Observations on the Mussulmauns of India

LETTER XXII

Mon­keys.--Hin­doo opin­ions of their Na­ture.--In­stances of their sagac­ity.--Root­ed an­imos­ity of the Mon­key tribe to the snake.--Cru­el­ty to each oth­er when maimed.--The fe­male re­mark­able for af­fec­tion to its young.--Anec­dotes de­scrip­tive of the be­lief of the Na­tives in the Mon­key be­ing en­dowed with rea­son.--The Mon­keys and the Al­li­ga­tor.--The Trav­eller and the Mon­keys.--The Hin­doo and the Mon­key.

The Na­tives of In­dia, more par­tic­ular­ly the Hin­doos, are ac­cus­tomed to pay par­tic­ular at­ten­tion to the habits of the var­ied mon­key race, con­ceiv­ing them to be con­nect­ing links in the or­der of Na­ture be­tween brutes and ra­tio­nal crea­tures; or, as some imag­ine and as­sert, (with­out any oth­er foun­da­tion than con­jec­ture and fan­cy), that they were orig­inal­ly a race of hu­man be­ings, who for their wicked deeds have been doomed to per­pet­uate their dis­grace and pun­ish­ment to the end of time in the form and man­ner we see them, in­hab­it­ing forests, and sep­arat­ed from their su­pe­ri­or man.

I have had very few op­por­tu­ni­ties of ac­quaint­ing my­self with the gen­er­al prin­ci­ples of the Hin­doo be­lief, but I am told, there are amongst them those who as­sert that one of their deities was trans­formed to a par­tic­ular kind of mon­key, since des­ig­nat­ed Hum­moomaun,[1] af­ter the ob­ject of their ado­ra­tion; whence aris­es the marked ven­er­ation paid by Hin­doos of cer­tain sects to this class of mon­keys.

The Na­tives firm­ly be­lieve the whole mon­key race to be gift­ed with rea­son to a cer­tain ex­tent, nev­er ac­count­ing for the sagac­ity and cun­ning they are known to pos­sess by in­stinc­tive habits; ar­gu­ing from their own ob­ser­va­tions, that the mon­keys are peace­able neigh­bours, or in­vet­er­ate en­emies to man, in pro­por­tion as their good will is cul­ti­vat­ed by kind­ness and hos­pi­tal­ity, or their propen­si­ty to re­venge roused by an op­po­site line of con­duct to­wards them.

The hus­band­man, whose land is in the vicin­ity of a for­est, and the abode of mon­keys, se­cures safe­ty to his crops, by plant­ing a patch of ground with that species of grain which these an­imals are known to pre­fer. Here they as­sem­ble, as ap­petite calls, and feast them­selves up­on their own al­lot­ment; and, as if they ap­pre­ci­at­ed the hos­pi­tal­ity of the land­lord, not a blade is bro­ken, or a seed de­stroyed in the fields of corn to the right and left of their plan­ta­tion. But woe to the farmer who ne­glects this pro­vi­sion; his fields will not on­ly be vis­it­ed by the ma­raud­ers, but their vengeance will be dis­played in the waste­ful de­struc­tion of his cul­ti­va­tion. This un­doubt­ed­ly looks more like rea­son than in­stinct; and if cred­it could be giv­en to half the ex­traor­di­nary tales that are told of them, the mon­keys of In­dia might just­ly be en­ti­tled to a high­er claim than that of in­stinct for their ac­tions.

