No. 33. — 1886.] THE VEDDAS OF CEYLON. 363 



had never changed its ground, and was living in the 

 immediate vicinity of comparatively highly civilised tribes, 

 could in a little more than two thousand years have sunk so 

 low. Farther accounts will certainly prove that the question 

 of the deterioration of the Veddas is not to be evaded; but I 

 must here declare that I cannot bring myself to admit their 

 possible decline from an organised Yakkho state. 



Not a single fact sustains the conjecture that Wijayo, with 

 his followers from the Valley of the Ganges, was the first 

 stranger who came to Ceylon. On the contrary, the legend 

 of the advent of Gotama Buddha clearly points to earlier 

 arrivals. This is done no less by the old traditions of the 

 Ramayana. Lassen* declared outright that in the legend of 

 Rama we must see the reminiscence of a former attempt to 

 colonise this Island by immigrants from India. The north- 

 west coast of Ceylon lies so near the coast of Coromandel, 

 and the vicinity of Adam's Bridge having always been (then 

 as well as later) the landing place for intruders from 

 Hindustan, it would be astonishing if the first immigration 

 at such a remote period should immediately have become a 

 fixed fact in history. If Wijayo found some kind of politi- 

 cal organisation on the Island, we may assume that before 

 him there had been an invasion of other tribes, and the 

 time in which the whole north of the great Island was Vedda 

 land must then be placed a good deal further back. In 

 historic times one irruption after another from the north and 

 west occurred, and the aborigines were driven toward the 

 south and east. But of these aborigines we must say that 

 only a part of them have preserved in its purity the original 

 type. 



The first visit of Gotama Buddha to the Island was, 

 according to the Mahawanso,| at Mahiyangana. This place, to 

 be sure, is found right in the present Vedda land near Bintenna, 



* Christian Lassen. Indische Alterthumskiinde. Bonn, 1847. Bd. I. S., 198. 

 f Mahawanso, p. 3, cap. I.; Introduction, p„ xxiv; Glossary, p. 10. 



