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



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in the greater number of places, they were in immediate 

 contact with the Sinhalese, to whose kings they stood in a 

 kind of subjection, and from whose line their own chiefs 

 were appointed. What wonder, therefore, if they adopted 

 more and more Sinhalese words and forms ? The question is 

 only whether, beside these, as I suppose, borrowed words, 

 their language has not preserved some individual elements ? 

 To this point the collectors of vocabularies and comparative 

 linguists seem to have given very little attention. And 

 yet the words of doubtful origin, as Mr. Hartshorne has 

 designated them, should be most carefully collected and 

 tested. Thus far we are not even informed positively 

 whether the Vedda language contains any words designating 

 numbers. What use is it for our investigation that Mr. Max 

 Miiller declares more than half the Vedda words (that is, of 

 those noted down by travellers) to be corrupt Sanscrit ? 

 Where belongs the other half, even if smaller, which perhaps 

 with greater attention might be enlarged? If we cannot class 

 it among the ; Tamil languages it is very possible that it may 

 prove specific. Nothing hitherto justifies us, it seems to me, 

 in any such one-sided statement as that of Mr. Edward Tylor, 

 who calls the Vedda language, without hesitation, Aryan. 



The matter would take a rather different aspect if we 

 might assume that originally the Veddas alone inhabited the 

 whole Island, and that they were not only forced back into 

 the forests by the immigrants, but had intermingled with 

 them. Of the Tamils, who did not immigrate until later, we 

 may say that in the north they have, in fact, supplanted 

 the original population, but that in the east they have not 

 merely mingled with the Veddas, but have accomplished a 

 veritable Tamilisation of the Veddas. This appears, however, 

 unimportant for the essential point. Not so with the 

 Sinhalese. If we follow the statements of the native 

 analyists, the origin of the Sinhalese is to be traced back to 

 the followers of king Wijayo, a victorious host of immigrants 

 from the valley of the Ganges. It will not be necessary to 



