Dardistan in 1866, 1886 and 1893 / Being an account of the history, religions, customs, legends, fables, and songs of Gilgit, Chilas, Kandia (Gabrial), Dasin, Chitral, Hunsa, Nagyr, and other parts of the Hindukush, as also a supplement to the second edition of the Hunza and Nagyr handbook and an epitome of part III of the author's "The languages and races of Dardistan"

by G. W. Leitner

The Dards.

Herodotus (III. 102-105) is the first author who refers to the country of the Dards, placing it on the frontier of Kashmir and in the vicinity of Afghanistan. “Other Indians are those who reside on the frontiers of the town ‘Kaspatyros’ and the Paktyan country; they dwell to the north of the other Indians and live like the Baktrians; they are also the most warlike of the Indians and are sent for the gold,” etc. Then follows the legend of the gold-digging ants (which has been shown to have been the name of a tribe of Tibetans by Schiern), and on which, as an important side-issue, consult Strabo, Arrian, Dio Chrysostomus, Flavius Philostratus the elder, Clemens Alexandrinus, Ælian, Harpokration, Themistius Euphrades, Heliodorus of Emesa, Joannes Tzetzes, the Pseudo-Kallisthenes and the scholiast to the Antigone of Sophocles[1]—and among Romans, the poems of Propertius, the geography of Pomponius Mela, the natural history of the elder Pliny and the collections of Julius Solinus.[2] The Mahabharata also mentions the tribute of the ant-gold “paipilika” brought by the nations of the north to one of the Pandu sons, king Yudhisthira.

In another place Herodotus [IV. 13-27] again mentions the town of Kaspatyros and the Paktyan country. This is where he refers to the anxiety of Darius to ascertain the flow of the Indus into the sea. He accordingly sent Skylax with vessels. “They started from the town of Κασπάτυρος and the Πακτυική χώρη towards the east to the sea.” I take this to be the point where the Indus river makes a sudden bend, and for the first time actually does lie between Kashmir and Pakhtu-land (for this, although long unknown, must be the country alluded to),[3] in other words, below the Makpon-i-Shang-Rong, and at Bunji, where the Indus becomes navigable.[4] The Paktyes are also mentioned as one of the races that followed Xerxes in his invasion of Hellas (Herod. VII. 67-85). Like our own geographers till 1866, Herodotus thought that the Indus from that point flowed duly from north to south, and India being, according to his system of geography, the most easterly country, the flow of the Indus was accordingly described as being easterly. I, in 1866, and Hayward in 1870, described its flow from that point to be due west for a considerable distance (about one hundred miles). (The Paktyes are, of course, the Afghans, called Patans, or more properly Pakhtus, the very same Greek word). “Kaspatyros” is evidently a mis-spelling for “Kaspapyros,” the form in which the name occurs in one of the most accurate codes of Herodotus which belonged to Archbishop Sancroft (the Codex Sancroftianus) and which is now preserved at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Stephanus Byzantianus (A.V.) also ascribes this spelling to Hekatœus of Miletus.[5]

Now Kaspapyros or Kaspapuros is evidently Kashmir or “Kasyapapura,” the town of Kasyapa, the founder of Kashmir, and to the present day one may talk indifferently of the town of Kashmir, or of the country of Kashmir, when mentioning that name, so that there is no necessity to seek for the town of Srinagar when discussing the term Kaspatyrus, or, if corrected, Kaspapuros, of Herodotus.

Herodotus, although he thus mentions the people (of the Dards) as one neighbouring (πλησιοχώροι) on Kashmir and residing between Kashmir and Afghanistan, and also refers to the invasions which (from time immemorial it may be supposed, and certainly within our own times) this people have made against Tibet for the purpose of devastating the goldfields of the so-called ants, does not use the name of “Dard” in the above quotations, but Strabo and the elder Pliny, who repeat the legend, mention the very name of that people as Derdæ or Dardæ, vide Strabo XV., ἐν Διρδαις ἔθνει μεγάλω τῶν προσεώων καὶ ὀρείνων Ἰνδῶν. Pliny, in his Natural History, XI. 36, refers to “in regione Septentrionalium Indorum, qui Dardæ vacantur.” Both Pliny and Strabo refer to Megasthenes as their authority in Chapter VI., 22. Pliny again speaks of “Fertilissimi sunt auri Dardæ.” The Dards have still settlements in Tibet where they are called Brokhpa ([see page 60 of text]). The Dards are the “Darada” of the Sanscrit writers. The “Darada” and the “Himavanta” were the regions to which Buddha sent his missionaries, and the Dards are finally the “Dards, an independent people which plundered Dras in the last year, has its home in the mountains three or four days’ journey distant, and talks the Pakhtu or Daradi language. Those, whom they take prisoners in these raids, they sell as slaves” (as they do still). (Voyage par Mir Izzetulla in 1812 in Klaproth’s Magasin Asiatique, II., 3-5.) (The above arrangement of quotations is due to Schiern.)[6]