Upon the Antiquity and Methods of Gold Mining in Ancient India

Abstract

In spite of Arrian's partial refutation, ever since Herodotus drew attention to the vast quantity of gold dust which the populous Indian province paid to Darius the Achaemenid, the world has thought of India as a source of gold 1). When modern geological survey began to make known the actual resources of the country, the comparative paucity of gold was a matter of some surprise and disappointment. Malcolm Maclaren, among the foremost of Indian gold prospectors, was forced to acknowledge that in India the prospector is offered an uninviting field, the whole auriferous zones have been exploited anciently. The spoil heaps only mark the valueless fields, the richer having been carted away to the rivers for crushing and washing. 2) We are led to the conclusion that whatever her past potentials they had been largely exhausted before the opening of the I9th century.