Intercourse between India and the Western World from the Earliest Times to the Fall of Rome c7.27

c7.27

Herodotus is the first writer to mention the famous legend of the Indian ants who watched over the gold which the Indians carried off in order to pay the tribute due to the Great King. It was said that this gold was guarded by gigantic ants, but the Indians, mounted on swift she-camels, plundered the gold at mid-day when the ants were asleep in their holes, and made off, hotly pursued! These "ants" were smaller than dogs but larger than foxes², and threw up the gold in excavating their burrows. Some of them were in the possession of the Great King. Later writers talk of having seen their skins³, or even (*mirabile dictu*) their horns! This curious story arose from the Sanskrit *Paippīlika*, "ant-gold," a term applied to alluvial gold from its resemblance to the earth of ant-hills⁴. The gold was carried off from the miners of Dardistān, who still keep fierce yellow mastiffs to guard their houses. These mastiffs were the "ants" of the legend. The "horns," which Pliny¹ asserts were hung in the temple of Hercules at Erythrae, were the horns of wild sheep, which, mounted in handles, are still used by the miners and farmers of Ladāk as pickaxes. The gold-fields of Dardistān were quickly exhausted, perhaps by the exorbitant demands of Persia. They are seldom mentioned in later literature², though Alexander, had he found them working, would have almost certainly exploited them. To-day they yield only insignificant quantities³.