17 



by a Chinese army so late as the year 1408 is also narrated. 

 But nothing is known of any colonization or settlement by the 

 Chinese having ever taken place in Ceylon ; and no elaborate 

 proof is needed to prove that neither Sinhalese nor Veddas, at 

 least in the form of their skulls, present the slightest indication 

 of any relationship to the Mongols. According to an old 

 tradition mentioned by Valentyn, the Sihala dynasty, from 

 which Wijeya the conqueror was descended, had their residence 

 in Tennasserim, so that a Siamese origin [or connexion] is 

 thus ascribed to the Sinhalese ; but it is unnecessary to follow 

 up the tradition. Besides, it is not the search for the origin 

 of the Sinhalese which claims our first interest but the deriva- 

 tion of the Veddas. 



The Veddds not degenerated Sinhalese. — Whether we con- 

 sider the Veddds to be, as some say, " savage Sinhalese," 

 or the Sinhalese to be, as others say, " tame Veddas" — 

 thus deducing both from the same stock — we must begin our 

 investigations with the Veddas. A reverse order would be 

 justified only if we assumed that the Veddas had sunk back from 

 a condition of higher civilization to that of absolute savagery 

 in which all travellers have found them for many centuries. The 

 theoretical objection to such an assumption need not be again 

 brought up, but I will only ask what signs of an earlier 

 civilization have actually been found ? What remains of an 

 earlier culture that, with any probability, might be attributed 

 to the Veddas ? A people who do not even possess clay vessels ; 

 who have no knowledge of domestic animals, beyond the dog ; 

 who are unacquainted with the simplest form of gardening 

 and agriculture ; who lack almost every kind of social institu- 

 tion ; who are not even counted as outcasts by their civilized 

 neighbours, — cannot possibly ever have had the means which 

 make a higher culture of any kind possible. The hypothesis of 

 a relapse to barbarism must hence be definitely given up. 



The ground for such an assumption could only be found 

 in the language. But it has been already shewn how great is 

 the difference of opinion as to the place which should be given 

 to that. That it is no Dravidian idiom, fundamentally, seems 

 proved beyond a doubt. If we take it for a dialect of the 

 Sinhalese, and the latter for a primitive sister dialect of the 



