Chap. I.] 



MONKEYS. 



11 



merous, these monkeys become so familiarised with the 

 presence of man as to exhibit the utmost daring and 

 indifference. A flock of them will take possession of 

 a Palmyra palm; and so effectually can they crouch 

 and conceal themselves among the leaves that, on the 

 slightest alarm, the whole party becomes invisible in an 

 instant. The presence of a dog, however, excites such 

 an irrepressible curiosity that, in order to watch his 

 movements, they never fail to betray themselves. They 

 may be frequently seen congregated on the roof of a 

 native hut : and, some years ago, the child of a Euro- 

 pean clergyman stationed near Jaffna having been left 

 on the ground by the nurse, was so teased and bitten by 

 them as to cause its death. 



The Singhalese have the impression that the remains 

 of a monkey are never to be found in the forest ; a 

 belief which they have embodied in the proverb that 

 ct he who has seen a white crow, the nest of a paddi 

 bird, a straight coco-nut tree, or a dead monkey, is 

 certain to live for ever." This piece of folk-lore has 

 evidently reached Ceylon from India, where it is be- 

 lieved that persons dwelling on the spot where a h ami- 

 man monkey, Semnopithecus entellus, has been killed, 

 will die, that even its bones are unlucky, and that no 

 house erected where they are hid under ground can 

 prosper. Hence when a dwelling is to be built, it is 

 one of the employments of the Jyotish philosophers to 

 ascertain by their science that none such are concealed ; 

 and Buchanan observes that " it is, perhaps, owing to 

 this fear of ill-luck that no native will acknowledge his 

 having seen a dead hanuman." 1 



1 Buchanan's Survey ofBhagul- monkey has never been found on 

 poor, p. 142. At Gibraltar it is the rock, 

 believed that the body of a dead 



