THE VEDDAS

CHAPTER XV

LANGUAGE

MR PARKER remarks of the Vedda language that it "is to a great extent the colloquial Sinhalese tongue, but it is slightly changed in form and accent. Yet closely as it resembles the latter, these differences and the manner in which it is pronounced render it quite an unknown language when it is spoken to one who has not a special acquaintance with it. Besides this, the Vaeddas use their own terms for the wild animals and some other things about which they often find it necessary to converse. Such words are usually a form of Sinhalese, or admit of Sinhalese or Tamil derivations; but a very few may possibly belong to, or be a modification of words in, their own original language, forming with perhaps a few forms of grammatical expression the only remains of it that have been preserved, with the exception of some doubtful terms found in Sinhalese^[1]."

The view taken by Mr Parker concerning the Sinhalese language, though not quite generally accepted, is that held by Geiger, who considers Sinhalese "a pure Aryan dialect," although it contains some words for which he "can find no Aryan origin"; there are, however, "fewer non-Aryan loan words in Sinhalese than there are non-Germanic words in English^[2]." In this and the following chapter Geiger's view will be assumed to be correct and we shall deal with the so-called Vedda language, which is but a dialect of Sinhalese, as a foreign language which the Veddas long ago adopted in the place of their own.

The obvious phonetic changes from the Sinhalese which we noted in the Vedda dialect were the substitution for the sibilant "s" of the palatal "ch" which though generally retained might be thrown out, thus "head" Sin. isa becomes in the Vedda dialect iya or sometimes icha, and gas the Sinhalese word for "tree" becomes gai or gayi in Vedda. There may be other phonetic changes which an expert linguist would detect, but certainly the substitution of "ch" for "s" is the change which gives its characteristic harsh quality to the Vedda dialect.

A number of authors have published short lists of Vedda words, that given by the Sarasins being of most importance, for although it consists of only 22 words care is taken to indicate the equivalent in use in each of the Vedda groups visited by the authors. More complete vocabularies have been collected by Bailey and Nevill, and vocabularies have also been published by two native scholars. One of these, who wrote under the nom-de-plume A. J. W., Batticaloa, has published his material in a somewhat inaccessible periodical, the Ceylon Literary Register (Vol. V, 1891). His information, which includes a number of sentences and lullabies, has evidently been carefully collected and would probably be specially useful to Sinhalese and Sanskrit scholars. Its great defect is that no mention is made of the places where the information was obtained, or the conditions prevailing when it was collected.

Mr A. J. W. Marrambe's publication entitled The Vedda Language and apparently printed at Colombo in 1893 which contains some Vedda invocations is of less value, for while it suffers from the same defects it does not appear to have been prepared with the care which characterises the vocabulary in the Literary Register^[3].

An important if indirect contribution to the study of the Vedda language has recently been made by Mr Parker, who, in Ancient Ceylon, gives in parallel columns Nevill's Vedda vocabulary and the equivalents of these words in the Kaelebasa language, collected by himself during his long sojourn in Ceylon; and to this we shall return later.

The Vedda words for the most important animals with which they are brought in contact which are given in the vocabulary at the end of this volume indicate that nouns and verbs in the Vedda dialect are largely formed by periphrasis. It may be urged that in certain cases this is done for the same reason that the common names of animals are avoided in all hunting languages, and doubtless this explains why the bear is commonly spoken of as hatera "the enemy^[4]," but it will not account for one of the words for "smoke" being "that which goes from the fire when wet," or "to bring" being "to come having taken things" or for "wind" being "that which causes the stems of trees to break." Mr Parker informs us that the expression "having taken, come," for "bring" is common in Sinhalese, while Dr L. D. Barnett, whom we have consulted on the subject of periphrases, writes that "compound actions" are often expressed by paraphrase, thus the Hindi for "bring" is le dana, i.e. "taking give" and "depart" is nikal jana, i.e. "issuing go." These examples show that there is nothing peculiar or specially significant in the existence in the Vedda dialect of such periphrasis for "bring" as that given above.

Such expressions might be survivals from a time when the Vedda vocabulary was limited, when quick precision was unnecessary or at least had not been attained, and when all ideas, except the simplest, were necessarily expressed in a roundabout fashion and generally helped out by gesture. We allude in Chapter XVI to the absolute impossibility of making even such an intelligent man as Handuna of Sitala Wanniya realise the difference between a number of periods of time all shorter than a day, and in the same chapter we point out that the older generation of unsophisticated Veddas count only by saying "one" and "one" and "one," so that the suggestion we make need not necessarily be taken to carry back the formation of the Vedda dialect to remote antiquity.

