Indian Antiquary Vol 04

SR No.: 032496
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 410
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 239

AUGUST, 1875.]
THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS.
227
tures." In short, as regards those writers who have endeavoured to explain the confusion of names by a certain external resemblance, suffice it to say that they have themselves despaired of finding an animal that would satisfy the conditions of their theory. Xivrey naïvely attributes this difficulty to the auri sacra fames, holding that a race of gold digging animals may have really existed, and gradually disappeared before the incursions of man.
We now come to a wholly different solution of the question. So long ago as the year 1819 Malte-Brun wrote: “May we not also suppose that an Indian tribe really bore the name of ants?" It is by following up the clue thus afforded by our learned countryman that we may hope to arrive at a solution of this question. Bnt it will be necessary in the first place to determine in what direction we are to look for the dwelling-place of the gold digging ants, by taking as our starting-point the places men- tioned by Herodotus. According to the Greek historian, the Indians who went in search of the gold livel in the neighbourhood of the city of Kaspatyrus (Kachrátupos) and of Paktyike ( Makrucký xápn). Now the inhabitants of Pak tyike are none other than the Afghans, who in the wost call themselves Pashtun and in the east Pakhtun, a name identical with that given to them by Herodotus. As to the second locality, instead of Kas patyrus, the name given in most editions of Herodotus, the Codez Sancroftianus, preserved in Emanuel College, Cambridge, gives that of Kas papyrus (Kaotámupos), a reading found also in Stephanus Byzantinus, and clearly pointing to the ancient name of the capital of Kas mir, Kisya papura, contracted to Kaśyapura.
We are thus brought to Kasmir. We have in our own times seen how the Sikhs, the present masters of Kasmir, took possession of large portions of Tibet, namely, of Ladak or Central Tibet in 1831, and of Balti or Little Tibet in 1840. But we know that in former times the
Sabahdârs, or governors of Kiśmir under the Great Mughul, and earlier yet the kings, both Muhammadan and Hindu, of independent Kås. mir, likewise strove to extend their conquests in the same direction. And hence we may well suppose that it was to Tibet that the Indians of Herodotus repaired when they left their native Kasmir in search of gold. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that Strabo and the elder Pliny expressly mention the Dards as those who robbed the ants of their treasures. Il For the Dards are not an extinct race. According to the accounts of modern travellers, they consist of several wild and predatory tribes dwelling among the mountains on the north-west frontier of Kaśmir, and by the banks of the Indus: they are the Daradas of Sanskrit literature. They understand Pushtu, the language of the Afghans, but their native tongue is u Sanskritic idiom. Even at the present day they carry on their maraading profession in Little and Central Tibet, and it is chiefly on this account that the picturesque vale of Huzara, which has at all times belonged to Little Tibet, remains in great part waste, in spite of its natural fertility. MirIzzet Ullah, the travelling companion of Moorcroft, who visited Tibet in 1812, writes as follows in his Journal:-"The houses of this country from datayin to this place are all wrecked and deserted. Last year a great number of the inhabitants wero carried off by bands of Dards, an independent tribe who live in the mountains three or four days' march north of Diriras, and speak Pashtu and Daradi. The prisoners made by them in these raids are sold for slaves."
Ælian, who makes the river Kampylinus the limit of theant country, Sthrows no light upon the question of Tibet, for it is impossible to gather from the text whether or not the Kampylin us denotes a branch of the Indus. But Tibet is in. dicated with tolerable certainty in the remarkable passage of the Mahabhá rata above referred to, as well as in the statements of Herodotus, Strabo, and Pliny. For among the north
• Der Ursprung und Verbreitung einiger geographischen llythen im Mittelalter, in Deutsche Vierteljuhrschrift, II. 266.
Trad. tératologiques, p. 267.
Mémoire sur l'Inde septentrionale, in Nouvelles Annales des Voyages (Paris, 1819), II. 382.
$ Hindustanice Path &n.-ED. | Strabo, XV. 1; Pliny, Hist. Nat. VI. 22; XI. 36.
Vigno, Travels, II. 300 ; Leitner, Durdistan, II. 31-34 • Vigne, Travels, II. 298.
Moorcroft and Trebeck, Travels, II. 261; Vigne, Tra. vels, II. 250, 297, 300, 306.
1 Voyage dans l'Asie centrale, in Klaproth's Magasin Asiatique, II. 3-5; conf. Wilson's preface to Moorcroft and Trebeck's Travels, 1. xviii.
SÆlian, de Nat. An. III. 4.