Herodotos on India

Herodotos of Halikarnassos, the Father of History, had a most vague and meagre knowledge of India. He knew that it was one of the remotest provinces of the Persian Empire towards the east, but of its extent and exact position he had no proper conception. His work contains the first notice of the famous gold-digging ants, whose labours yielded the vast tribute in gold which India in the days of Darius paid to the Persian crown. Herodotos was born in B.C. 484, and died at Thurii, a city in Magna Gr cia, situated on the Tarentine Gulf, where he spent the later years of his life, and where he wrote his History. His death was subsequent to the breaking out of the Peloponnesian War in 431 B.C.

HERODOTOS

BOOK III. 89-96. In these chapters Herodotos relates that Darius on ascending the throne of Persia divided his empire into twenty governments called Satrapies, and fixed the amount of tribute which each of these should pay into his treasury. India stands last in his enumeration of these Satrapies.
97. Of the Indians, the population is by far the greatest of all nations whom we know of, and they paid a tribute proportionately larger than all the rest, 360 talents of gold dust[1]; this was the twentieth division.
98. The Indians obtain the great quantity of gold from which they supply the before-mentioned dust to the king, in the manner presently described. That part of India towards the rising sun is all sand; for of the people with whom we are acquainted, and of whom anything certain is told, the Indians live the farthest towards the east and the sunrise, of all the inhabitants of Asia, for the Indians' country towards the east is a desert by reason of the sands. There are many nations of Indians, and they do not speak the same language as each other; some of them are nomades, and others not. Some inhabit the marshes of the river, and feed on raw fish, which they take going out in boats made of reeds; one joint of the reed makes a boat. These Indians wear a garment made of rushes, which, when they have cut the reed from the river and beaten it, they afterwards plait like a mat and wear it like a corselet.
99. Other Indians, living to the east of these, are nomades, and eat raw flesh; they are called Pad ns. They are said to use the following customs. When any one of the community is sick, whether it be a woman or a man, if it be a man the men who are his nearest connections put him to death, alleging that if he wasted by disease his flesh would be spoilt; but if he denies that he is sick, they, not agreeing with him, kill and feast upon him. And if a woman be sick, in like manner the women who are most intimate with her do the same as the men. And whoever reaches to old age, they sacrifice and feast upon; but few among them attain to this state, for before that, they put to death every one that falls into any distemper.[2]
100. Other Indians have the following different custom: they neither kill anything that has life, nor sow anything, nor are they wont to have houses, but they live upon herbs, and they have a grain the size of millet in a pod, which springs spontaneously from the earth, this they gather, and boil it and eat it with the pod. When any one of them falls into any disorder, he goes and lies down in the desert, and no one takes any thought about him, whether dead or sick.
101. The intercourse of all these Indians whom I have mentioned takes place openly as with cattle; and all have a complexion closely resembling the Ethiopians. The seed they emit is not white as that of other men, but black as their skin; the Ethiopians also emit similar seed. These Indians are situated very far from the Persians, towards the south, and were never subject to Darius.
102. There are other Indians bordering on the city of Caspatyrus[3] and the country of Pactyice, settled northward of the other Indians, whose mode of life resembles that of the Bactrians. They are the most warlike of the Indians, and these are they who are sent to procure the gold; for near this part is a desert by reason of the sands.[4] In this desert, then, and in the sand, there are ants in size somewhat less indeed than dogs, but larger than foxes.[5] Some of them are in possession of the King of the Persians, which were taken there. These ants, forming their habitations underground, heap up the sand, as the ants in Greece do, and in the same manner; and they are very like them in shape. The sand that is heaped up is mixed with gold. The Indians therefore go to the desert to get this sand, each man having three camels, on either side a male one harnessed to draw by the side, and a female in the middle. This last the man mounts himself, having taken care to yoke one that has been separated from her young as recently born as possible; for camels are not inferior to horses in swiftness, and are much better able to carry burdens.
103. Is occupied with a short description of the camel.
104. The Indians then adopting such a plan and such a method of harnessing, set out for the gold, having before calculated the time, so as to be engaged in their plunder during the hottest part of the day, for during the heat the ants hide themselves under the ground. Amongst these people the sun is hottest in the morning, and not, as amongst others, at mid-day, from the time that it has risen some way, to the breaking up of the market; during this time it scorches much more than at mid-day in Greece, so that, it is said, they then refresh themselves in water. Mid-day scorches other men much the same as the Indians; but as the day declines, the sun becomes to them as it is to others in the morning; and after this, as it proceeds it becomes still colder, until sunset; then it is very cold.
105. When the Indians arrive at the spot, having sacks with them, they fill them with the sand, and return with all possible expedition. For the ants, as the Persians say, immediately discovering them by the smell, pursue them, and they are equalled in swiftness by no other animal, so that the Indians, if they did not get the start of them while the ants were assembling, not a man of them could be saved. Now the male camels (for they are inferior in speed to the females) slacken their pace, dragging on, not both equally, but the females, mindful of the young they have left, do not slacken their pace. Thus the Indians, as the Persians say, obtain the greatest part of their gold; and they have some small quantity more that is dug in the country.
106. The extreme parts of the inhabited world somehow possess the most excellent products; as Greece enjoys by far the best tempered climate. For in the first place, India is the farthest part of the inhabited world towards the east, as I have just observed: in this part, then, all animals, both quadrupeds and birds are much larger than they are in other countries, with the exception of horses; in this respect they are surpassed by the Medic breed called the Nys an horses. In the next place, there is abundance of gold there, partly dug, partly brought down by the rivers, and partly seized in the manner I have described. And certain wild trees there bear wool instead of fruit, that in beauty and quality excels that of sheep; and the Indians make their clothing from these trees.

