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242
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1877.
their blindness diminishes their delight over- flows, and this is a token that the disease has been cured. The remedy for other distempers to which they are liable is black wine; and if this potion fails to work a cure nothing else can save them.
Fragm. XXXIX. Strab. XV. 1. 44, p. 706.
Of Gold digging Ants. Megasthenes gives the following account of these ants. Among the Derdai, a great tribe of Indians, who inhabit the mountains on the eastern borders,t there is an elevated plateau about 3,000 stadia in circuit. Beneath the surface there are mines of gold, and here accordingly are found the ants which dig for that metal. They are not inferior in size to wild foxes. They run with amazing speed, and live by the produce of the chase. The time when they dig is winter. They throw up heaps of earth, as moles do, at the mouth of the mines. The gold-dust has to be subjected to a little boiling. The people of the neighbourhood, coming secretly with beasts of burden, carry this off. If they came openly the ants would attack them, and pursue them if they fled, and would destroy both them and their cattle. So, to effect the robbery without being observed, they lay down in several different places pieces of the flesh of wild beasts, and when the ants are by this de. vice dispersed they carry off the gold-dust. This they sell to any trader they meet with || while it is still in the state of ore, for the art of fasing metals is unknown to them.
FRAGM. XL. Arr. Ind. XV.-5-7.
Of Gold digging Ants. But Megasthenes avers that the tradition about the ants is strictly true that they are gold-diggers not for the sake of the gold itself,
but because by instinct they burrow holes in the earth to lie in, just as the tiny ants of our own country dig little holes for themselves, only those in India being larger than foxes make their burrows proportionately larger. But the ground is impregnated with gold, and the Indians thence obtain their gold. ['Now Megasthenes writes what he had heard from hearsay, and as I have no exacter information to give I willingly dismiss the subject of the ant.] T
(FRAGM. XL. B.) Dio Chrysost. Or. 35,-p. 436, Morell.
Of Ants which dig for gold.
(Cf. Fragm. XXXIV. and XL.) They get the gold from ants. These creatures are larger than foxes, but are in other respects like the ants of our own country. They dig holes in the earth like other ants. The heap which they throw ap consists of gold the purest and brightest in all the world. The mounds are piled up close to each other in regular order like hillocks of gold dust, and all the plain is made effulgent. It is difficult, there. fore, to look towards the sun, and many who have attempted to do this have thereby destroyed their eyesight. The people who are next neighbours to the ants, with a view to plunder these heape, cross the intervening desert, which is of no great extent. They are mounted on wagons to which they have yoked their swiftest horses, and arrive at noon, a time when the ants have gone underground. They at once seize the booty, and make off at full speed. The ante, on learning what has been done, pursue the fugitives, and overtaking them fight with them till they conquer or die, for of all animals they are the most courageous. It hence appears that they understand the worth of gold, and that they will sacrifice their lives rather than part with it.
FRAGM. XLI. Strab. XV. 1. 58-60,--pp. 711-714. Of the Indian Philosophers.
(Fragm. XXIX. has preceded this.) (58) Speaking of the philosophers, he (Megas. thenes) says that such of them as live on the mountains are worshippers of Dionusos, showing as proofs that he had come among them the wild vine, which grows in their country only, and the ivy, and the laurel, and the myrtle,
argeance and life and dress wresent day
Data dr.
See Ind. Ant. vol. IV. pp. 225 segg. where cogent argu. ments are adduced to prove that the gold digging anta' were originally neither, as the ancients supposed, real anta, nor, as so many eminent men of learning have supposed, larger animals mistaken for ants on account of their appearance and subterranean habita, but Tibetan miners, whose mode of life and dress was in the remotest antiquity exactly what they are at the present day.
+ These are the Dardæ of Pliny, the Daradrai of Ptolemy, and the Daradas of Sanskrit literature. 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 northwest frontier of KAsmir and by the banks of the Indus." Ind. Ant. loc. cit.
The table-land of Chojotol, see Jour. R. Geog. Soc. vol. XXXIX. pp. 149 seqq.- ED.
$." The miners of Thok-Jalung, in spite of the cold, prefer working in winter; and the number of their tents,
which in summer amounts to three hundred, rises to nearly six hundred in winter. They prefer the winter, as the frozen soil then stands well, and is not likely to trouble them much by falling in."-Id.
| TW TUXÓTI TÔy európav. If the different reading του τυχόντος τους εμπόρους be adopted, the rendering is. "They dispone of it to merchants at any price."
Cf. Herod. III. 102-105; Arrian, Anab. V.4.7: Ælian, Hist. Anim. III. 4; Clem. Alex. Pæd. II. p. 207; Tzetz. Chil. XII. 330-340 : Plin. Hist. Nat. XI. 36, XXXIII. 21; Propert. III. 18.5; Pomp. Mel. VII. 2; Isidor. Orig. XII.3; Albert Mag. De Animal. T. VI. p. 678, ex subdititiis Alexandri epistolis; Anonym. De Monstris et Belluis, 259, ed. Berger de Xivrey; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. VI. 1 ; and Heliodoras, Eth. X. 26, p. 495; also Gildemeister, Script, Arab. de reb. Ind. p. 220-221, and 120; Busbequins, Lego. tionis Turcicæ Epist. IV. p. 144, or Thaunus XXIV. 7, p. 809.-Schwanbeck, p. 72.
