Indian Antiquary Vol 13

SR No.: 032505
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: John Faithfull Fleet, Richard Carnac Temple
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 492
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 22 MB

Page 263

AUGUST, 1884.) EARLY NOTICES OF METALS AND GEMS IN INDIA.
229
Indian mineral productions. Babylon obtained indigenous sources must have been very conprecious stones and dogs (probably Tibetansiderable before the alluvial deposits were mastiffs) from India. In the enumeration of exhausted of their gold throughout wide rethe nations and tribes which paid tribute to the gions. Persian monarch, Darius, the Indians alone, When it is remembered that about 80 per we are told, paid in gold, all the others paying cent. of the gold raised throughout the world in silver. The amount of this gold was 360 is from alluvial washings, and when this fact Euboeic talents = £1,290,000. Herodotos is considered in connexion with the reflection pointedly, moreover, speaks of India as being that wide tracts in Australia and America, "rich in gold";' and he relates the famous and formerly richly productive, are now deserted, widespread fable of the gold digging ants, the being covered with exhausted tailings, it can be origin of which has been fully ascertained." I conceived how these regions in India, and there shall only add now that the horns of the gold- are very many of them, which are known to diggir.g ants," referred to by Pliny and others be auriferous, may, in the lapse of time, after were, probably, simply samples of the ordinary yielding large supplies of gold, have become pickaxes used by the miners. In Ladakh, and, too exhausted to be of much present consideraprobably, also in Tibet, these implements are tion. More than this, however, recent made of the horns of wild sheep, mounted on explorations have confirmed the fact, often handles of wood.
previously asserted, that in Southern India The portion of India conquered by Darius there are indications of extended mining opewas probably situated chiefly to the north- rations having been carried on there. west of the Indus. The Indus itself, as well Evidence exists of the most conclusive as some of its tributaries, is known to be kind of large quantities of gold having been auriferous.
amassed by Indian monarchs, who accepted a Many commentators on the above and other revenue in, gold dust only, from certain secreferences by subsequent authors to the exist tions of their subjects, who were consequently ence of gold and silver), as indigenous products compelled to spend several months of every of India, object that mines of these metals are year washing for it in the rivers or were not known to exist in India. Thus The already quoted facts taken from the Lassen says: “If the ancients speak of abun- pages of the Bible and Herodotos must be dant gold in India, it is either only a false accepted as evidence that gold was an export amplification of the early and true account of from India, and that to so large an extent, that Northern India, the country of the Dårds, the suggestion that it was first imported may between Kaśmir and the Upper Indus, or a false be safely rejected. A large amount, very conclusion, from the fact that the Indians probably, reached Northern India in the course used much gold for ornaments and other of trade from Tibet, but it is incredible that purposes." Heeren, like Lassen, alludes doubt- the vast stores which, se will be shown on & fully to Pliny's statement (vide postea) as to future pago, were in the possession of the the existence of abundant gold and silver mines princes of Southern India about 600 years ago, in the country of the Nareee; he attributes the were, to any considerable extent, derived from quantity of gold which must have been in extraneous sources. Ancient India to commerce with other gold Much uncertainty exists as to the date of the producing countries, namely, Tibet and Bur- famous Indian epic known as the Ramayana. ma. He even suggests that African gold By Wilson, however, it is supposed to have found its way to India in early as well as it is been written about 300 B.C.; but it refers to a known to have done in later times. Our most time probably contemporaneous with Solomon. recent knowledge of India, however, affords It represents India as abounding at that early evidence that the amount of gold derived from period in wealth, which we cannot but conclude
• Herodoton, lib. I, c. 192. 1. c. lib. III, 6. 106.
10 Scient. Proceedings R. Soc. Dub., for 1890. The fable has been shown by Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr. Sobiern Ind. Ant. vol. IV, pp. 225ff.) to have originated in the peculiar customs of the Tibetan gold miners, which would
appear to be the same at present, they were in the time of Herodotos. The DAIDO" Apt" gold was possibly Arat given to the fragments of gold dust brought from Tibet on googant of their shape and fi **Arialic Nations (Boknpd.), vol II, p. 32.