CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

SEMNOPITHECUS ENTELLUS, THE COMMON LANGUR

38.1 The Living

38.1.1 Zoology The common langur or Hanuman monkey is a small and elegant with long limbs and a very long tail (Plate 41) as all langurs.1 It has a head and body length ranging between 40 and 80 cm and a tail length of about 70 to 110 cm. Langurs are extremely agile, though they lack the grasping tail of the New World monkeys. On the ground, langurs walk on four feet. Their hands are much like ours, with which they thus can hold objects and manipulate them as we do, although their thumb is small. The common langur has long, whitish hairs around a blackish face with prominent, shelf-like brow ridges carrying forward directed brow hairs. Langurs feed mainly on leaves, complemented with fl owers, fruits, buds and so on. When they spot a tiger or a leopard, they follow it at a safe distance among the tree tops meanwhile talking excited to each other. They typically live in troops of 15–25 individuals of both sexes and mixed ages, though all-male troops also occur. When the forest consists of tall trees, langurs seldom come to the ground, and live almost entirely on the high branches. The common langur is the commonest monkey on the Indian subcontinent after the rhesus monkey. It is found in extreme southern Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, northern Pakistan, Kashmir, , Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka, where it lives in practically every forests of India, on sea level as well as 3.5 km high in the Himalayas, and not shunning human settlements and buildings. Currently, however, the common

1 Often the species is considered a member of the genus Presbytis, but at present it is regarded as the (single) representative of a separate genus; langurs of the genus Presbytis are restricted to Indonesia and the Malay peninsula. 388 SEMNOPITHECUS ENTELLUS langur is a near threatened species, mainly due to loss of habitat.2 Its frequent crop raids often make it an undesired species.

38.1.2 Related Species There are fi ve more langur species on the subcontinent, all very restricted in their distribution. They resemble each other more or less with minor specifi c difference. These fi ve species belong to the genus Trachypithecus, the brow-ridged langurs or leaf monkeys and are the following: the golden langur (Trachypithecus geei) of Nepal, and north-eastern India, the capped langur (T. pileatus) of and Bangladesh, the Nil- giri langur (T. johni) of south-western India, Phayre’s langur (T. phayrei) of eastern Assam and Bangladesh, and the purple-faced leaf monkey (T. vetulus) of Sri Lanka. The langurs of the genus Trachypithecus have prominent brow ridges, resembling raised eyebrows. Their thumb is particularly short, and their hinds limbs are relatively shorter, compared to the common langur.

38.1.3 Role of Langurs in Society The common langur is sacred to the Hindus, who relate it to the monkey-god Hanuman, son of the wind god Vayu and a popular hero in the epic Ramayana.3 In the epic, Hanuman is the general of the monkey army (for fi ghting langurs, see fi g. 471), which assists Rama in recovering Sita, who was abducted by Ravana, the king of Lanka. Hanuman discovers Sita, after which he sets the city of Ravana ablaze. He is one of the most popular deities of Hindus today, especially as remover of obstacles (samkat-mochan), much like the elephant-headed god Ganesha. He is often depicted running after the demon Ravana

2 A Eudey and Members of the Specialist Group 2000, “Semnopithecus entel- lus,” in 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, op. cit. 3 For the complex theology around Hanuman, see e.g. S. Nagar, Hanuman: Through the Ages, 3 vols. (Delhi: B.R. Publishing, 2004) and J. Narula, God and Epic Hero: The Origin and Growth of Hanuman in Indian Literary and Folk Tradition (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005). Hanuman is a folk-god, an incarnation of Shiva, a warrior-god, an ideal human and a perfect statesman. He plays a prominent role in the devotional bhakti cult as well as in esoteric tantric cults. Hanuman is known in several forms: entirely theriomorphic, monkey-headed and multi-headed. Hanuman is especially popular in South India, but the origin of his cult is not clear. It is, a.o., believed that it was originally associated with sun worship, see R. Ponnu, “Hanuman Cult in South India,” Quarterly Journal of the Mythic Society 81, 1–2 (1990), 107–125.