Indian Antiquary Vol 04

SR No.: 032496
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Swati Publications
Publication Year: 1984
Total Pages: 410
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 18 MB

Page 243

AUGUST, 1875.)
THE TRADITION OF THE GOLD DIGGING ANTS.
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similar or converse confusion may have taken place at a much earlier period.
But, setting aside the giant dogs of Tibet, we have only to recall what has been said about the fars in which the Tibetan miners muffle themselves in winter, in order to arrive at the most natural explanation of the account given by Nearchus, the friend of Alexander's boyhood. When Nearchus quitted India he was commissioned, as is well known, to descend the Indus and proceed by sea from the mouth of that river to that of the Euphrates. It appears that he wrote an account of his voyage entitled flapáthous, in which, according to Strabo and Arrian, he stated that although he had not, while in India, succeeded in meeting with living specimen of the gold digging ants, he had yet seen the skin of one of them, and that it resembled the hide of a panther. Many of these skins were brought to the Macedonjan camp.t
The description of the gold digging ants con- tains yet another peculiarity, the explanation of which has hitherto been a great perplexity: I refer to Pliny's assertion that the horns of an Indian ant were preserved as a curiosity in the temple of Hercules at Erythra. I Samuel Wahl, whose idea was that the gold digging ants were hyenas, in the face of this passage of Pliny, is driven to defend his theory in the following language :-“The horns mentioned by Pliny as belonging to an animal which, to judge from the descriptions of ancient writers, cannot have had horns, may be ac- counted for by supposing that they belonged to a rare species, or to an individual that was a lusius naturæ, as sometimes occurs with other hornless animals : but I am inclined to the belief that the passage of Pliny is corrupt, and that for cornua we ought to read coria or prepared hides, or else that cornua should be taken in the sense of teeth, as in the case of elephants."'S
My own wholly different interpretation of this passage of Pliny will, I hope, be considered a more probable one. It rests upon a conjec- ture long since formed by me upon the dress of the Tibetan miners, but which has developed,
thanks to the testimony of an eye-witness, into & certainty. It is to Mrs. Frederick Severin that I am indebted for a piece of information which has been of the greatest value to me in my researches into the tradition of the gold digging ants. Mrs. Severin is married to a Danish gen. tleman who has for many years been the proprietor of a tea-plantation in Assam bearing the name of Grönlund. She is the daughter of Mr. William Robinson, formerly Inspector of Government Schools in Assam, author of a book on Assam, and of several memoirs on the Tibetan tribes adjoining that district. It was during a visit recently paid by her to Denmark that I obtained from her the information I had so long sought.
The province of Assam, as is well known, is not less remarkable than the Caucasus as the meeting-place of different races. A variety of tribes flock thither from the most distant quarters, from the west the Aryan Hindus, from the south the Trans-Gangetic Hindus, from the East the Chinese, and from the north the Tibetans, who inhabit the adjoining district of Bhotan, or, as they themselves call it, Lhopato. On one occasion when Mr. Robinson made a tour in Upper Assam, he took with him his daughter, then only fourteen years of age, to visit a family friend, Colonel Holroyd, who held'an important government appointment in the district. Colonel Holroyd took occasion to present to his guests some Tibetans who had just crossed the Himalay a clothed in their strange costume, and Miss Robinson was able to satisfy herself that there are Tibetans who wear Ya k skins with the horns attached and projecting from their heads. We may fairly conclude that it is to this costume of the Tibetans that allusion is made in the Mahabharata, when it speaks of the "hairy, horned Kankas" who brought presents to king Yudhishthira. These Kankas we know for certain to have been the inhabitants of Eastern Tibet. And there can be little doubt that this characteristic Tibetan head-dress was in view in the story told to those who visited the temple of Erythra, a story
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• Probably the skin of Felis uncis, the ounce, the snowloopard of sportsmen, common in Tibet.-ED. + Strabo, XV.1; Arrian. Indica, c. 15.
Pliny, Hist. Nat. xi. 36. $ Wahl, Erdbeschreibung von Ostindien, II. 484-5.
| 4 Descriptive Account of Assam, Calo. 1841, &c. Robinson's Notes in Jour. 48. Soc. Beng. vol. XVIII pt. i. pp. 183-937, 810-349; vol. XX. pp. 126-187; vol. XXIV. pp. 307-324.
Rémusat in Mém. de l'Institut Royal, VIII. (1827) pp. 111, 113, 126; Lassen, Ind. Alt. I. 374, 1023.