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]