Further the use of periphrases is common in Sinhalese and other languages closely related to Sanskrit.

We are indebted to Dr Barnett (who tells us that the list could be greatly extended without difficulty) for the following examples of Sanskrit periphrases, many of which occur in Sinhalese in unmodified or only slightly modified forms:

dvīpī leopard, lit. "spotted."
dvirepha bee, lit. "double R-sound."
hutā'sana fire, lit. "devouring libations."
hutavāhana fire, lit. "conveying libations."
kari elephant, lit. "animal with a hand."
kṛishṇamārga fire, lit. "having a black path" (Sin. kinumaga).
pādapa tree, lit. "drinking with the feet."
parapushṭa cuckoo, lit. "nurtured by a stranger" (Sin. parapuṭu).
pārāvata dove, lit. "belonging to distant lands" (Sin. paravi).
sākhāmṛiga monkey or squirrel, lit. "branch-deer."
shaṭpada bee, lit. "six-legged" (Sin. sapada).

Even at the present day the vocabulary of the peasant Sinhalese is not a large one, and if from this there were taken away all ceremonial and agricultural terms, and those directly or indirectly due to European influence, it would, we believe, be surprisingly small. It is reasonable to suppose that it was no bigger centuries ago. It is therefore not surprising that the dialect which was formed by the Veddas from this vocabulary and took the place of their old language, adopted only a small number of words suitable to their jungle life, and so prepared the way for the use of large numbers of periphrases even if it did not at first necessitate their formation^[5]."

Although Dr Barnett considers that many of the Vedda periphrases seem to point primarily to a low level of culture, and although we believe that we should do wrong to ignore the influence of some such process as that which we have sketched, we think it probable that many of the expressions in the Vedda language (so called) arose as the result of a deliberate effort to mystify.

At the time when the Veddas began to use Sinhalese as their habitual mode of communication they would find it convenient, if not absolutely necessary, to be able to discuss matters between themselves in the presence of Sinhalese, especially Sinhalese traders, without allowing the latter to understand what they were saying. This necessity would naturally lead them to invent periphrases and onomatopoeic words while it would encourage mispronunciation and the use of archaic forms.

Further evidence in favour of this view may be gathered from other Indian tribes and even from the Veddas themselves. Dr Rivers found that the Todas have a secret language which "consists of a large number of expressions which they use in the presence of Badagas, Tamils and others, when they wish to be understood only by themselves. Many of the Badagas and Tamils with whom the Todas associate no doubt pick up some knowledge of their language, and even if this were not the case the Toda language is sufficiently like Tamil to enable a stranger to understand part of what is said. In consequence the Todas have adopted a secret code for use among themselves which they call kalikatpimi, literally 'stolen we tie' while in distinction the ordinary language is called itherkelv or 'front fact^[6].'"

Thus "cook food in milk" which in the ordinary language is pârs âdr literally "milk cook" becomes in the secret language monk nâr pud mûdn tarsk idsht literally "four sides come three on up put," i.e. "put what comes from the four teats upon the three (stones which support the cooking pot)." Further the leg may be called metepol "walk thing," also used for foot-prints, or pûmi ûlar pî pol "thing that goes into the earth," while many other things have secret names; thus butter is called pelthpol "white thing" and clarified butter kârtpol "melted thing."

All this seems to indicate that the so-called Vedda dialect arose, at least in part, as a deliberately invented secret language, and this view is supported by an anecdote told by Nevill which shows that even at the present time the formation of periphrases and the use of onomatopoeic words comes readily to the older Veddas, allowing them to communicate with their fellows in the presence of Sinhalese without using the ordinary words.

