19 



excluded from this system * Upon such a foundation ail 

 intermingling of the Ma gad ha people with the aborigines would 

 most naturally take place, and if we look upon the Sinhalese 

 race as the result of this commingling, the experience of so 

 many other countries, where a similar commingling has taken 

 place, would make it perfectly explicable that the Magadha 

 people made their language, the old Pali or Elu, the ruling one, 

 while in their physical conformation the aboriginal element 

 won lasting influence. With such a view of the matter the 

 Veddas and Sinhalese would neither be identical, nor distin- 

 guished from one another merely by the degree of culture; 

 The Veddas would appear rather as representatives of the 

 aboriginal race ; the Sinhalese, on the other hand^ as hybrids 

 produced by a union of immigrant Indians with Veddas, 

 and therefore varying according to the measure of these 

 elements. This indeed strikes me as being the solution of the 

 anthropological problem before us. The linguistic difficulty, 

 that also the unmixed natives adopted to some extent — less 

 or more — the Aryan language of their conquerors appears no 

 longer insurmountable, for the same thing is actually now 

 happening with the Fins in the Baltic provinces of Russia. 



COMPARATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY, 



The craniological materials available to the Author for 

 purposes of coin pa l is ion have been the following. Of Vedda, 

 skulls, twenty-three well authenticated specimens, including 

 three lent to the Author himself from the Colombo Museum : 

 but of this number two had to be excluded from some of the 

 computations owing to abnormalities, the probable consequent 

 of artificial or accidental occipital pressure. Of Sinhalese 

 skulls, after setting aside those of which there are no detailed 

 descriptions or measurements, or which are measured on a 

 system different from that used by the Author, and also those of 



* [We have corroboration of this in the statement that "King 

 Pandukhabayo-(B. C. 437) placed the Veddas in a separate settlement, 

 near the town ( Anuradhapura). 7 ' Barrows Buried Cities p. 3. Un- 

 fortunately Mr. Barrows has not quoted his authority for this 

 statement.— T, B.) 



