Manchester Memoirs, Vol. Ixiv. (192 1), No. 5 5 



Gold. 



The area covered by the Dharwar Schists not only in 

 Hyderabad State, but from Shorapur in the North, to the 

 Wainad in the extreme South of India, is everywhere pitted 

 with the remains of ancient gold mining, and, as far as I 

 personallv have seen in Hyderabad, around or in the vicinity 

 of these workings, dolmens and circled cairns are to be found, 

 and in Dharwar and Bellary even greater quantities are 

 reported. 



As far as Hyderabad State is concerned, the memory of 

 the ancient gold mines and their workers seem entirely lost. 

 I believe that this is true of the rock workings of Kolar, 

 Dharwar and Rhodesia goldfields, though desultory washing 

 for alluvial gold is recorded. 



In Hyderabad one can obtain some idea of the possible 

 date only through a process of elimination. 



It cannot be possible that any gold mines existed in the 

 days of the Vijjianuggur Kings, the wealth of whose king- 

 dom was extolled by Ferishta, for sufficient time would not 

 have elapsed to allow for the complete filling up and entire 

 obliteration of all surface indications, of the huge pits which 

 have since been unearthed, even if all memory of such an 

 industrv could be effaced in such a relatively short period. 

 This is most unlikely, for the present inhabitant readily points 

 out the iron mines, which still remain open, and records prove 

 to have been worked at that period. Besides, the Raichore 

 Doab has not been without its European Chroniclers, and 

 neither Ferns Nunez or Paes ever mention the existence of 

 gold mining. Nor in the great store of copper plate — or lithic 

 records — which range through Mahommedan Chalukqan, 

 back to the newly found inscription of Asoka, carved on a 

 rock at Muski, in the middle of the auriferous band and 

 surrounded by old gold workings, do we find a single 

 reference. 



Of folk lore there is none, else it must have come to the 

 ears of Colonel Meadows Taylor, a man so loved and respected 

 that his name yet lingers among the villagers and is recorded 

 in song, which may still be heard, croned by some Beydur 

 mother as she hushes her infant to sleep. 



But beyond Professor Lassens' statement that the Sans- 

 krit words, used in the Bible, had a Deccan termination, and 

 on which he assumed that the land of Ophir was on the 

 Malabar Coast, and that apparently unsatisfactory process of 

 dissecting place names of the Doab, starting with the Sans- 

 krit " Hoon " and generally terminating with either Persian 

 or Canarese, no evidence of any gold industry can be found 



