VEDDA

also spelled Veddah, people of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) who were that island's aboriginal inhabitants prior to the 6th century BC. They adopted Sinhala and now no longer speak their own language. Physically they are allied to the Dravidian jungle peoples of southern India and to early populations in Southeast Asia. They have now been largely absorbed into the modern Sinhalese population; in 1911 they were reported to number about 5,300, while by 1964 the government estimated their population at about 800. By the 1970s, they had virtually ceased to exist as a separate community. The aboriginal material culture and subsistence patterns of the Vedda were extremely simple. They lived in caves and rock shelters, wore bark-cloth clothing, hunted game with bow and arrow, and gathered wild plants and honey. Their religion was essentially a cult of the dead; ancestral spirits were believed to enter the bodies of shamans, through whom they communicated with their descendants.