ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY, 

 CEYLON BRANCH. 



THE VEDDAS OF CEYLON, AND THEIR 



RELATION TO THE NEIGHBOURING TRIBES. 



By Professor R. Virchow. 



Translated for the Ceylon Asiatic Society from the Memoirs of the 

 Royal Academy of Science of Berlin, 1881. 



In the various mixture of races inhabiting the Island 

 of Ceylon, the Veddas (Vaeddas, Weddas, Veddahs, Vaddahs, 

 Vaidahs, Beddas, Bedas) have since a long time been an object 

 of special prominence for the study of ethnography, because, 

 owing to an inferior order of intellectual development, and 

 through defects in physical organisation, it offers the most 

 room for conjecture that here is presented a remnant of the 

 aboriginal inhabitants. And now, when according to all 

 accounts their number is so rapidly diminishing that at no 

 very distant date its last members will have disappeared 

 from among the living, it adds peculiar interest to the 

 study that it is desirable to transmit to posterity at least a 

 trustworthy picture of its singular characteristics. For this 

 the material we now have is nowise sufficient : hence the 

 task for the following disquisition is not merely to collect 

 what has been already arrived at, but to point out the gaps 

 which can be supplied only by farther local researches. It 

 is to be hoped that this may stimulate to the immediate 

 application of all possible means to obtain the wanting 

 material. 



31—87 B 