Mon­keys seem to be aware that snakes are their nat­ural en­emies. They nev­er ad­vance in pur­suit of, yet they rarely run from a snake; un­less its size ren­ders it too formidable an ob­ject for their strength and courage to at­tack with any­thing like a prospect of suc­cess in de­stroy­ing it. So great is the an­imos­ity of the mon­key race to these rep­tiles, that they at­tack them sys­tem­at­ical­ly, af­ter the fol­low­ing man­ner:--

When a snake is ob­served by a mon­key, he de­pends on his re­mark­able agili­ty as a safe­guard from the en­emy. At the most favourable op­por­tu­ni­ty he seizes the rep­tile just be­low the head with a firm grasp, then springs to a tree, if avail­able, or to any hard sub­stance near at hand, on which he rubs the snake's head with all his strength un­til life is ex­tinct; at in­ter­vals smelling the fresh blood as it oozes from the wounds of his vic­tim. When suc­cess has crowned his labour, the mon­key ca­pers about his pros­trate en­emy, as if in tri­umph at the vic­to­ry he has won; de­vel­op­ing, as the Na­tives say, in this, a strik­ing re­sem­blance to man.

Very few mon­keys, in their wild state, ev­er re­cov­er from in­flict­ed wounds; the rea­son as­signed by those who have stud­ied their usu­al habits is, that when­ev­er a poor mon­key has been wound­ed, even in the most tri­fling way, his as­so­ciates vis­it him by turns, when each vis­itor, with­out a sin­gle ex­cep­tion, is ob­served to scratch the wound smart­ly with their nails. A wound left to it­self might be ex­pect­ed to heal in a short time, but thus ir­ri­tat­ed by a suc­ces­sive ap­pli­ca­tion of their sharp nails, it in­flames and in­creas­es. Mor­ti­fi­ca­tion is ear­ly in­duced by the heat­ed at­mo­sphere, and death rapid­ly fol­lows.

The mon­keys' mo­tives for adding to their neigh­bour's an­guish, is ac­count­ed for by some spec­ula­tors on the score of their aver­sion to the un­nat­ural smell of blood; or they are sup­posed to be ac­tu­at­ed by a nat­ural ab­hor­rence to the ap­pear­ance of the wound, not by any means against the wound­ed; since in their do­mes­tic habits, they are con­sid­ered to be peace­able and af­fec­tion­ate in their bear­ings to­wards each oth­er. The strong will ex­er­cise mas­tery over the weak where food is scarce, but, in a gen­er­al way, they are by no means quar­rel­some or re­venge­ful amongst them­selves. They are known to hold by each oth­er in de­fend­ing rights and priv­ileges, if the ac­counts giv­en by cred­ible Na­tives be true, who add that a whole colony of mon­keys have been known to is­sue forth in a body to re­venge an in­jury sus­tained by an in­di­vid­ual of their tribe; of­ten fir­ing a whole vil­lage of chupha-​roofs, where the ag­gres­sor is known to be a res­ident, who in his anger may have maimed or chas­tised one of their colony.

The fe­male mon­key is re­mark­able for her at­tach­ment to her proge­ny, which she suck­les un­til it is able to pro­cure food for its own sus­te­nance. When one of her young dies, the moth­er is ob­served to keep it close­ly en­cir­cled in her arms, moan­ing piteous­ly with true ma­ter­nal feel­ings of re­gret, and nev­er part­ing with it from her em­brace un­til the dead body be­comes an of­fen­sive mass: and when at last she quits her hold, she lays it on the ground be­fore her, at no great dis­tance, watch­ing with in­tense anx­iety the dead body be­fore her, which she can no longer fold in her em­brace, un­til the work of de­com­pos­ing has al­tered the form of the crea­ture that claimed her ten­der at­tach­ment. What an ex­am­ple is here giv­en to un­nat­ural moth­ers who ne­glect or for­sake their off­spring!

I shall here in­sert a few anec­dotes il­lus­tra­tive of the opin­ions of the Na­tives on the sub­ject of mon­keys be­ing pos­sessed of rea­son­ing fac­ul­ties. They shall be giv­en ex­act­ly as I have re­ceived them, not ex­pect­ing my read­ers will give to them more cred­it than I am dis­posed to yield to most of these tales; but as they are re­al­ly be­lieved to be true by the Na­tives who re­late them, I feel bound to af­ford them a place in my work, which is in­tend­ed rather to de­scribe men as they are, than men as I wish to see them.

