Herodotus' gold-digging ants in India

[Paul Kiparsky]

According to Australian geoscientist Anna Petts, "local villagers in  
Africa are known to pan soil from termite mounds to recover gold  
nuggets up to 1 centimetre in size" (http://www.abc.net.au/science/ 
articles/2009/05/08/2562546.htm, see also http://www.afrol.com/ 
articles/10447).

When I read this it occurred to me that Herodotus' famous story about  
giant ants in India that bring up gold when digging their mounds and  
tunnels might really refer to termites.  I realize that Michel  
Peissel's suggestion that Herodotus' ants are marmots is widely  
accepted, and it is supported by reports that the Minaro on the Indo- 
Pak border used to sift sand from marmot mounds to get gold.   
However, termites seem a better fit in other respects.  Their mounds  
are bigger, and certain termite species burrow as much as 30 meters  
into the ground to excavate building material. Herodotus says  
explicitly that these creatures "look like our ants".  He says they  
are much bigger than ants though, and indeed, some termite species  
can reportedly be up to 20 cm long.  (True, he compares them in size  
to a fox, which would fit the marmot better, but perhaps he is  
exaggerating).  Also, Callimachus fr. 202 adds the information that  
the ants are winged, which is true of termites during the swarming  
season (June to August in Pakistan)

Do you know of any references to termite mounds or anthills in  
Sanskrit literature that might shed light on this question?  If there  
are modern survivals of this technique, they would most likely be  
found in remote parts of Pakistan.

Paul