BOOK IV. 44. A great part of Asia was explored under the direction of Darius. He being desirous to know in what part the Indus, which is the second river that produces crocodiles, discharges itself into the sea, sent in ships both others on whom he could rely to make a true report and also Scylax of Caryanda.[5] They accordingly setting out from the city of Caspatyrus and the country of Pactyice[6] sailed down the river towards the east and sunrise to the sea[7]; then sailing on the sea westward, they arrived in the thirtieth month at that place where the King of Egypt despatched the Ph nicians, whom I before mentioned, to sail round Libya. After these persons had sailed round, Darius subdued the Indians and frequented this sea.

The translation of the foregoing extracts has been taken from Bohn's Herodotus translated by Cary.
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1. This tribute must have been levied mainly from countries situated to the west of the Indus, for it is certain that the Persian power never extended beyond the Panjab and the lower valley of the Indus. In the time of Alexander it was bounded by that river.
2. This revolting practice did not exist among the Aryan Indians, but may have prevailed among barbarous tribes on the borders of India Proper. We learn from Duncker (Gesch. des Alt. ii. 268) that the practice still prevails among the aboriginal races inhabiting the Upper Nerbudda among the recesses of the Vindhyas. The Pad ans are mentioned by Tibullus, iv. i. 144.
2. Kaspatyros is evidently the city called Kaspapyrus by Hekat us, who speaks of it as a city of the Gandarians. The Sanskrit name Kasyapapur by a slight contraction gives the form used by Hekat us. The position of this place has been much discussed. Heeren took it to be Kabul, but in the opinion held by Lassen, Humboldt, and other writers Kaspatyrus is taken to be Kashmir. On the latter supposition the river on which Skylax embarked would be the Hydaspes or Jihlam. In Ptolemy's Geography Kashmir appears in the form Kaspeiria, whose sovereigns had extended their rule far beyond the limits of the present kingdom of Kashmir.
3. 'The vague idea that all to the cast of the Indians was a sandy desert probably arose in the first instance from the real fact of the occurrence of a broad desert tract to the east of the fertile lands of the Indus, and would be confirmed by vague reports that similar deserts were found also to the east of Bactria and the adjoining countries.'-Bunbury's Hist. of Anc. Geog. I. 229, 230.
4. The story of the ant-gold was repeated by Megasthenes, and Nearchos, who is a trustworthy writer, says that he saw somewhere in India the skin of one of the gold-digging ants. It has been supposed that this was the skin of a marmot, or some such burrowing animal. The fable is a genuine Indian tradition, for in his Ariana (p. 135), Professor Wilson cites a passage from the Mahb h rata wherein mention is made of 'that gold which is dug up by Pipilikas (ants) and is therefore called Pippilikas (ant-gold).' The Pippilikas were therefore probably Thibetan miners, since Megasthenes states that the gold was carried away from the Derdai, that is the people of Dardistan.
5. Karyanda was a city of Karia on the coast, not far from Halikarnassos, of which Herodotos was a native. As Skylax was the fellow-countryman of the historian there seems little if any ground for doubting, as some have done, whether this voyage was actually made.
6. Dr. M. A. Stein (in his Memoir on Maps illustrating the Ancient Geography of Kas'mir, 1899) identifies the land of Paktyik  with the territory of Gandhara, the present Peshawar District. While thinking it unlikely that the exact site of Kaspatyros will ever be identified, he suggests that the expedition of Skylax may have started from some point near Jah mg ra, a place on the Kabul river some six miles distant from its junction with the Indus. Paktyik  is probably now represented by the ethnic name Pakht n, or the Indian Path n. Dr. Stein rejects the idea that Kaspatyros or Kaspapyros was ever taken to designate Kashmir.
7. The Indus, however, after emerging from the mountains, holds its course southward.

From: J. W. McCrindle, Ancient India as Described in Classical Literature. Westminster, England: Archibald Constable and Co., 1901, 1-5.