In the neigh­bour­hood of Mut­tra is an im­mense jun­gle or for­est, where mon­keys abound in great num­bers and va­ri­ety. Near a vil­lage bor­der­ing this for­est, is a large nat­ural lake which is said to abound with ev­ery sort of fish and al­li­ga­tors. On the banks of this lake are many trees, some of which branch out a great dis­tance over the wa­ter. On these trees mon­keys of a large de­scrip­tion, called Lun­goor,[2] gam­bol from spray to spray in hap­py amuse­ment: some­times they crowd in num­bers on one branch, by which means their weight near­ly brings the end of the bough to the sur­face of the wa­ter; on which oc­ca­sion it is by no means un­usu­al for one or more of their num­ber to be less­ened.

Whether the mon­keys told their thoughts or not, my in­for­mant did not say, but the re­tail­ers of this sto­ry as­sert, that the old­est mon­key was aware that his miss­ing brethren had been seized by an al­li­ga­tor from the branch of the tree, whilst they were en­joy­ing their amuse­ment. This old mon­key, it would seem, re­solved on re­veng­ing the in­jury done to his tribe, and formed a plan for re­tal­iat­ing on the com­mon en­emy of his race.

The mon­keys were ob­served by the vil­lagers, for many suc­ces­sive days, ac­tive­ly oc­cu­pied in col­lect­ing the fi­brous bark of cer­tain trees, which they were con­vert­ing in­to a thick rope. The nov­el­ty of this em­ploy­ment sur­prised the peas­ants and in­duced them to watch dai­ly for the re­sult. When the rope was com­plet­ed, from six­ty to sev­en­ty of the strongest mon­keys con­veyed it to the tree: hav­ing formed a noose at one end with the nicest care, the oth­er end was se­cured by them to the over­hang­ing arm of the tree. This ready, they com­menced their for­mer gam­bols, jump­ing about and crowd­ing on the same branch which had been so fa­tal to many of their brethren.

The al­li­ga­tor, un­con­scious of the stratagem thus pre­pared to se­cure him, sprang from the wa­ter as the branch de­scend­ed but in­stead of catch­ing the mon­key he ex­pect­ed, he was him­self caught in the noose; and the mon­keys mov­ing away rather pre­cip­itate­ly, the al­li­ga­tor was drawn con­sid­er­ably above the sur­face of the wa­ter. The more he strug­gled the firmer he was held by the noose; and here was his skele­ton to be seen many years af­ter, sus­pend­ed from the tree over the wa­ter, un­til time and the changes of sea­son re­leased the blanched bones from their ex­alt­ed sit­ua­tion, to con­sign them to their more nat­ural el­ement in the lake be­low.

On one oc­ca­sion, a Hin­doo trav­eller on his way to Mut­tra, from his place of res­idence, drew down the re­sent­ment of the mon­keys in­hab­it­ing the same for­est, by his inat­ten­tion to their well-​known habits. The sto­ry is told as fol­lows:--

'The man was trav­el­ling with all his world­ly wealth about his per­son: viz., fifty gold mo­hurs, (each near­ly equal to two pounds in val­ue[3]), and a few ru­pees, the sav­ings of many a year's hard ser­vice, which were se­cret­ed in the folds of his tur­ban; a good suit of clothes on his back; a few gold or­na­ments on his neck and arms; and a bun­dle of sun­dries and cook­ing ves­sels.

'The Hin­doo was on foot, with­out com­pan­ions, mak­ing his way to­wards the home of his fore­fa­thers, where he hoped with his lit­tle trea­sury to be able to spend his re­main­ing years in peace with his fam­ily and friends, af­ter many years' toil and ab­sence from his home. He stopped near to the lake in ques­tion, af­ter a long and fa­tigu­ing march, to rest him­self be­neath the shade of the trees, and cook his hum­ble meal of bread and dhall. I ought here, per­haps, to say, that this class of Na­tives al­ways cook in the open air, and, if pos­si­ble, near a riv­er, or large body of wa­ter, for the pur­pose of bathing be­fore meals, and hav­ing wa­ter for pu­ri­fy­ing their cook­ing uten­sils, &c.

