Gabbasov Sergey - Hidden Hunter-Gatherers of Indian Ocean. With appendix стр 6.

Important items used for trade are honey, meat, medicinal herbs, wild berries and cultivated grains. With the money they can buy clay vessels, cloth, salt, gunpowder and betel (Stegeborn 1993). Livestock herding has been adopted by a Wanniyala-aetto from their neighboring Sinhalese agriculturalists. On the first stage, Wanniyala-aetto came to watch the herds (the cattle graze around the house and sometimes the man’s wife or children bring them to other places where there is a fresh feed). In addition to the daily pay, they may receive a calf born that year. If they watch several herds, they obtain more livestock. The Wanniyala-aetto milk the cows, boil the milk and drink it or make yoghurt. Also they use cows to plow their rice-paddies. Some families have had four to five chickens freely walking inside and outside their houses, they were kept only for the eggs.

The Wanniyala-aetto do not eat their domestic animals such as their hunting dogs, chicken or cows. They are considered as pets and part of the compound like the children. The Wanniyala-aetto do not practice endocannibalism and do not eat their dead pets (Stegeborn 1993).

Nowadays the hunting and gathering traditions of the Wanniyala-aetto are almost lost. Some individuals sometimes go to collect honey and medicinal herbs. The native diet has changed considerably. Canned fish and meat replace fresh produce; sugar replaces honey; fewer vegetables are eaten. That contributes to new diseases: obesity, high blood pressure, heart problems, and alcoholism.

Nandadeva Wijesekera (1964) informed that “personal cleanliness of the Veddas leaves much to be desired, for sanitation and personal hygiene receive no attention. They wash their faces and mouths in the morning from a stream or water-hole nearby, as a matter of casual routine but thereafter for the rest of the day, although water may be available, they show no inclination to bathe in streams due to fear of being drowned”.

Also, Wijesekera supposes that the main reason is that they do not see the need to bathe nor can they think of any special benefit there from. He declares that very few “of the Veddas can swim even in streams and they do not dare to cross them unless forced to do so”, but he points out that the Veddahs love the rain, feel quite happy to get wet and thereafter sit by the fire (Wijesekera 1964). He mentions that the Veddahs seldom cut their hair, so their hair grow together into a massive lump. According to him, the act of beautifying the body, male or female, has never appealed to the Veddahs. Clothing was used only to cover their nudity. The hair is allowed to grow anyhow, the beard and moustache are not trimmed. But at the time of writing of that book (ibid.) the new habit of wearing by women necklaces of colored glass, beads, shell or bangles of ivory or brass; the practice of wearing ornaments (typical to Sinhalese and Tamils) became universal both among women and men. Due to Wijesekera, in the past flowers did not enter the scheme of adornment either of the person or hair, but “during recent times flowers and twigs have been used” (ibid.). We don’t have any concrete information about the group of the Veddahs which Wijesekera described, but the details given helped us to determine them as “Wanniyala-aetto”.

No mats were used by the Veddahs – they didn’t weave. Instead the skins of deer or sambur were used for sitting or sleeping and every family owned a number of them. At night a fire kept burning in front of the hut. The skins were also used to make bags or cushions. Also the “riti” bark was used for clothing and making bags. The custom of painting or tattooing their bodies or limbs was unknown to them (Brow 1978).

The average Wanniyala-aetto family size is six persons. Generally, residence is patrilocal. Descent is traced bilaterally. Marriage is preferred between patrilateral cousins, although anyone but the father’s brother’s child can be a potential spouse. A Wanniyala-aetto hamlet may involve three to nine families clustered together, each family in its own house. An average family includes a husband, wife and approximately three children.

Each group is named for local topography. Those dwelling near “mora” berries (Nephelium longana) are the “Morana Warige”. The people of the grasslands (“talawa”) are the “Tala Warige”.

Men were trained to use the bow, track animals, listen and interpret sounds of the nature, engage physical and mental activity and skills related to hunting. Adult women were the primary caretakers of the children. A child might be nursed until the age of four to five years – this prolonged lactation served as a method of birth control (Stegeborn 1993).

There was always someone at the house who took care of the youngest children, either an older sibling or someone from the extended family.

Stegeborn (1993) described in details the relationships with a dog. The hunting dog was a life-long partner, it was playmate for the children when it was a puppy and the disciplined companion of the hunter when it had become an adult. A well-trained dog knew when to bark and when to be quiet. The dog had to warn the house if elephants approach, but it had not been allowed to bark. It ran inside the house, sniffed its owner and danced around until everybody was alert. Stegeborn (ibid.) supposed that barking would have attracted the elephants to the hamlet because they seem to connect the dog with cultivation, and recognize that the barking sound means food, and perhaps salt from burned hearth wood. The domestic dog spent its life like any other member of the Wanniyala-aetto family, “the only difference is that he sleeps outside at night” (ibid.).

Veddas of Henebedda village (Nilgala district) belonged to “Namadewa” warige at the time of Seligmanns’ research (1911) lived in bark-covered huts, gather honey and hunt, several of them possess guns, and some of them rear cattle for the Sinhalese villagers. But Bailey (1863) first induced some Veddahs in the Nilgala district to make chenas (cultivated rain-fed lands) about the middle of the 19

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A number of “Morane” men stated that their ancestors came from Moranegala in the Eastern Province, but no Unapane man ever suggested that his clan had originally come from the place of that name near Kallodi. “Moranegala” is a hill name, and probably the hill has been named from the “mora” trees (Nephelium longana) which it may be assumed grew there, so that “Moranegala” means “the hill of the mora trees”, and it might be argued that Morane warige derived it’s name from the “mora” tree. In songs, collected at Sitala Wanniya, both men and women of “Morane” warige are addressed as “mora flowers” (Deschamps 1892).

A number of the Veddahs were politically organized in the 16

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The Wanniyala-aetto can be classified as sedentary people, as they generally stay at one place for several years. Normally the group moves together and the new site is located quite near the old one.

Seligmans (1911) give the information about the mobility of Veddah. Their residental moves per year are 3 times, average distance is 11,2 km (with total distance of 36,3 km). Logistical mobility is zero days and primary biomass is 17,2 kg per square meter. Total area of mobility is 41 square kilometers.

COASTAL VEDDAHS

The Veddah community in the east, often referred to as “Muhudu Veddah” or “Veddahs of the sea”, reside mainly in the Districts of Trincomalee and Batticaloa. Despite being intrinsically connected to the “original inhabitants of the land”, this community bears very little resemblance to the original Veddahs. The Veddahs themselves have a belief that they migrated from the inlands, being driven from their native “Sabaragamuwa” during the 17