Accounts of the Veddas

Early Accounts

• Robert Knox's 1681 account - It is the first account that accurately described Veddas.

                 " One of these Natives there be two sorts Wild and Tame. I will begin with the former. For as in these Woods there are Wild Beasts so Wild Men also. The Land of Bintan is all covered with mighty Woods, filled with abundance of Deer. In this Land are many of these wild men; they call them Vaddahs, dwelling near no other Inhabitants. They speak the Chingulayes Language. They kill Deer, and dry the Flesh over the fire, aand the people of the Country come and buy it of them. They never Till any ground for Corn, their food being only Flesh. They are very expert with their Bows. They have a little ax, which they stick by their sides, to cut honey out of hollow trees. Some few, which are near Inhabitants, have commerce with other people. They have no Towns nor Houses, only live by the waters under a Tree, with some boughs cut and laid about them, to give notice when any wild Beasts come near, which they may hear by their rustling and trampling upon them. Many of these habitations we saw when we fled through the Woods, but God be praised the Vaddahs were gone. "

• ' The Veddahs of Ceylon ' - Article and engraving from " The Graphic " of June 14, 1884

                 " The two Veddahs were photographed by Mr.Scowen, of Kandy, and are two of the party of Veddahs brought up to Kandy for the Price of Wales to see at the time of his visit to Ceylon, and I am not aware of any Veddahs having appeared until last month, in this or in any other civilised place, since that occasion. Had these men not been here once before, I doubt if the natives i sent after them would have been able to persuade them to come this time. "

• ' The Veddas ' by C.G. and Brenda Z. Seligmann ( 1911 )

                " Every Vedda belongs to a waruge or clan, as the term may be translated, and among a large number of the Vedda communities still existing, exogamy is the absolute rule. Further, with exogamy is associated descent in the maternal line, so that the fundermentals of the social system of the Veddas may, perhaps, be summed up as a clan organization with female descent. "

• ' East Coast Veddas ' by   C.G. and Brenda Z. Seligmann ( 1911 )

          " The Coast Veddas do not know when they came or how they came, but they say that long ago their ancestors came from Gala, far beyond the hills to the west. They also sometimes say they came from Kukulu-gammaeda and spread out along the Coast. Some say this is Kukulugam near the Verukal; others suppose it to be somewhere far away. "

Archaeological Evidence

• ' Early man and the Rise of Civilization of Sri Lanka '-by Dr. S. V. Deraniyagala
• ' The Curse of Kuveni : The Vedda and the Anti-Thesis of Modernization ' - by Sudharshan Seneviratne
• ' Revisiting Cultural Heritage in Sri Lanka : The Vedda ( Vanniyaletto ) - by David Blundell

Anthropological Studies

• The Wanniya-Laetto ( Veddahs ) of Sri Lanka : Nature Conservation, Human Rights and Indigenous People - by Wiveca Ann-Chatrin Stegeborn
• Guardians of the Red Earth : An American anthropologist among the Danigala Veddas - by Jill Priest

Veddas and Colonial History

• ' Colonial History and Vedda Primitivism : An Unorthodox Reading of Kandy Period Texts ' - by Professor Gananath Obeyesekere

Legal and Human Rights

• 'What can we learn from Indigenous People' - by Professor G. L. Pieris (The text of a lecture given by Professor G. L. pieris on 15 March 1994 at the National Museum in Colombo)
• ' Sri Lanka's Indigenous Wanniya-laeto : A Case History ' - by Patrick Harrigan