'The man hav­ing un­dressed him­self, and care­ful­ly piled his wardrobe be­neath the tree he had se­lect­ed for shel­ter, went to the lake and bathed; af­ter which he pre­pared his bread, and sat him­self down to dine. As soon as he was com­fort­ably seat­ed, sev­er­al large mon­keys ad­vanced and squat­ted them­selves at a re­spect­ful dis­tance from him, doubt­less ex­pect­ing to share in the good things he was en­joy­ing. But, no: the trav­eller was ei­ther too hun­gry or in­hos­pitable, for he fin­ished his meal, with­out ten­der­ing the small­est por­tion to his un­in­vit­ed vis­itors, who kept their sta­tion watch­ing ev­ery mouth­ful un­til he had fin­ished.

'The meal con­clud­ed, the trav­eller gath­ered his cook­ing ves­sels to­geth­er and went to the bank of the lake, in or­der to wash them, as is cus­tom­ary, and to cleanse his mouth af­ter eat­ing; his clothes and valu­ables were left se­cure­ly un­der the tree as he imag­ined,--if he thought at all about them,--for he nev­er dreamed of hav­ing of­fend­ed the mon­keys by eat­ing all he had cooked, with­out mak­ing them par­tak­ers. He was no soon­er gone, how­ev­er, than the mon­keys as­sem­bled round his valu­ables; each took some­thing from the col­lec­tion; the old­est among them hav­ing se­cured the purse of gold, away they ran to the tree over the very spot where the man was en­gaged in pol­ish­ing his brass ves­sels.

The Hin­doo had soon com­plet­ed his busi­ness at the lake, and un­con­scious of their move­ments, he had re­turned to the tree, where to his sur­prise and sor­row, he dis­cov­ered his loss. Near­ly fran­tic, the Hin­doo doubt­ed not some sly thief had watched his mo­tions and re­moved his trea­sures, when he heard cer­tain hor­rid yells from the mon­keys which at­tract­ed his at­ten­tion: he re­turned hasti­ly to the lake, and on look­ing up to the tree, he dis­cov­ered his en­emies in the mon­keys. They tan­ta­lized him for some time by hold­ing up the sev­er­al ar­ti­cles to his view, and when the old mon­key shook the bag of gold, the poor man was in an agony; they then threw the whole in­to the lake, the coins, one by one, were cast in­to the deep wa­ter, where not a shad­ow of hope could be en­ter­tained of their restora­tion, as the lake was deep and known to be in­fest­ed with al­li­ga­tors.

'The man was al­most driv­en mad by this un­looked-​for calami­ty, by which he was de­prived of the many com­forts his nursed trea­sure had so fair­ly promised him for the re­main­der of life. He could de­vise no plan for re­cov­er­ing his lost valu­ables, and re­solved on has­ten­ing to the near­est vil­lage, there to seek ad­vice and as­sis­tance from his fel­low-​men; where hav­ing re­lat­ed his un­for­tu­nate ad­ven­tures, and declar­ing he had done noth­ing to anger the crea­tures, he was asked if he had dined, and if so, had he giv­en them a share? He said, he had in­deed cooked his din­ner, and ob­served the mon­keys seat­ed be­fore him whilst he dined, but he did not of­fer them any.

'“That, that, is your of­fence!” cried the vil­lagers in a breath; “who would ev­er think of eat­ing with­out shar­ing his meal with men or with an­imals? You are pun­ished for your greed­iness, friend.”--“Be it so,” said the trav­eller; “I am severe­ly used by the brutes, and am now re­solved on pun­ish­ing them ef­fec­tu­al­ly in re­turn for the ill they have done me.”

'He ac­cord­ing­ly sold the gold or­na­ments from his arms and neck, pur­chased a quan­ti­ty of sug­ar, ghee, flour, and ar­senic, re­turned to his old quar­ters, pre­pared ev­ery­thing for cook­ing, and, in a short time, had a large dish filled with rich-​look­ing cakes, to tempt his en­emies to their own ru­in.

