156 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 



just been brought down to spend a week working on the road in lieu 

 of their tax. They were not pure-blooded Veddas. In spite of this, 

 their thin hungry appearance pointed to the trutli of their story that 

 they were really ? hort of food, and that if they were kept from home 

 for a week their wives and families would be reduced to a condition 

 of starvation. Luckily Mr. G. W. Woodhouse, the District Judge, 

 believed their story and sent them back to their village , for when we 

 visited Omuni about a week later, although we were met with the 

 customary gift of honey, to which were added a few berries, it was 

 obvious that even the small number of folk left in the settlement were 

 really short of food , and this in spite of a number of families having 

 left some time before to wander into Tamankaduwa, where they 

 hoped to get yams, and perhaps some game. Indeed, so short of 

 food were these people that, in spite of the interest one of us (B. Z. S.) 

 inspired, a number of women left the village immediately after our 

 arrival, explaining that if they did not go and find some yams they 

 and their children would get nothing to eat that night. 



The folk of Omuni share with the people of Mudugala, now living 

 at Unuwatura Bubule, about four miles from Maha-oya, the pos- 

 session of some most interesting beads, the like of which we did not 

 see elsewhere among the Veddas. At Omuni they are worn by the 

 women and regarded as heirlooms, and descend from grandmother 

 to granddaughter; or, when a woman dies before a granddaughter 

 is born, from mother to daughter; and it appears to be usual for a 

 grandmother to give a number of her beads to a granddaughter 

 soon after the latter's birth, and again at her marriage. At Unu- 

 watura Bubule these beads are not worn, as they are regarded as 

 too precious — indeed they are considered quasi -ssbcred., at least as 

 the property of the yakku, and are used in the ceremonial dances in 

 which the yakku are invoked. The beads themselves, which are 

 much worn, are of glass, generally red or green, and have been identi- 

 fied at the British Museum as Venetian beads of the sixteenth 

 or seventeenth century — indeed most of the actual patterns are 

 identical with the beads in a traveller's sample book preserved in 

 the Museum. 



From Maha-oya our route lay to Batticaloa, where, after a delay 

 to pick up an interpreter kindly put at our disposal by Mr. Freeman, 

 we went on to Ka^lkudah in order to visit the coast Veddas to the 

 north of Batticaloa. Although these coast Veddas, or Verdas as 

 they call themselves, have intermarried with the Tamils and have 

 adopted many Tamil customs, tliej still have remains of the old 

 clan system of the Veddas, and although they usually speak Tamil, 

 the majority of them say they have a language of their own which 

 they consider to be the old Vedda language, and which was found 

 to be Sinhalese. They have roughly built temples, and we' were told 

 independently in two settlements that the chief agency worshipped 

 was called Kapalpe or Kabalpe, i.e., " ship spirit." At first we 



