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AUGUST, 1875.]
THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS.
THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS.
BY FREDERIC SCHIERN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN. Translated by Anna M. H. Childers.
HE
ERODOTUS is the earliest Greek writer the Indians get a start while the ants are musterwho mentions gold-digging ants. Omiting, not a single gold-gatherer could escape. Durting irrelevant matter, the following is the ing the flight the male camels, which are not so account he gives of them :fleet as the females, grow tired, and begin to drag first one and then the other: but the females recollect the young which they have left behind, and never give way or flag. Such, according to the Persians, is the manner in which the Indians get the greater part of their gold: some is dug out of the earth, but of this the supply is more scanty."+
"Besides these there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the city of Kas patyrus and the country of Paktyika: these people dwell northward of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode of life as the Baktrians. They are more warlike than any of the other tribes, and from them the men are sent forth who go to procure the gold. For it is in this part of India that the sandy desert lies. Here in this desert there live amid the sand great ants, in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof we are speaking. These ants make their dwellings underground, and, like the Greek ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps
as they burrow. Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold. The Indians when they go into the desert to collect this sand take three camels and harness them together, a female in the middle, and a male on either side in a leading-rein. The rider sits on the female, and they are particular to choose for the purpose one that has just dropped her young for their female camels can run as fast as horses, while they bear burdens very much better.... When, then, the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill their bags with the sand and ride away at their best speed: the ants, however, scenting them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are so swift, they declare, that there is nothing in the world like them: if it were not, therefore, that
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Professor Schiern's essay was published in the Vers handl. Kgl. Dänischen Gesellsch. der Wissensch. for 1870, and was also printed separately as a pamphlet in Danish, German, and French. My translation is from the French version, which is considerably abridged, and therefore more suited to the pages of the Antiquary. I have slightly condensed the text in a few places. I take this opportunity of pointing out that Professor Schiern is not the first who has supposed the gold-digging ants to be Tibetan miners, as will be seen by the following extract from an article in the Pall Mall Gazette of March 16, 1869, written by Sir Henry Rawlinson: Now then for the first time we have an expla nation of the circumstances under which so large a quantity of gold is, as is well known to be the case, exported to the west from Khoten, and finds its way into India from Tibet; and it is probable that the search for gold in this region has been going on from a very remote antiquity, since no one can read the Pandit's account of the Tibetan miners, 'living in tents some seven or eight feet below the surface of the ground, and collecting the excavated earth in heaps previous to washing the gold out of the soil,' without being reminded of the description which Herodotus gives of the
Such is the story of the gold-digging ants as told by the far-travelled Herodotus, "the Humboldt of his time," who had come to Susa for the preparation of his magnificent history, a work scarcely less valuable from a geogra phical and ethnological than from a historical point of view. The story, for the truth of which Herodotus was compelled to rely entirely upon the statements of the Persians, we find repeated by a great many later Greek and
Roman authors. How deeply the legend had taken root among the ancient Greeks may best be seen from the narrative of Harpokration, who records the sarcasms of the comic poets relative to a fruitless expedition against the gold-digging ants undertaken by the Athenians with troops of all arms, and provisions for three days. "It was rumoured among the Athenians one day," he says, "that a mound of gold-dust had been seen on Mount Hymettus guarded by the warlike ants: whereupon they armed themselves and set out against the foe, but returning to Athens after much expenditure of labour to no purpose, they said mockingly to
'ants in the land of the Indians bordering on Ka-patyrus (or Kaspapyrus for Kasyapura or Kaimfr), which made their dwellings underground, and threw up sand-heaps as they burrowed, the sand which they threw up being full of gold. Professor Wilson indeed long ago, and before it was known there were any miners aotually at work in Tibet, suggested this explanation of the story in Herodotus, on the mere ground that the grains of gold collected in that country were called pipilika or ant-gold." To Professor Schiern is, however, unquestionably due the merit of an independent discovery, and above all of the lucid and laborious exposition of the evidence in favour of his theory.-A. M. H.C.
+ Herodotus, iii. 102, 105. I take the translation from Rawlinson.-A.M.H.C.
Cont. Strabo, II. 1; XV. 1; Arrian. de Exped, Alexandr. V.4; Indica, 5; Dio Chrysostom. Orat. XXXV.; Philostrat. de Vita Apollonii Tyan. VI. 1; Clem. Alex. Pad. II. 12; Elian, de Nat. An. XV.14; Harpokrat. s. v.xpvooxoeiv; Themist. Orat. XXVII.; Heliodor. X. 26; Tzetz. Chil. XII. 330-340; Pseudo-Callisth. II. 29; Schol. ad Sophocl. Antig. v. 1025.