'The feast was pre­pared in the pres­ence of the as­sem­bled mul­ti­tude of mon­keys. The Hin­doo placed the dish be­fore his guests, say­ing, “There, my lords! your food is ready!” The old mon­key ad­vanced to­wards the dish, took up a cake, raised it to his nose, and then re­turn­ing it to the dish, im­me­di­ate­ly ran off, fol­lowed by the whole of his as­so­ciates in­to the thick jun­gle.

'The man be­gan to de­spair, and thought him­self the most un­lucky crea­ture ex­ist­ing; when, at length, he saw them re­turn­ing with aug­ment­ed num­bers; he watched them nar­row­ly, and ob­served each mon­key had a green leaf in his paw, in which he fold­ed a cake and de­voured the whole speed­ily. The man ex­pect­ed of course to see them sick­en im­me­di­ate­ly, for the quan­ti­ty of ar­senic he had used was suf­fi­cient, he imag­ined to have killed twen­ty times their num­ber. But, no: his stratagem en­tire­ly failed; for the leaf they had pro­vid­ed them­selves was an an­ti­dote to the poi­son put in­to their food. The trav­eller thus sac­ri­ficed even that lit­tle which would have car­ried him on his jour­ney, had he been sat­is­fied with his first loss; but the Hin­doo cher­ished a re­venge­ful dis­po­si­tion, and there­by was obliged to beg his way to his fam­ily.'

The next mon­key sto­ry is equal­ly mar­vel­lous, the Na­tives be­lieve that it ac­tu­al­ly oc­curred; I am dis­posed, how­ev­er, to think all these sto­ries were orig­inal­ly fa­bles to im­press a moral up­on the ig­no­rant.

'Near a small town in the province of Oude there is a jun­gle of some ex­tent, in­hab­it­ed by mon­keys. A cer­tain man of the Hin­doo class, re­sid­ing in the town, re­solved up­on en­joy­ing him­self one day with a bot­tle of ar­rack he had pro­cured by stealth, and since it is well known that spir­its or fer­ment­ed liquors are pro­hib­it­ed ar­ti­cles in the ter­ri­to­ries gov­erned by Mus­sul­maun rulers, the man be­took him­self with his treat to the neigh­bour­ing jun­gle, where in pri­vate he might drink the spir­it he loved, and es­cape the vig­ilance of the po­lice.

'Ar­riv­ing at a con­ve­nient spot, the Hin­doo seat­ed him­self un­der a tree, pre­pared his hookha, drew from his wrap­per the bot­tle of spir­its, and a small cup he had pro­vid­ed; and if ev­er he knew what hap­pi­ness was in his life, this mo­ment was sure­ly his hap­pi­est.

'He drank a cup of his liquor, smoked his hookha with in­creased rel­ish, and thought of noth­ing but his present en­joy­ment. Present­ly he heard the sound of rustling in the trees, and in a few min­utes af­ter, a fine stur­dy mon­key, of the Lun­goor tribe, placed him­self very near to him and his bot­tle.

'The Hin­doo was of a live­ly tem­per, and with­al kind­ly dis­posed to­wards the liv­ing, though not of his own species. Hav­ing a cake of dry bread in his waist­band, he broke off a piece and threw it to his vis­itor; the mon­key took the bread and sniffed at the cup. “Per­haps you may like to taste as well as to smell,” thought the Hin­doo, as he poured out the liquor in­to the cup, and pre­sent­ed it to his guest.

'The mon­key raised the cup with both paws to his mouth, sipped of its con­tents, winked his eyes, ap­peared well sat­is­fied with the flavour, and to the sur­prise of the Hin­doo, fin­ished the cup, which was no soon­er done, than away he sprang up the tree again.

