Age of the Nandas and Mauryas c9.s15.3

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