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JOUBNAL, R.A.S. (CEYLON). [Vol. IX. 



even by this ? At best the possibility of placing the Veddas 

 on a level with the Andamanese and the Australians, whilst, 

 according to the present facts, they must be placed decidedly 

 lower. A people who do not even possess clay vessels, who 

 have no knowledge of domestic animals beyond the dog, 

 who are unacquainted with the simplest forms of gardening 

 and agriculture, who lack almost every kind of social 

 institution, who are not even counted among the outcasts by 

 their civilised neighbours, cannot possibly ever have had the 

 means which make a higher culture of any kind possible. 

 The hypothesis of a return to barbarism must hence be 

 definitely given up. 



The ground for such an assumption could only be found 

 in the language. How great the difference of opinion with 

 regard to the place which should be given the Vedda 

 language I have already shown. That it is no Dravidian 

 idiom fundamentally seems to me proved beyond a doubt 

 from the testimony before us. A great number of high 

 authorities, among them some of the first linguists, declare it 

 to be rather a Sinhalese than an Aryan dialect. But whether 

 the Sinhalese itself corresponds to one of the other Indo- 

 Aryan languages is again contested. But even if, with the 

 well-informed Childers, we take it for ancient Pali, or 

 rather a primitive sister dialect of the Pali, it will then truly 

 be very difficult for any one to argue from it, and still less 

 from the Sanscrit words intermingled with it, the derivation 

 of the Veddas from the valley of the Ganges. 



For centuries they have been surrounded by more highly 

 cultivated people, and even if they, from shyness, have 

 remained hidden in their forests, a certain intercourse with 

 their neighbours has yet been unavoidable. Where the Tamils 

 have continuously pressed on nearer to them, as in the 

 vicinity of Batticaloa, a part of the Veddas have adopted the 

 Tamil language.* But during a very much longer period, and 



* Cordiner, I. c, L, p. 91. Bailey, I. c, p. 305, note. 



