Among Vishnu‘s names occurs right after kapila, the name kapi, and before the name avyaya. (In the Vishnu Sahasranamam.)
It is well known that Valmiki Ramayanam uses the term kapi often to describe the vanaras.
I have previously argued/deduced in a bunch of posts that the vanaras were humans, and people kept throwing the term kapi at me. While the Ramayanam describes their behaviour as very human and Hanuman specifically as very learned and wise, our movies make monkeys out of them and worse represent great vanara kings, soldiers, scholars and engineers as foolish.
When I suggested that it could be a tawny (brown) colour (I got it from a translation of Sankara’s commentary) I was also lectured at by no one less than a human with a tail of qualifications (with plenty of unwarranted pontifications thrown in!)
The term kapi as used by Valmiki did not refer to monkeys but to a rather competent race of people living in the Bellary-Kishinda region who helped Rama recover Sita from the Rakshasas and Ravana.
Notes :
Acc to APTE : (http://www.aa.tufs.ac.jp/~tjun/sktdic/cgi-bin/dic-srch.cgi)
search `kapi’ in `Apte Dic’
meanings of “kapi” [1]
m.{i-stem}
1.an ape;
2.an elephant;
3.a species of karaJja;
4.incense;
5.the sun;
6.name of viSNu
#16223
meanings of “kapi” [2]
f.{i-stem}
1.a female monkey
#16224
Monier Williams says :http://www.sanskrit-lexicon.uni-koeln.de/cgi-bin/tamil/recherche
| 1 | kapi | m. (%{kamp} Un2. iv , 143) , an ape , monkey RV. x , 86 , 5 AV. Mn. Sus3r. &c. ; an elephant L. ; Emblica Officinalis L. ; a species of Karan5ja L. ; Olibanum L. ; the sun L. ; N. of Vishn2u or Kr2ishn2a MBh. xiii , 7045 ; N. of several men ; (%{ayas}) m. pl.N. of a school ; (%{i} , %{I}) f. a female ape L. ; (mfn.) brown Comm. on Un2. ; [cf. Gk. $ &78154[250 ,3] $ $ $ Old Germ. {affo} ; Angl. Sax. {apa} ; Eng. {ape}.] |
