LANGŪRS AT HOME
An amusing case of monkey plunder occurred some years ago at Simla. The chief confectioner of the place had prepared a magnificent bride-cake, which was safely put by in a room that, like most Simla rooms, looked on the steep hillside. It is of little use, however, locking a door when the window is left open. So when they came to fetch the cake, the last piece of it was being handed out of the window by a chain of monkeys who had whitened the hillside with its fragments. A theft of this kind is mainly mischievous, for the wild monkey dislikes food mixed with butter, nor does he greatly care for sugar. A bride-cake, too, looks (and is to my humble taste) about as edible as a plaster cast, and one can scarcely understand how they discovered it was meant to be eaten. The creature has a passion for picking things to pieces. A flower or a fragile toy will amuse a monkey for a long time. If a bird falls into its hands it will not be released till it is plucked of every feather. If the bird resents the process, the monkey with an unconcerned air rubs its head vigorously on the ground. It would not be difficult to train a monkey to pluck fowls for use in the kitchen. It is often said that the monkey kills snakes by grinding the head on a stone, occasionally spitting on it, nor is the feat incredible to one who has observed the constant habit of rubbing things on the ground and holding them up for inspection. Yet in spite of this belief, a popular saying, expressing a dilemma or an opportunity that cannot be turned to profit, is—"Like a snake in a monkey's hand." He is afraid of it, but he will not let go. Natives also say that monkeys rob birds' nests and destroy eggs and young in pure malice. The fastidiousness of the wild monkey's taste is curious, considering the precarious existence it leads. Daily for some months my family and myself were interested in a troop of wild monkeys, which we regularly fed, trying them with very various food. Once we gave them biscuits which, from lying in a dealer's shop, had acquired that peculiarly stale, tinny flavour which Anglo-Indians know too well. They had been accustomed to eat the same kind of biscuit when fresh, and scrambled as usual for the fragments, but after the first bite they made comical mouths of dislike, spat out vigorously, rubbed the biscuit on their sides, on the ground, examined it carefully, and seemed to conclude,—"Yes, it's the same as yesterday," tried again, and then chattered and grinned in wrath and disgust. But they soon learned to discriminate by smell merely.
Like the over-wise crow, which is apt to outwit itself by futile cunning, the monkey is most ingeniously suspicious. Our friends grew bold with encouragement, but their manners were never friendly; with the exception of one which had evidently escaped from confinement. We managed to entrap the creature, and having removed its hateful collar, set it free again. My daughter could coax this experienced person into a room and it would open her hand to take grain, keeping a sharp look-out on the open door. All the rest were keenly suspicious, and irritable. They seemed to circumvent each morsel and, having won it, defied us with angry eyes to take it back again, regarding our free gift as a triumph of their own finesse. This is natural enough when we consider that for generations the monkey folk have been chased from field and garden plot with shouting. They were in no fear for their lives, and had learned the very human satisfaction of defying an enemy from a safe distance.
This shallow cunning has deeply impressed the minds of the people. They say it is absolutely impossible to poison a monkey. For ages this belief has been rooted in the minds of Orientals. Al Masudi, who compiled his Arabic encyclopædia—"meadows of gold and mines of gems"—in the tenth century, wrote that most Chinese and Hindu kings keep wise but dumb monkeys as tasters for their tables, relying implicitly on their judgment of what is poisoned and what is wholesome. A native gentleman told me of a cultivator in the hills whose crops and garden were so seriously injured that he determined to get rid of his enemies. So he daily set out platters of boiled rice which they greedily ate. When they had learned the habit of coming in crowds, he one day set out rice poisoned with a tasteless drug. He heard a great chatter and whining round his treacherous platters, and saw a council sitting round the untasted food in earnest debate. Presently they rose and scampered away, but soon returned, each bearing twigs and leaves of a plant which their instinct taught them was an antidote to the poison. With these they stirred and mixed the rice, which they afterwards ate with their usual relish, returning the next morning for more, absolutely unharmed. This story is also told, mutatis mutandis, of an attempt made by a Sikh noble, Sirdar Lehna Singh Majithia, to poison troublesome monkeys at the sacred town of Hurdwar. When you believe that monkeys are capable of speech and only refrain from speaking for fear that they would be made to work, it is easy to credit them with a knowledge of chemistry. Belief in their ability to speak is widely current in India, and the notion is not unknown in the West.
But while native credulity will swallow the impossible with ease, native observation is not without keenness. The inability of the monkey to make for itself a shelter against the heavy rains of the country is noted in proverbs. It is really curious that in the Simla region, where are many built-out roads forming dry refuges of quite natural aspect, they are never resorted to. Troops of monkeys will sit shivering for hours in driving storms within a few yards of covered spaces, which seem as if specially provided for their shelter and comfort.
