No, 32—1886.] THE VEDDAS OF CEYLQtt. 



347 



The Kandyans say that the Veddas are real Sinhalese 

 Vellalas, who at a period of very remote antiquity occupied 

 the tract of country which now constitutes the district of 

 Batticaloa. That they were expelled from thence by an 

 invasion of Tamils from a foreign country, and took refuge 

 in the forests in which they are now met with. They would 

 not mix with the other inhabitants of the country, but to 

 criminals and other unprotected fugitives who took refuge 

 amongst them, and to slaves who fled from their masters, 

 they generally afforded hospitality and protection, though 

 they were apt to deliver them up for presents in cloth, &c. 



They are totally unacquainted with letters, but the differ- 

 ent tribes hold a rude correspondence with each other by 

 small pieces of wood cut into different shapes. Fugitives 

 used to be furnished with passports of this kind, when they 

 removed from one tribe to another, and the treatment they 

 received depended on the recommendation which the talis- 

 man conveyed. 



Man in a state of nature, or in any degree approaching it, 

 is ever an object of curiosity to the civilised world. The 

 knowledge of the existence of the Veddas of Ceylon must 

 therefore excite a wish to be acquainted with their origin 

 and history. From themselves, however, no information 

 whatever can be obtained. They trouble themselves little 

 about futurity, and the past is a blank to them. They are 

 said to have been in the habit of addressing the King of 

 Kandy by a word which signified "brother"; but this was 

 merely due to the poverty of their vocabulary, as the word 

 aluiva* is used by them when speaking of or to all 

 persons with whom they are in friendship, and in consider- 

 ation of this they were allowed to use this familiar term in 

 the presence of the late king, a liberty that would have cost 

 any other of his subjects their lives. 



* Bailey, who, by the way, says that the word is " hoon " (cousin), attributes 

 this familiarity to the fact that the Veddas claimed and were acknowledged 

 to have a royal origin. 



112—86 



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