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



493 



amount of facts have been collected. First of all then, great 

 stress must be laid on the importance of enlarging by every 

 possible effort the ethnology of the Indians, in order to be 

 able to investigate radically the tribe of " black-skins." 

 Since a part of the Dasyu were transferred to the Sudras, 

 and consequently included in the caste system of the Hin- 

 dus, as the Veddas in that of the Sinhalese, it is not even 

 possible to bring to a conclusion the physical anthropology 

 of the Hindus and the Sinhalese until we have resolved 

 the evidently very composite group of the Dasyu into its 

 separate members. One such member is plainly the tribe 

 of the Veddas. Their natural isolation upon an island has 

 perhaps tended to preserve in them, rather than in related 

 races upon the continent, their peculiar character, and made 

 them an object by which to test the admissibility of the 

 theories concerning the origin of the black Indians. 



May the zeal of the observer know no nagging, that before 

 the utter extinction of this already much depleted race, the 

 language and customs, the physical and mental constitution, 

 of the Veddas, may be in all particulars firmly established. 



b 



