Thalia   

them any longer- undertook to furnish a gift, which in my day was
still brought every fifth year, consisting of a hundred boys, and
the same number of maidens. The Arabs brought every year a thousand
talents of frankincense. Such were the gifts which the king received
over and above the tribute-money.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 Greek 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