No. 32. — 1886.] THE VEDDAS OF CEYLON. 



345 



nor do they molest traders or travellers on the commonly 

 frequented paths that lead through the country they inhabit. 

 It is dangerous to offend them, and instances are known in 

 the Batticaloa district where they have revenged an injury 

 by deliberate assassination. 



In Major Johnstone's expedition from Batticaloa to Kandy, 

 in 1804, the first person that fell was brought down by the 

 arrow of a Vedda. On the march of the detachment through 

 the Vedda woods between the Nadakadu province of the 

 Batticaloa district and the frontier of Wellassa, a small clear 

 spot was chosen to encamp on for the night. It was on the 

 side of a wood which a party of the pioneers entered for the 

 purpose of procuring firewood. It happened that a few 

 Veddas had here taken up their temporary abode. They 

 fled on being discovered by the pioneers, who at once 

 proceeded to plunder the little property they had left in their 

 huts, the most valuable part of which consisted of two or three 

 fowls, who, like their owners, sought safety in the jungle. 

 While one of the pioneers was pursuing a fowl, a Vedda 

 concealed in a bush shot him through the loins. This hap- 

 pened but a few yards from the camp. The wounded man 

 was brought in alive, and the arrow was extracted by the 

 medical officer, but he died in a few hours. The Veddas 

 effected their escape. An instance of their mode of taking 

 revenge took place in the Batticaloa district about 1822. 

 One of the more civilised Veddas, a lad who had established 

 a friendly intercourse with a hill family, conceiving an 

 attachment to a young female of the family, made proposal to 

 the parents for her. The match for some cause or other did 

 not come off, and shortly after the girl sickened and died. 

 The family attributed her death to necromancy practised by 

 the young man, and under this impression, four or five years 

 after, a brother of the young woman left the woods in search 

 of the object of his revenge, and having found him watching 

 a paddy field in the Batticaloa district, walked up to him in 

 the open day, and deliberately shot him through the body. 