'“Had I known you would run away so soon, my guest, I should have spared my ar­rack;” thought the Hin­doo. But the mon­key quick­ly re­turned to his old po­si­tion, threw down a gold mo­hur to his en­ter­tain­er, and sat grin­ning with ap­par­ent sat­is­fac­tion. The Hin­doo, as­ton­ished at the sight of gold, thought to re­pay his bene­fac­tor by an­oth­er cup of spir­its, which he placed be­fore the mon­key, who drank it off, and again mount­ed the tree, and short­ly re­turned with a sec­ond gold mo­hur.

'De­light­ed with the prof­it his ar­rack pro­duced, the Hin­doo drank spar­ing­ly him­self, for each time the mon­key took a cup, a gold mo­hur was pro­duced, un­til the man count­ed eight of these valu­able coins on his palm. By this time, how­ev­er, the mon­key was com­plete­ly over­come by the strength of his pota­tions, and lay ap­par­ent­ly sense­less be­fore the Hin­doo, who fan­cied now was his turn to mount the tree, where he found, on dili­gent search, in a hol­low place, a small bag of gold mo­hurs, with which he walked off, leav­ing the mon­key pros­trate on the earth.

'The Hin­doo de­ter­mined on go­ing some dis­tance from his home, in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion, fear­ing his se­cret trea­sure might be the means of draw­ing him in­to dif­fi­cul­ties amongst the peo­ple of his own town, who had prob­ably been robbed by the mon­key at some pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od.

'In the mean­while the mon­key is sup­posed to have re­cov­ered from his stu­por, and the next morn­ing on dis­cov­er­ing his loss, he set up a hor­rid yell, which brought to­geth­er all his fel­low-​in­hab­itants of the jun­gle; and some neigh­bour­ing vil­lagers saw an im­mense num­ber of mon­keys of all sorts and sizes, col­lect­ed to­geth­er in a body. The sto­ry runs that this army of mon­keys was head­ed by the one who had re­cov­ered from his drunk­en fit, and that they marched away from the jun­gle in pur­suit of the rob­ber.

'Their first march was to the ad­ja­cent vil­lage, where ev­ery house was vis­it­ed in turn by the mon­keys, with­out suc­cess; no one ev­er ven­tur­ing to ob­struct or drive away the in­trud­ers, fear­ing their re­sent­ment. Af­ter which they sal­lied out of the vil­lage to the main road, minute­ly look­ing for foot­steps, as a clue, on the sandy path­way; and by this means dis­cov­er­ing the track of the Hin­doo, they pur­sued the road they had en­tered through­out the day and night. Ear­ly in the morn­ing of the fol­low­ing day, the mon­keys ad­vanced to the serai (inn, or halt­ing place for trav­ellers) soon af­ter the Hin­doo him­self had quit­ted it, who had ac­tu­al­ly so­journed there the pre­vi­ous night.

'On the road, when the horde of mon­keys met any trav­eller, he was de­tained by them un­til the chief of them had scru­ti­nized his fea­tures, and he was then lib­er­at­ed on find­ing he was not the per­son they were in pur­suit of. Af­ter hav­ing marched near­ly forty miles from their home, they en­tered one of the halt­ing places for trav­ellers, where the Hin­doo was rest­ing af­ter his day's jour­ney.

'The mon­key hav­ing rec­og­nized the rob­ber, im­me­di­ate­ly grasped him by the arm, and oth­ers en­ter­ing, the fright­ened rob­ber was searched, the purse dis­cov­ered in his wrap­per, which the chief mon­key an­gri­ly seized, and then count­ed over its con­tents, piece by piece. This done, find­ing the num­ber cor­rect, the mon­key se­lect­ed eight pieces, and threw them to­wards the Hin­doo; and dis­tribut­ing the re­main­ing num­ber of gold mo­hurs amongst the mon­keys, who placed each his coin in the hol­low of his cheek, the whole body re­tired from the serai to re­trace their steps to the jun­gle.'

[1] Hanu­man, the di­vine mon­key of the Ra­mayana epic, who helped Ra­ma to re­cov­er his ab­duct­ed wife, Si­ta.

[2] _Lan­gur, Semno­pithe­cus en­tel­lus_.

[3] Now worth a lit­tle more than a sovereign.