Also 7–9 wanderow, 9 wandaru. [a. Sinhalese wanderu, monkey, cognate with Hindī bandar, repr. Skr. vănara monkey, believed to mean literally ‘forest-dweller,’ f. vanar- (vanas, vana) forest. The Fr. form ouanderon (Buffon) is a re-spelling of the word as given by Knox.] A name properly belonging to the langur monkeys (genus Semnopithecus), inhabiting Ceylon, but until recently almost always misapplied, after Buffon’s example, to the Lion-tailed Macaque (Macacus silenus) of Malabar.
1681. R. Knox, Hist. Rel. Ceylon & E.-Ind., I. vi. 26. Monkeys…. Some so large as our English Spaniel Dogs, of a darkish gray colour, and black faces, with great white beards…. There is another sort just of the same bigness, but … milk white both in body and face…. This sort they call in their Language, Wanderows.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., IV. vii. 215. The Wanderow is a baboon rather less than the former [i.e., the Mandril]…. What particularly distinguishes it is a large long white head of hair, together with a monstrous white beard. It … is chiefly seen in the woods of Ceylon and Malabar.
1785. W. Smellie, trans. Buffon’s Nat. Hist. (1791), VIII. 133. The Ouanderou and the Lowando. [Footnote, Ouanderou, wanderu, the names of this animal in Ceylon.]
1812. Mar. Graham, Jrnl. Resid. India (1813), 97. I saw one of the large baboons, called here Wanderows, on the top of a coco-nut tree.
1874. F. Buckland, in G. C. Bompas, Life, xii. (1885), 289. One is a Macaque…. Another is the Wanderoo, a fellow with a great mass of hair round his face and the most awful teeth ever seen in a monkey’s mouth. This monkey has been credited with having killed two niggers before he was caught; he comes from Malabar.
1907. Times, 21 Aug., 2/4. Mr. George Benzie has presented a lion-tailed macaque (Macacus silenus), often miscalled the wanderoo, a name which of right belongs to the purple-faced langur (Semnopithecus cephalopterus) of Ceylon.
attrib. 1885. Hornaday, 2 Yrs. in Jungle, xxiii. 274. We started a lot of wanderoo monkeys.
1894. Outing, XXIV. 292/1. Descriptions of the fauna of Ceylon, notably of the wandaru monkeys.
