# Ancient India as described by Megasthenês and Arrian/Frag. XXXIX.

Fragm. XXXIX.
Strab. XV. 1. 44,—p. 706.
Of Gold-digging Ants.
Megasthenês gives the following account of these ants. Among the Derdai, a great tribe of Indians, who inhabit the mountains on the ​eastern borders, 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 doj 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, end 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 device 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 fusing metals is unknown to them.
* ↑ See Ind. Ant. vol. IV. pp. 225 seqq. where cogent arguments are adduced to prove that the 'gold-digging ants' were originally neither, as the ancients supposed, real ants, nor, as so many eminent men of learning have supposed, larger animals mistaken for ants on account of their appearance and subterranean habits, 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 Sanskṛit 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 north-west frontier of Kâśmîr 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. Ind. Ant.
* ↑ "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.
* ↑ Τω τυκόντι τῶν ἐμπόρων. If the different reading τοῦ τυχόντος τοῖς ἐμπόροις be adopted, the rendering is, '"They dispose 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. 13. 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, 269, ed. Berger de Xivroy; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon. VI. 1; and Heliodorus, Æth. X. 26, p. 495; also Gildemeister, Script. Arab. de reb. Ind. p. 220-221, and 120; Busbequius, Legationis Turcicæ Epist. IV. pp. 144, or Thaunus XXIV. 7, p. 809.—schwanbeck, p. 72.