490 JOURNAL, R.A.S (CEYLON). [Vol. IX, 



India in ancient times was inhabited by tribes who bore a 

 close relationship to these. With as little propriety as the 

 present Hindus can be said to have sprung, and progressively 

 developed from these more or less dwarfish aborigines, 

 just so little does such a kind of explanation suit the con- 

 nection of the Veddas with the Sinhalese. As they have not 

 descended from the Sinhalese by regressive degeneration, 

 neither surely have they been transformed by progessive 

 evolution into Sinhalese. That no such simple affinity 

 exists is proved chiefly by the difference in the form of the 

 face, to which all observers testify. 



In truth, it was just the form of the face which caused 

 all the earlier travellers to associate the Sinhalese with 

 the Europeans. Even Knox, as I have already mentioned, 

 was of the opinion that no people in the world were so 

 exactly like the Sinhalese as the people of Europe. Cordiner 

 asserts this quite as distinctly, calling attention particularly 

 to the features, which means the face. If so fine an observer 

 as John Davy, instead of this, says the Sinhalese are wholly 

 Indian, we can only conclude that all these designations 

 point to the common Aryan character of the face. With 

 Davy this is the less to be doubted since he speaks explicitly 

 of the "Asiatic " form of the Sinhalese skull (that is, of the 

 capsule of the skull) ; when, directly to the contrary, almost 

 all observers ascribe to the Vedda face a foreign and very 

 frequently Dravidian type, it becomes clear that genealogical 

 investigation must make the face a main object of study. 

 If we now go back to the history there can be no doubt 

 that the Sinhalese face is an importation from the Aryan 

 province of the Indian continent. The Ramayana, as well 

 as the Wijayo legend, affords direct confirmation of this. 

 The latter, however, conveys at the same time an earnest 

 warning not to be too one-sided in this opinion, for it 

 speaks distinctly of an importation of Tamil women from 

 " Mabar," from whom the king himself and his followers 

 took wives. 



