The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c26.100

v1.c26.100

The monkeys too were a species of creature which naturally fascinated the foreigners. Different kinds are described. ‘Among the Prasioi (the people of Magadha),’ says a late writer, copying from Megasthenes, ‘there is a breed of apes human in intelligence, about the size of Hyrcanian dogs to look at, with a natural fringe above the forehead.’ One might take them for ascetics, if one did not know. They are bearded like satyrs, and their tail is like a lion’s....At the city of Latage they come in crowds to the region outside the gates and eat the boiled rice which is put out for them from the king’s house—every day a banquet is placed conveniently for them—and when they have had their fill they go back to their haunts in the forest, in perfect order, and do no damage to anything in the neighbourhood¹.’ The same writer takes from Megasthenes an account of the apes like satyrs which inhabited the glens of the Himālayas. ‘When they hear the noise of huntsmen and the baying of hounds, they run up to the top of the cliffs with incredible swiftness and repel attack by rolling stones down upon their assailants. They are hard to catch. Only occasionally, at rare intervals, some of them are brought to the country of the Prasioi, and these are either sick ones or pregnant females².’ The forests on the upper Jhelum (Hydaspes, Vitastā), one of the companions of Alexander recorded, were full of apes, and he was told that they were caught by the huntsmen putting on trousers in view of the apes, and leaving other pairs of trousers behind, smeared on the inside with birdlime, which the imitative animals would not fail to put on in their turn³!