No. 33.— 1886.] the veddAs of ceylon. 



467 



hordes in the mountains to the east of Bengal. Mr. Bailey* 

 concurs with this view. He not only brings forward the 

 Khonds, the Puttuwas or Juanguas, the Pulindas (in Orisa), 

 the Meekirs (in north Cachar), &c, but extends his compari- 

 sons even to Assam, Tenasserim, and east Burmah. But his 

 proofs also are drawn wholly from the social and religious 

 life of these peoples. Without any special evidence is the 

 statement of Mr. Tagoref that a wandering tribe known to 

 the Ptolemies in the northern part of India, the Vaidehas, 

 and who were later encountered by Tippoo Sahib in Mysore 

 under the name of the Bedas, are still extant in their wild 

 and savage condition in the Veddas of Ceylon. Mr. JagorJ 

 mentions that the Bedas who live in little groups in the 

 woods of Travancore and Cochin are considered by some to 

 be a branch of the Veddas of Ceylon. However interesting 

 these suggestions may be, they still appear to me to 

 assist very little toward the settlement of the disputed 

 question. 



Anthropological comparisons have until now hardly been 

 undertaken. Neither have I the intention so far to extend 

 the present investigation, although a variety of material for 

 it is before me. I shall certainly make some references to 

 such, but a full discussion of all the points to be considered 

 would require a much more extensive work. In the first 

 place it will be necessary to take the Tamils of Ceylon into 

 comparison, and chiefly because the historical accounts, going 

 backward as far as Wijayo, inform us of numerous 

 marriages, not merely of the kings, but of their retainers, 

 with the Malabar women, not to mention the very early 

 invasions and settlements made in the Island by Tamil 

 hordes. 



* Bailey, I. c, p. 307. 



f Transactions of the Ethnological Society of London. New series, 

 1863, vol. II., p. 381. 



% Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1879, Bd. XI. Verhandlungen de Berliner 

 Anthropologischen Gesellscnaft, s. 167. 



