2-981-794 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches at Kandy, Ceylon, by one of our special artists, 1876. 'Priest of the Malwatta Monastery; Temple Dancers of the Pera-Hara; Flower Offerings at the Door of the Tooth Temple; Manika, the Gem...Dawuti, a Vedda; Ran-Manika, the Golden Gem; a Vedda Maiden...the Veddas, who inhabit the most secluded parts of Ceylon...derive their subsistence from the natural productions of the soil and the forest and from the chase. A cloth round the loins is the only clothing worn by them...[they are the] aborigines of the country, a wild degraded race little above the bushman...In colour they are very dark, with immense quantities of frizzly unkempt hair falling on their shoulders. The men wore loin-clothes, the women aprons. In stature they were very small. Few even among the planters had ever seen any of these wild tribes, who shun all contact with the rest of the population, and live in the wildest forests"'. From "Illustrated London News", 1876.