Primate Tales: Using Literature to Understand
Changes in Human–Primate Relations
Sindhu Radhakrishna
1
Received: 9 August 2017 /Accepted: 6 February 2018
#
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018
Abstract Primate species, by and large, are culturally significant icons across their
habitat. One of the more prominent expressions of this lies in the revered status of
macaques and langurs in South and Southeast Asia, largely because of their religious
status in Hinduism. People’s belief in these species’ sanctity often serves to protect
them from physical harm or retaliation in conflict situations and thus strongly
mediates their conservation. The nature of this interface has changed over the years
of mutual interactions between the two groups. Trends in literature are useful
markers of sociocultural developments in human life and reflect changes in human
views with respect to the world around them. I investigated Tamil language
poetical works from southern India to analyze people’s attitudes toward primates
and changes in their views of primates over time. My findings suggest that
sacredness was not a defining characteristic of human–primate relations in ancient
times. The deification of monkeys occurred later and was largely driven by the
growing popularity of Ramayana, the Hindu epic. The growing importance of
religion in the daily lives of people and increasing urbanization subsequently led to
the peripheralization of monkeys in people’s lives and narratives. Monkeys, once
considered coinhabitants of a shared landscape, slowly began to be seen as animals
with some human-like qualities that represent wild nature. The literary lens is thus
a useful tool to map and understand changes in human perceptions of primate
species over time and can be a powerful method in ethnoprimatology.
Keywords Content analysis
.
Ethnoprimatology
.
Human–primate relations
.
Primate
sacredness
.
Southern India
.
Tamil literature
Int J Primatol
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10764-018-0035-9
Handling Editor: Joanna M. Setchell
* Sindhu Radhakrishna
sindhu.radhakrishna@gmail.com
1
School of Natural Sciences and Engineering, National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS),
Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore 560 012, India
@Phil_Robichaud
@deepthiw
@JoseServera