Illustration of the "gracile ape-man of India", possibly the bandar-log, by Philippe Coudray in Guide des Animaux Cachés (2009).
The bandar-log or bandar-lok (Hindi: "monkey people") were an undiscovered tribe of India reported in the early 19th Century. They were described as hairy people resembling orangutans, with their own language.[1]
Description[]
Henry Piddington described the bandar-log as short and flat-nosed, with pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles on their mouths and cheeks; disproportionately long arms; and reddish hair growing on their black skin. He compared them to orangutans, and the Indian labourers compared them to monkeys.[1]
They spoke their own language, which had some degree of mutual intelligibility with the Dhangar language.[1]
Sightings[]
1824 or 1825[]
In 1824 or 1825, some native labourers under Henry Piddington working on a coffee plantation allegedly captured a pair of what they called "monkey people". According to Piddington:[1]
- "the people were flocking from all quarters to see what they called the "monkey people." Upon enquiring who these people were, he informed me that with the last gang of Dhangurs there had arrived two persons a man and a woman, "who are exactly like great monkies, Sir, and the natives call them the monkey people (bandar-log). They cannot even talk the Dhangur language properly, Sir, but have a language of their own."
- "I desired these persons to be sent for, and certainly they in all respects, and especially the man, justified the epithet which the villagers had applied to them. He was short, flat-nosed, had pouch-like wrinkles in semicircles round the corners of the mouth and cheeks, his arms were disproportionately long, and there was a portion of reddish hair to be seen on the rusty black skin. Altogether if crouched in a dark corner, or on a tree, he might well have been mistaken for a large Orang-Utang. The woman was equally ugly [...] these people were evidently so different from the Dhangurs (and so considered by them too) that it was impossible not to be, as it were, convinced that they were a different race.
- "Of this the most unquestionable proof was their language. It was only with great difficulty and by the aid of signs that one of the Dhangurs, evidently a very intelligent fellow, could make them understand the questions put to them ; the result of which was, that they lived a long way off from the Dhangurs in the jungles and mountains, that there were only a few villages of them, and that in consequence of an accident or a quarrel, the man had killed a man of another village, for which his own people were about to deliver him up; in the fear of which he fled with his wife, and after passing a long time wandering in the jungles they had fallen in with my party of Dhangurs who had given them food and had brought them down in their company. This latter part of their story was corroborated by the Dhangur Sirdar, who said, they were nearly starved when his people met with them. The Dhangur who had acted as interpreter said that some of their words sounded "like his talk," and that they understood a good many words of the Dhangur language. All agreed that they had never seen or heard of this people before.
- "I thought all this so curious, that I told them immediately that I should send them to Calcutta to a gentleman who wished to learn their language and hear about their country, and that they should have good pay and would get some presents. My intention was to send them to my friend and partner G. J. Gordon, Esq. of Mackintosh and Co. for Dr. Abel's inspection, and that of the Asiatic Society; and I never supposed for an instant that this could possibly alarm them and so did not note any exact description of them. It seems, however, that it did so, and that as I suppose the man thought, perhaps, that I was going to send him to prison for his homicide, which act by the way he explained very clearly to us by signs as well as words, or that they were frightened in some way by the Dhangurs or villagers; for the next morning it was found that they had absconded! and I could never hear of them again to my very great disappointment, for I felt, and still feel certain, that they were of a race utterly different from the Coles and Dhangurs, and probably approaching to the Veddahs of Ceylon. [...] I hope it will not be thought extravagant to suppose, that we really have a small forest tribe buried somewhere in the vast jungles of the wild country between Palmow, Sumbhulpore and the head waters of the Nerbudda? and I place my recollection of them now before the Society, in the hope that by giving it publicity, we may direct enquiry to the subject, and perhaps rescue from utter oblivion a remnant of one of the aboriginal races of India who, as to appearance, may well justify the singular myth of Hanuman's aid to Rama in the conquest of Lanka; which, like all other myths has no doubt a remote foundation in truth, such a one for instance as the tradition that the people who assisted the hero-god in his war, were like monkeys, which would have been perfectly true, if said of the forefathers of this singular race.
- "Since the foregoing was written (in the month of September last) I have lately obtained, in conversation with my friend, Dr. Falconer, a very remarkable confirmation of the views it sets forth. Dr. Falconer states that when in London he was intimate with Mr. Traill, for many years Commissioner of Kumaon. That gentleman told Dr. Falconer that, hearing from the natives curious accounts of a race of men who, like monkeys, lived in the trees, and who inhabited the depths of the forests of the Teraee, he had after much trouble succeeded in having one man brought to him, whose appearance was also most extraordinary and fully justified the epithet of bandar-log, which the natives applied to him. Mr. Traill found him also so excessively timid and alarmed, that though he was desirous of keeping him for a short time, in hopes of inducing him and his tribe to enter into some intercourse with the Residency, he would not detain him; and so giving him some presents he sent him away. Nothing was ever heard of him or of any of his tribe afterwards!
- "We have thus upon three several points of continental India the indubitable fact (for the account of the Tipperah, or Chittagong, tree-inhabiting race is I think official ?) that there are wild tribes existing which the native traditional name likens to the Orang-Utang, and my own knowledge certainly bears them out, for in the gloom of a forest, the individual I saw might as well pass for an Orang-Utang as a man. What are these singular people?
Theories[]
Piddington believed they were members of an undiscovered tribe similar to the Veddas of Ceylon.[1] Bengali anthropologist Sarat Chandra Roy suggested, tentatively, that they could have been Birhor people, who he described as having long, matted hair covering their faces.[2] MonsterQuest connected them to the Monkey Man of New Delhi.[3]