Page:The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 4-1875.djvu/240

 August, 1875,] THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD-DIGGING ANTS. 227 tures."* Iu short, as regards those writers who have endeavoured to explain the confusion of names by a certain external resemhlance, suffice it to say that they have themselves despaired of finding an animal that would satisfy the conditions of their theory. X i v r e y naively at- tributes 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.f We now come to a wholly different solution of the question. So long ago as the year 1819 Malt e-B run wrote : " May we not also sap- pose that an Indian tribe really bore the name of ants ? "+ It is by following up the cine thus afforded by our learned countryman that we may hope to arrive at a solution of this question. But 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- • i by Herodotus, According to the Greek historian, the Indians who went in search of the gold lived in the neighbourhood of the city of K a s p a t y r n a (Ka«nrdrt/p'os) and ofPaktyike (ij na«rv!*i7 x^Pf)' Now the inhabitants of 1 } a k- t y i k e are none otber than, the Afghans, who in the west call themselves P a s h t n n and in the east P a k h t u n ,§ a name identical with that given to them by Herodotus. As to the second locality, instead ofKaspatyrns, the name given in most editions of Herodotus, the -- SanerofUatute, preserved in Emanuel Col- lege, Cam bridge, gives that of Kaspapyrus (Ka<nnwrvf»&) r a reading found also in Ste- phanas Byzantinus, and clearly pointing to the ancient name of the capital of K a s - m i r, K a s y a p a p u r a, contracted to K a s y a- pura. We are thus brought to K a s ra 1 r. "We have in oar own times seen how the Sikhs, tin; pre- sent masters of KAsinir, took possession of large portions of Tibet, namely, of L a d a k or Central Tibet in 1831, and of Balti or Little Tibet in Bat we know that in former times the • Der Vrtprung wnd Verbreitung tinirjer geoyrai>hi*rh- en Mijtken im ItittelalUr, in Deutsche licrtiljihr. schrifL II. 206. f Tnul, bIra.i'>to<}i [uet, p. li^T- J Mtfmotre sur : nah, in NouvcUd An- il'.ms, f-UJl, 11.383. § Ilinduntanice P a t h & a . — Ed. U StraW, XV. 1 ; pjiaj, Hist. X*it. VI. 22 ; XL 36. Subilhdars, or governors of Jfitsxnir under the Great Mughul, and earlier yet the kings, both Muhammadan and Hindu, of independent Kus- mtr, 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 m Kaeniir in search of gold. This supposition is confirmed by the fact that S t ra b o and the elder Pliny expressly mention the Dards as those who robbed the ants of their treasures. j[ FortheDards are not an extinct race. Ac- cording to the accounts of modern travellers, they consist of several wild and predatory tribes dwelling among the mountains on the north-west frontier of K:ismlr, and by the banks of the Indus :*' they are the Daradas of Sanskrit literature- They understand Pushtu, the language of the A fgh an s,*but their native tongue is a Sanskritic idiom. Even at the present day they carry on their marauding pro- fession in Little and Central Tibet, and it is chiefly on this account that the picturesque vale of Hnzara, which has at all times belongs Little Tibet, remains in great part waste, in spite of itB natural fertility, f M i r 1 z z e t D 1 1 a h, the ited Tibet iu 1612, writes as follows in his Jour- nal !— • " The houses of this country from M a t a - y in to this place are all wrecked ami Last year a great number of the inhabitants were carried oil' by bands of Dards, an independent tribe who live in the mountains three ur tour march north of D i r i r a s, and speak P a s h t u and D a r a d i . The prisoners made by them in these raids are sold for slaves.' £ Lilian, who makes the river Kampylinus the limit of theant country, § throws no light upon the question ofTibet, for it is impossible from the text whether or not the Kampylinus denotes a branch of the Indus. But Tibet is in- dicated with tolerable certainty in the remarkable passage of the MahabMraia above referred to, as well as in the statements of Herodotus, S trabo, and Pliny . For among the nortb- <f Tigne, Travel*, 11.3410 ; Leitoor, Dardiskm, II. 31-84, • Vigno, Travels, EL 88B. tMoorcroft and Trebwk, Travel), II. 3W; Vigae, Tn. vels, II. ^jU. 2<J7, 300, 306. X Voyage doftl I'Asie ctntrctl?, in Klaprotfi'd Magasin Atiatijiu, II. 3-5 ; conf. Wilson's preface to Koweraft and Trobcck'a Travels, I. iviii. § JSlian, dt Nat. An. III. 4.
 * travelling companion ofMoorcroft, who vis-