Buru
A valley deep within the Himalaya Mountains may be home to a
lizard-like creature called buru, or at least was until quite recently.
In 1944-45, Christopher von F�rer-Haimendorf, professor of anthropology at Osmania
University in Hyderabad, India, undertook a study of tribes on the Assam-Burma border. In
the northern part of the Balipara Frontier Tract, he discovered a valley inhabited by a
primitive tribe known as the Apa Tanis. F�rer-Haimendorf recounted that the bottom of the
valley was "inhabited by lizardlike monsters." The account was published in the Illustrated
London News for November 8, 1947.
The creature was described in detail by a Charles Stonor in the 1940s. Stonor said that he
and J.P. Mills, a respected authority on Assamese tribes, had visited the Valley of the
Apa Tanis. He recounted a tradition that when the first of the Apa Tanis settled in the
valley, there was a great marshy lake. According to the tribesmen,
The lake was the home of great aquatic beasts the like of which they had never seen before, and to which they gave the name Buru. The Buru was a heavily-built, cumbersome animal, fifteen feet or so in length with a long and thick neck, and a broad head tapering to a snout. There were three hard plates on the head, one on top, and one on each side. The tongue was long and forked, after the fashion of a snake. There were teeth "flat like those of a man": and according to some accounts there was a pair of small [tusks] in each jaw. The body had a girth such as "a man could just put his arms around," and measured some eighteen inches across the back. A row of blunt spines ran down the back and along each side. There were four stumpy limbs, with feet "like those of a burrowing mole." The Buru had a thick and powerful tail, three or four feet long, and on each side were broad and deeply-fringed lobes. The skin was fish-like and the colour mottled blue/black above and whitish below.
There were many of them, and first and foremost they were aquatic, keeping to the deeper water, so that they were not very often seen. In the summer months they sometimes crawled out onto the banks to bask in the sun. In winter they disappeared into the mud on the bottom and were never seen. Now and again they appeared above the surface of the water, when they gave a coarse, bellowing call.
They were believed to have been vegetarian, and were always nosing about in the mud, weaving their way through the swamp with their long necks, when the hard plates on their heads were brought into play. They did not lay eggs, and the young were born alive in the water.
The Buru "did everything with its tail," and a tradition tells of a man who speared a young one he surprised asleep on a mud-bank, whereupon he was attacked by the mother, who caught him round the legs with her tail and pulled him into the water where he was drowned.
Stonor then goes on to recount how the Buru were killed off by the tribesmen, as the
population of the Apa Tanis increased. He was struck by their knowledge of the valley and
their ability to point out four sites at which a Buru had been killed. Stonor also spoke
with the descendants of a man named Takhe Saha, who said that their ancestor had found a
Buru's skull in an area called Chagho. They said it was "like a pig's but with a
longer snout."
In closing, Stonor noted "I for one find it impossible to doubt the truth of the
story. The appearance and the habits strongly suggest a giant member of the Lizard
family." Furthermore, he compares the Buru specifically to the famous Komodo Dragon (Varanus
komodoensis). After the publication of Stonor's account, he and Mills went to the area
twice more.
One of Stonor and Mills' other excursions, in 1946, turned up another account of the
Buru's appearance. A priest of the tribe, Tamar, said that the creatures were legless
(Mills said that Tamar was probably referring to the absence of well-developed limbs, not
the total absence of legs). The creatures, said Tamar, had two flanges the thickness of a
man's arm. These flanges, he said, aided in burrowing.
In 1948, an expedition composed of C.R. Stones, Ralph Izzard (a London Daily
Mail correspondent) and photographer Frank Hodgkinson, travelled to the
lands of the Rilo tribe, where Stonor had said the Buru still lived. In 1951, Izzard
published The Hunt for the Buru, an account of the 1948
expedition. The expedition was a failure.
Southeast Asia is home to a number of reptilian animals possibly analogous to the Buru.
There are convincing accounts of lizard-like monsters from the Sundarbans (Ganges Delta
region), in India and Bangladesh. The creatures are recognized as distinct from the
saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), although the two species have a symbiotic
relationship.
Less convincing accounts come from the Kathiawar Peninsula. Creatures called jhoor
supposedly dwell there, but Bernard Heuvelmans notes that they are "largely
mythicized." The Buru may also survive in Bhutan and Burma. As late as the 1500s, the
creatures were reported from Sumatra.
BORD, Janet and Colin
1989 Unexplained
Mysteries of the 20th Century. Chicago: Contemporary.
HEUVELMANS, Bernard
1986
Annotated Checklist of Apparently Unknown Animals With Which
Cryptozoology is Concerned. Cryptozoology 5.
MACKAL, Roy P.
1980 Searching
for Hidden Animals. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.