An old Vedda who died before 1886 was "fond of encouraging the others to learn a patois which strangers could not understand, and used to illustrate its use by a story of his being overtaken by a party of pilgrims to Katragam, who insisted on his accompanying them as guide some distance. A lad, partly a Vaedda, was with him. On the way they heard a deer give the peculiar bleating cry made when they are seized by a leopard. Seeing his companions did not understand it, he went on, and entering into conversation with the boy, sent him away, saying loudly and rapidly so as not to excite suspicion, Bûs kî bâs kî adina atak gena at baruwak gena pimbina atak gena, thopa ammât appât enda kiyâpa. This means, "Bûs was said, bâs was said, bringing the bow, axe and fire-stick, tell your mother and father to come." Here the bow is called the "pulling-bough," the axe is called the "bough heavy" or "heavy in the hand," and the fire-stick, the "blowing bough," in allusion to the blowing of the spark into a flame. Bûs imitates the snort of the leopard as it springs on the deer, and bâs the cry of the deer. The old man delighted to tell this tale, showing his own wit, and would then say "and because the boy knew huntsman's craft and how to speak aloud but secretly, he slipped away and called his parents. I went back as soon as I could, and we all had a grand feast, for the leopard had not time to eat much before the boy's parents were there^[7]."

At Sitala Wanniya we learnt for the first time that two classes of words could be distinguished in the Vedda dialect. Words of the first class are commonly employed by the Veddas among themselves or their use is compulsory when hunting or travelling in the jungle; the second class contains words which are used only in invoking the yaku.

The monitor lizard commonly called munda becomes in the yaka language bimbada ganeka, "one whose belly touches the ground"; the pig dola is called hosedika; the spotted deer gemberupodeya is called depatam magala; the sambar kankuna becomes gaura magala; and the wandura monkey botakuna is called ude kelina.

These were the only animals which were given yaka names at Sitala Wanniya, but betel leaves, usually known as paengeri kola, coconut milk polikiri and rice depotulu all used in offerings to the yaku are spoken of on these occasions as nilikola, literally "dark leaves," ran kiri daluo "golden bud milk" and hudu hamba from sudu sambā, lit. "white rice," respectively^[8].

Probably all the wilder Veddas at one time used special words when addressing the yaku, for even at Rerenkadi among the sophisticated Veddas of the chena settlement we heard of the former existence of a yaka vocabulary, while at Lindegala the few words of the Vedda dialect that were still remembered were said to have been used especially in yaku ceremonies^[9].

At Sitala Wanniya we obtained the expressions yakade heremitiya, literally "iron walking staff," for boy, and hanukanna kilote, "box for lime" or "lime eating box," for girl. We were not able to satisfy ourselves as to the significance of these metaphors, which were said to be used only in yaku ceremonies. According to one account the expression refers to the genitals of the sexes, another explanation states that a boy is a strong support to his relatives, while a girl is as precious as a supply of chewing materials.

The hypothesis that the Vedda language arose in part as a secret language explains how it is that at the present day the Vedda dialect is best preserved among the Village Veddas of Bintenne.

The people of Dambani and Bulugahaladena whose condition we have described in Chapter II and whom we have specially in mind as typical Veddas of the Bintenne are precisely in that stage of development in which a secret language would be most useful. They do not lead, and apparently have not for a considerable number of generations led the wandering life which until recently characterised the Veddas living further to the east, nor on the other hand do they even now show any tendency to be absorbed by the peasant Sinhalese of the province in which they live. They in fact constitute small autonomous communities enjoying considerable prestige in the eyes of their neighbours both on account of their ancestry and their reputed fierceness. Not only is their dialect directly useful to them in their trading with the neighbouring Sinhalese, but as we soon discovered their use of what their neighbours consider a language different from their own greatly enhances their prestige.

They have thus had a motive for keeping up if not for enlarging their store of periphrases and metaphors which probably never existed among the wilder, less sophisticated Veddas, who only preserve the old names of certain animals or foods which are used in yaku ceremonies or which have become part of their jungle language.

From this point of view we may detect three stages in the evolution of the present Vedda dialect. In the first stage their original language is effaced by an archaic form of the Sinhalese; the formation from this of a large number of secret words constitutes the second stage, while the third stage is represented by the process of substitution of more or less modern and colloquial Sinhalese words for the majority of archaic words and forms, during which process many of the modern words underwent phonetic changes.

The following sentences taken down from men of Bulugahaladena show the characteristics of the Vedda dialect as it survives among the Village Veddas of Bintenne. The notes given after each sentence have been supplied by Mr Gunasekara, the sentences themselves are written down in the form in which we gave them (in English) to our interpreter. We have no doubt that he translated them literally into Sinhalese, so that not only the building up of the sentences but also the repetitions and inaccuracies in the Vedda dialect are of interest.

Come here quickly.
Ham hanikete mangacapa.

Hanikete is from the Sinhalese haṇikaṭa quickly.

