Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s15: 3. Herodotus

Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s15

Language
English

3. Herodotus

c9.s15.1

The references to India and Indians in Herodotus (B. C. 484-425)¹ place them in a clear light, and the monstrous races that formed the stock in trade of Greek writers on India before and after him do not make their appearance in his pages. India is to him the furthest region of the inhabited world towards the east, and Indians dwell nearest the rising of the sun. Of the Indians within the empire of Darius he observed that they were more numerous than any other nation known to him, and paid a tribute exceeding that of every other people, three hundred and sixty talents of gold-dust. But he knows that there were many other tribes of Indians, all of them dark-skinned, living a long way from Persia towards the south over whom King Darius had no authority. There were many tribes among Indians and they did not all speak the same language. Some were nomads, others not. Among the nomads the Padaeans, who lived on raw flesh, including that of sick or old members of the tribe, who were offered in sacrifice to their gods—a practice attested by modern observers to have obtained till recently among some savage hill tribes. The same custom prevailed among the Kallatiai within the Persian empire. There was another tribe of marsh-dwellers who ate raw fish and wore garments of sedge. Herodotus' knowledge of the people across the Persian border was by no means confined to savages. ‘There is another set of Indians whose customs are very different. They refuse to put any living animal to death, they sow no corn, and have no dwelling houses. Vegetables are their only food. There is a plant which grows wild in their country, bearing seed, about the size of millet seed, in a calyx: their wont is to gather this seed and having boiled it, calyx and all, to use it for food. If one of them is attacked with sickness, he goes forth into the wilderness, and lies down to die; no one has the least concern either for the sick or for the dead.’ This is a very good account of the life of the forest-dwelling sages of India who used wild rice (*nivāra*) for their staple food.

c9.s15.2

¹ Herodotus, III, 38, 94, 98-106: VII, 65, 86: McCrindle, *Anc. Ind.* Sec. 1. The citations in the text are from Rawlinson's version, Everyman's Library Edn. Strabo, XV, 1, 56 (p. 59) for Megasthenes on cannibalism.

c9.s15.3

Within the Persian empire, the Indian tribes of Paktiyika (Pashto country), who dwelt northward of all the rest of the Indians and resembled the Bactrians in their mode of life, were the most warlike, and from among them were selected the men who were sent to procure gold from the sandy-desert. Herodotus gives a full account of gold-digging ants of the size of dogs, which threw up mounds of the gold-dust that was collected and brought away by the Indians in camel loads during the hottest part of the day when the ants hid themselves to escape the heat; this story in some form became a permanent feature of all later Greek accounts of India; Nearchus averred that he saw the skins of these ants and that these resembled the skins of leopards;¹ Megasthenes connects the Derdai (Skt. Daradas, mod. Dards) with the gathering of ant-gold, and states that they diverted the attention of the ants by depositing the flesh of wild beasts in different places before beginning to remove the gold. Some ingenious scholars explain away the ants of the size of dogs by supposing that the ants are dervied from the name of gold *pipilikā*, and that the native miners did keep formidable dogs which chased away the people who came to take the gold; such explanations raise more questions than they answer and are of no value. Herodotus adds that India got a small part of its gold supply from mining and both he and Megasthenes mention that some of it came from river beds.²

c9.s15.4

¹ Strabo, XV, 44, in McCrindle, *Anc. Ind.*, p 51 where he gives references to several ancient authors mentioning the gold-digging ants: also his Meg. and Arrian, pp. 94-7. The *Mahābhārata*, (Cal. ed.), VII, 1860 also mentions them.

c9.s15.5

² Frag. XXIX, pp. 78-9-Strabo, XV 1: 57. pp. 63-4. (The page references are, unless otherwise stated, to McCrindle's translations). Also Curtius, VIII, 9-*Alexander's Invasion*, p. 187.

c9.s15.6

Herodotus notes that the beasts and birds of India were much bigger than those found elsewhere, except the horses, which were surpassed by the Median breed. He tells us of a

c9.s15.7

*tadvai pipilikam nāma uddhritam yat-pipilikaih*
*jātarūpam drona-meyam ahārshuh puñjalo nripāh*

c9.s15.8

The Kumbakonam edition (II, 78, 80) reads wrongly *kuñjalo* for *puñjalo*. The remarkable identity in the expressions employed by Herodotus and in this verse should be noted. Modern scholars are generally inclined to trace to Indian sources most of the fabulous things narrated of India in the Greek books. Tarn, after Laufer, traces the ant-legend to Mongolian sources (*The Greeks in Bactria and India*, pp. 106-7). The Son river was called Eranoboas, Hiranyavāha, gold-carrier.

c9.s15.9

Persian governor of Babylon who ‘kept so great a number of Indian hounds, that four large villages of the plain were exempted from all other charges on condition of finding them in food’. The Indus was for him the only river, besides the Nile, that produced crocodiles.¹ Most interesting to the Greeks must have been his discovery that there were trees in India ‘the fruit whereof is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their clothes of this tree wool’. ‘The Indians in the army of Xerxes wore cotton dresses, and carried bows of cane, and arrows also of cane with iron at the point’. Some Indians with similar equipment rode on horses while others used chariots drawn by horses or wild asses.

c9.s15.10

¹ I, 192 (hounds) : IV, 44 (crocodiles).

Linked texts (4)