in the Pali language, meaning instruments that produce sound through a column of moving air. As a natural trumpet, it sits within the Hornbostel–Sachs category of conches, and its voice is one of the oldest sound-making traditions preserved in South Asian ceremonial life.
The shell most closely associated with the Shankha is the sacred chank, also known in English as the divine conch or chank shell, a species found in the Indian Ocean along the southern coasts of India and parts of Sri Lanka. The exterior of a typical specimen is cream or off-white beneath a heavy, often brown-patched outer layer, while the interior aperture reveals a smooth peach or apricot-orange colouring, with prominent columellar folds — ridges that run along the inner column of the shell. Most examples coil to the right; a left-handed shell is extraordinarily rare. The listing offers two distinct specimens: one with an elongated spire, an open aperture, and the naturally speckled cream-and-brown surface of an unpolished shell; the other with a smooth, polished, rounded body and faint tan marbling across a white exterior.
The Hakgediya has been used primarily in Theravada Buddhist artistic rituals, performed in honour of the Triple Gem — the Three Jewels of Buddhism. It does not carry a melodic role in these ceremonies; rather, the player controls dynamics, breath attack, sustain and decay to produce calls that complement the polyrhythmic percussion of the Avanaddha drums, which are the principal instruments in this tradition. The Ghana (idiophones) and Tat (chordophones) complete the ensemble. The Shankha does not stand apart from this ritual fabric; it is a thread within it.
Sri Lankan folk and ritual music is rhythmic, layered and unhurried in its construction. It brings together the beat of drums, the chink of small cymbals, the breath of the flute and the resonant call of the conch. The Shankha's contribution to that sound is elemental rather than ornamental — a single sustained tone, shaped entirely by the player's breath, rising above the percussion. The instrument's Sinhala name, Hakgediya, derives from the Sanskrit shankha, and the word itself carries the weight of a tradition that has moved across the Indian Ocean for centuries.
This listing is presented under Arts and Crafts. Each shell is a natural object and will carry its own particular pattern of markings, proportions and surface character. Whether kept as a piece of craft heritage or used in ceremonial practice, the Hakgediya represents a continuity of material culture that connects the coastal waters of the Indian Ocean to the ritual life of Sri Lanka.
