No. 33.— 1886.] THE VEDDAS OF CEYLON. 



353 



Sandese, the district right below Adam's Peak distinctly 

 inhabited by Veddas. Possibly only some scattered remnants 

 of the tribe dwelt among these mountains. 



That four hundred years ago the Vedda territory extended 

 continuously in this way as far as the west side of the moun- 

 tains, and even to the western sea coast, is highly improbable, 

 as a-Chinese geographer, Hiouen Thsang, in the seventh century 

 of our era, travelling in India states that the Yakkhos had* 

 withdrawn into the south-east corner of Ceylon. It may, 

 however, be correct that as Sir E. Tennent asserts, under the 

 Dutch Government Veddas were found in large numbers, 

 but half civilised, at no great distance north of the peninsula 

 of Jaffna, in the so-called Wanni. The question whether 

 in the earliest ages Veddas inhabited the whole Island I will 

 take up later. 



The present Vedda-land is very lovely, embracing a com- 

 paratively flat, wooded country, nowhere raised more than 

 two hundred feet above the level of the sea, but frequently 

 having the appearance of a park. It would seem that the 

 character of the soil varies, since dams and unwholesome 

 marshes alternate with rock-ribbed hills. The Rev. Mr. Gil- 

 lingsf speaks of the province of Bintenna as very dry and 

 rocky. But Mr. Frederick MiillerJ is mistaken in trans- 

 ferring the home of the Veddas to the mountains of Ceylon. 

 All the more recent accounts limit their abodes to the 

 anterior land which separates the central mountains from the 

 sea coast, excluding them wholly from the mountains 

 themselves. Sir Emerson Tennent§ to be sure makes a 

 distinction between the somewhat more civilised village and 

 coast tribes, and the wild " Rock Veddahs, galle-vedda." 



* Tennent, I. c, I., p. 372. note. 



"f The Journal of the Ceylon Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 

 Colombo, 1853, p. 89. 



X Reise der bstere. Fregatte Norasa. Anthropologischer Theil. Abth. III. 

 Ethnographic Wien, 1868, s. 139. 



§ Tennent, I c, II., pp. 439-44. 



