8 



Dodda- Veddas — Bhodii/as. — In connection with this 

 subject we must be careful not to confound the Veddas with the 

 " Dodda- Veddas," a name given to a division of one of the very 

 lowest castes, or rather a tribe of outcasts, including the 

 Rodiyas. Thousands of years had not sufficed to reduce the 

 Rodiya out-casts to the degree of degradation to which the 

 Veddas had fallen when Knox first heard of them. 



HISTORICAL & LINGUISTIC. 



Cultivated Races in the Island: Tamils. — This would be the 

 place to bring forward the historical and linguistic observations 

 which concern the relations of the Veddas to the cultivated tribes 

 of the island, by fir the most numerous of whom, after the 

 Sinhalese themselves, are the Tamils, who now exclusively 

 occupy all those portions of the island which lie nearest to the 

 Indian continent, and whose connection with the Dravidians of 

 of India seems unquestionable. These are the Damilos of the 

 Mahawaiiso, a Pali term exactly equivalent to Dravida in the 

 Sanskrit. ( 2 ) In local English speech they are frequently 

 called Malabars, as if they came only from the Malabar coast, 

 but in point of fact they belong to the ancient great 

 Pandian kingdom, wdiich stretched from the east to the west 

 coast of India, and from the Deccan to Cape Comorin, but has 

 ultimately dwindled to the little state of Madura. The first 

 warlike invasion of the Damilos, of which there is historical 

 record, took place, B. C. 237, and during the whole of the next 

 fourteen or fifteen hundred years their invasions were constantly 

 renewed, and the dynasties of native princes repeatedly super- 

 seded by their Tamil conquerors. ( 3 ) In the beginning of the 

 13th century the whole country was overrun, subjected, and 

 cruelly devastated ; its inhabitants tortured, and many of its 

 Buddhist monuments destroyed by a great expedition, from 

 Kalinga and the northern Circars of the Dekkan, under 

 Maagha, who assumed the throne of the island. In the result, 



( 2 ) R. C. Childers. Notes on the Sinhalese language. Journal 

 Royal Asiatic Society, 1875, London, Vol. viii., p. 133 note. 



( 3 ) Mahawanso, Chap, xxi., p 127. Ibid Appendix, So verigns of 

 Ceylon p. lxi. Glossary p. 5. Ibid p. 128. lxiv. Ekanayaka, in Journal 

 Royal Asiatic Society, 1876, Vol. 8, p. 297. Tennent, i. 412. 



