Greek Reports of India and Aryavarta

Herodotus

from The History of the Persian Wars

c.430 BC

III.98: The way in which the Indians get the plentiful supply of gold which
enables them to furnish year by year so vast an amount of gold-dust to the kind
is the following: Eastward of India lies a tract which is entirely sand. Indeed
of all the inhabitants of Asia, concerning whom anything certain is known, the
Indians dwell the nearest to the east, and the rising of the sun. Beyond them
the whole country is desert on account of the sand. The tribes of Indians are
numerous, and do not all speak the same language—some are wandering tribes,
others not. They who dwell in the marshes along the river live on raw fish, which
they take in boats made of reeds, each formed out of a single joint. These Indians
wear a dress of sedge, which they cut in the river and bruise; afterwards they
weave it into mats, and wear it as we wear a breast-plate.

III.99: Eastward of these Indians are another tribe, called Padaeans, who are
wanderers, and live on raw flesh. This tribe is said to have the following customs:
If one of their number be ill, man or woman, they take the sick person, and if
he be a man, the men of his acquaintance proceed to put him to death, because,
they say, his flesh would be spoilt for them if he pined and wasted away with
sickness. The man protests he is not ill in the least; but his friends will not
accept his denial—in spite of all he can say, they kill him, and feast themselves
on his body. So also if a woman be sick, the women, who are her friends, take
her and do with her exactly the same as the men. If one of them reaches to old
age, about which there is seldom any question, as commonly before that time they
have had some disease or other, and so have been put to death—but if a man,
notwithstanding, comes to be old, then they offer him in sacrifice to their gods,
and afterwards eat his flesh.

III.100: There is another set of Indians whose customs are very different.
They refuse to put any live animal to death, they sow no corn, and have no dwelling-houses.
Vegetables are their only food. There is a plant which grows wild in their country,
bearing seed, about the size of millet-seed, in a calyx: their wont is to gather
this seed and having boiled it, calyx and all, to use it for food. If one of them
is attacked with sickness, he goes forth into the wilderness, and lies down to
die; no one has the least concern either for the sick or for the dead.

III.101: All the tribes which I have mentioned live together like the brute
beasts: they have also all the same tint of skin, which approaches that of the
Ethiopians. Their country is a long way from Persia towards the south: nor had
king Darius ever any authority over them.

III.102: Besides these, there are Indians of another tribe, who border on the
city of Caspatyrus, and the country of Pactyica; these people dwell northward
of all the rest of the Indians, and follow nearly the same mode of life as the
Bactrians. They are more warlike than any of the other tribes, and from them the
men are sent forth who go to procure the gold. For it is in this part of India
that the sandy desert lies. Here, in this desert, there live amid the sand great
ants, in size somewhat less than dogs, but bigger than foxes. The Persian king
has a number of them, which have been caught by the hunters in the land whereof
we are speaking. Those ants make their dwellings under ground, and like the Hellene
ants, which they very much resemble in shape, throw up sand-heaps as they burrow.
Now the sand which they throw up is full of gold. The Indians, when they go into
the desert to collect this sand, take three camels and harness them together,
a female in the middle and a male on either side, in a leading-rein. The rider
sits on the female, and they are particular to choose for the purpose one that
has but just dropped her young; for their female camels can run as fast as horses,
while they bear burthens very much better.

III.104: When the Indians therefore have thus equipped themselves they set
off in quest of the gold, calculating the time so that they may be engaged in
seizing it during the most sultry part of the day, when the ants hide themselves
to escape the heat. The sun in those parts shines fiercest in the morning, not,
as elsewhere, at noonday; the greatest heat is from the time when he has reached
a certain height, until the hour at which the market closes. During this space
he burns much more furiously than at midday in Hellas, so that the men there are
said at that time to drench themselves with water. At noon his heat is much the
same in India as in other countries, after which, as the day declines, the warmth
is only equal to that of the morning sun elsewhere. Towards evening the coolness
increases, till about sunset it becomes very cold.

III.105: When the Indians reach the place where the gold is, they fill their
bags with the sand, and ride away at their best speed: the ants, however, scenting
them, as the Persians say, rush forth in pursuit. Now these animals are, they
declare, so swift, that there is nothing in the world like them: if it were not,
therefore, that the Indians get a start while the ants are mustering, not a single
gold-gatherer could escape. During the flight the male camels, which are not so
fleet as the females, grow tired, and begin to drag, first one, and then the other;
but the females recollect the young which they have left behind, and never give
way or flag. Such, according to the Persians, is the manner in which the Indians
get the greater part of their gold; some is dug out of the earth, but of this
the supply is more scanty.

III.106: It seems as if the extreme regions of the earth were blessed by nature
with the most excellent productions, just in the same way that Hellas enjoys a
climate more excellently tempered than any other country. In India, which, as
I observed lately, is the furthest region of the inhabited world towards the east,
all the four-footed beasts and the birds are very much bigger than those found
elsewhere, except only the horses, which are surpassed by the Median breed called
the Nisaean. Gold too is produced there in vast abundance, some dug from the earth,
some washed down by the rivers, some carried off in the mode which I have but
now described. And further, there are trees which grow wild there, the fruit whereof
is a wool exceeding in beauty and goodness that of sheep. The natives make their
clothes of this tree-wool.

VII.65: The Indians wore cotton dresses, and carried bows of cane, and arrows
also of cane with iron at the point. Such was the equipment of the Indians, and
they marched under the command of Pharnazathres the son of Artabates.

VII.70. The Eastern Ethiopians—for two nations of this name served in the
army—were marshalled with the Indians [probably those who currently speak the
Dravidian language Brahui, who presently live in Pakistan, west of the Indus River.
—ed.]. They differed in nothing from the other Ethiopians, save in their language,
and the character of their hair. For the Eastern Ethiopians have straight hair,
while they of Libya are more woolly-haired than any other people in the world.
Their equipment was in most points like that of the Indians, but they wore upon
their heads the scalps of horses, with the ears and mane attached; the ears were
made to stand upright, and the mane served as a crest. For shields this people
made use of the skins of cranes.

VII.86: The Medes, and Cissians, who had the same equipment as their foot-soldiers.
The Indians, equipped as their foot. men, but some on horseback and some in chariots—the
chariots drawn either by horses, or by wild asses.