Their daily life is interesting to watch. The scheme seems to be patriarchal with a touch of military organisation, for they move and plunder in a sort of formation, and the patriarch is at once commander-in-chief and effective fighting force. Its main fact is the tyranny of the leading male of each troop, who grows to a great size, with immensely powerful shoulders. He develops large canine teeth, which some observant Hindu draughtsmen take care to grace their pictures of Hanumān withal. These are used unsparingly on the younger male members of the troop, in fighting for his place of power, and on disobedient females. "The demon" was the familiar name we gave to a leader with whom we were well acquainted. He seemed to be always angry and was easily moved to a paroxysm of rage, when he used worse language than any permitted to man, for there was a savage force and variety in his grunting fury which made one thankful he was untranslatable. He took the lion's share of everything, especially resenting that the rising bachelors of the troop should have a chance. Mothers and babies were merely cuffed aside from a morsel, but there was ruthless war between him and all who might become his rivals. No more perfect picture of headlong, desperate terror can be imagined than a young man-monkey plunging and bounding in reckless flight down the hillside, pursued as he screams by a livid and grunting elder. Natives may well call the monkey sire Maharaja, for he is the very type and incarnation of savage and sensual despotism. They are right, too, in making their Hanumān red, for the old male's face is of the dusky red you see in some elderly, over-fed, human faces.
Like human Maharajas, they have their tragedies and mayhap their romances. One morning there came a monkey chieftain, weak and limping, having evidently been worsted in a severe fight with another of his own kind. One hand hung powerless, his face and eyes bore terrible traces of battle, and he hirpled slowly along with a pathetic air of suffering, supporting himself on the shoulder of a female,—a wife, the only member of his clan who had remained faithful to him after his defeat. We threw them bread and raisins, and the wounded warrior carefully stowed the greater part away in his cheek pouch. The faithful wife, seeing her opportunity, sprang on him, holding fast his one sound hand, and opening his mouth she deftly scooped out the store of raisins. Then she sat and ate them very calmly at a safe distance, while he mowed and chattered in impotent rage. He knew that without her help he could not reach home, and was fain to wait with what patience he might till the raisins were finished. It was a sad sight, but, like more sad sights, touched with the light of comedy. This was probably her first chance of disobedience or of self-assertion in her whole life, and I am afraid she thoroughly enjoyed it. Then she led him away,—possibly to teach him more salutary lessons of this modern and "advanced" sort, so that at the last he would go to another life with a meek and chastened soul.
Monkey mothers are tender to their little ones, with a care that endears them to the child-loving Oriental. The babies are quaint little mites with the brown hair that afterwards stands up crest-wise, parted in the middle of their brows; their wistful faces are full of wrinkles, and their mild hazel eyes have a quick glancing timidity, that well suits their pathetic, lost, kitten-like cry. Yet even in the forest there are frisky matrons. I have seen a mother monkey, disturbed in her gambols on the ground by the whining of a tiny baby left half-way up an adjacent tree, suddenly break off, and hastily shinning up the tree, snatch up the baby, hurry to the very topmost branch, where she plumped it down as who should say,—"Tiresome little wretch!" and then come down to resume her play. Thus is a mischievous midshipman mast-headed, and thus is the British baby sent up to the nursery while mamma amuses herself. Natives say that when monkey babies die the mothers often go mad, and that in the excess of their affection they occasionally squeeze their offspring to death. It is at least certain that a mother monkey will carry with her for weeks the dried and dead body of her little one, nursing and petting it as if it were alive. In defence of the little ones the sires will fight savagely, as is their duty. I knew a fat fox terrier, the dream of whose life was to catch a monkey. Once it came true, and for half a minute, said a man who saw, he held a baby monkey. I was indoors at the time, but as the dog passed me to take refuge under a chair, I knew from his solemn silence that something had happened. The leader monkey had fallen upon him and inflicted three frightful bites—more like deep knife-cuts than the work of teeth—which seemed likely to prove fatal; but first-rate surgical skill was available, and Bob was saved to carefully avoid monkeys in future.
A quaint episode of our acquaintanceship with monkey folk was the arrival during one of our levees of one of the wandering performers who lead about tame monkeys with a goat that serves them as charger. The wild monkeys drew off at first suspiciously, but when the man sat down to his performance and made their tame brethren dance, put on strange raiment, and mount the goat, they crept closer with horrified curiosity and evident disgust. The tame monkeys off duty regarded their free kinsmen with listless indifference, and the artiste at work never seemed to glance at them, though they watched him with jealous and angry eyes, much, I imagine, as labourers on strike watch blacklegs.
There is a belief that during severe winters wild monkeys, instead of furtively hanging about the grocers' shops and watching their chance to steal, come into Simla streets in bands and stand whining like beggars asking for alms. But there is only native authority for this story. It is just possible they may have been so hard pressed as to seek human help, but it is an immense step for such wild and distrustful creatures to take. Some shopkeepers habitually feed them, and they may have whined at a place where they missed their daily dole.