This axe belongs to me.
Me galreke maieme.

Me is Sinhalese maiema from Sinhalese mayēma, magēma my own.

We two have come from Bulugahaladena.
Kakulai mai mangacawe Bulugahaladening.

Kakula, child, boy, then kakulai mai the child and I, the final i of each word is the equivalent of the Sinhalese yi (colq.) and t: Mai from the Sinhalese mamayi; -ing -in the ablative case ending. The finite verb in Sinhalese is placed last in the sentence.

Bring your bow and arrow.
Malaliyai moreanai arang mangacapa

Moreanai is a shortened form of moriankeca arrow. Arang the equivalent of the Sinhalese aran having taken. The literal translation of this sentence would be "Having taken bow and arrow come."

This wood is wet, I cannot make fire.
Me dande diapodga mandevela gina ucana kode.

Diapodga mandevela "water being absorbed" or "being surrounded by water" (Sk. mand or maṇḍ).

Ucana from Sanskrit ush to burn: Me and dande are Sinhalese.

He climbed a tree to find a bees' nest.
Kanda arini patagacana rŭke pĕnĕ negigĕ.

Patagacana is to break and not to find; pĕnĕ negigĕ is the equivalent of the Sinhalese poena noen̥gē, literally he jumped and ascended.

But the branch was rotten and he fell.
Eke dira bacela patagacan palage.

Eke, Sinhalese it; there is no word for branch; dira having been rotten; bacela Sinhalese pahala down; palage he fell (Sanskrit pat to fall) or he jumped (Sanskrit plū to jump).

There are no bananas in my chena, but much Indian corn.
Mai hempodga pucenewa keurlana tenak tenak tibinya kehelpodga kodoi.

Mai Sinhalese mehi here; hempodga is the Sinhalese hēna, i.e. chena; pucenewa having been burnt; keurlana Indian corn (?); tenak tenak little little, some.

Literally translated the sentence runs "Here the chena having been burnt (i.e. prepared in the usual manner) there is some Indian corn, there are no bananas."

He killed the sambar and dried its flesh over the fire.
Kankuna patagacala ginaucala pucakadala kavilanye.

Patagacala being killed; ginaucala having made a fire (Sinhalese gini avussala); pucakadala having burnt; kavilanye he eats.

Literally "The sambar being killed, having made a fire (and) having burnt (its flesh) he eats."

When a man is dead we go away from that cave.
Mini botadammana pata mang venakette mangacana one.

Pata is the Sinhalese viṭa when; mang is the Sinhalese mam I; venakette is from the Sinhalese venaataka, to another quarter; oné is the Sinhalese ōnāe, ought, must

Literally "When a man is dead I must go to another quarter."

The dog scents a deer.
Kuka pakaragandekate mangacanya.

Pakaragandekate to smell good.

Literally this would be translated somewhat as follows: "The dog moves after a good smell."

Which is the road to Dambani?
Dambanete mangacena mompodgak kohede.

Mompodgak a road is derived from mom Sinhalese man road and podgak.

Although we are unable to offer any opinion as to the precise age of the Vedda dialect there is no doubt that it is at least of respectable antiquity. Geiger (op. cit. p. 89), while admitting that the material at his disposal is insufficient to allow him to give "a full picture of the dialect," considers "beyond dispute" that it contains "an archaic element" and he cites the verb p. gacchati which in the Vedda dialect exists in the form gacana, whereas only the gerund gos occurs in Sinhalese^[10]. Nevill writes of the Vedda dialect as being "largely identical with the old Sinhalese now called Elu."

This carries its formation back some hundreds of years; and whether Nevill's statement is literally correct or not the archaic forms and incomprehensible expressions preserved in the invocations given in Chapter X show that the Vedda dialect arose at least some centuries ago^[11].

Our Vedda vocabularies contain a few of the non-Aryan words of unknown origin which are noted by Geiger as occurring in Sinhalese such as kola leaf, kasa coconut (in composition to form kasapengediya) and rilava monkey. They contain a far larger number of Aryan words which Mr Gunasekara considers are not Sinhalese, or contain a non-Sinhalese element.

Such words are: agedya mouse deer, basekarea monkey, bopatte breast, bota man, botadamanya to kill, to die, botakabala elephant, deula lightning, donda monkey, enavacenava to strike, enonukalapa to ask, gabiaci iron, gulekepa to fall, kadira bat, kaeriya bear, katamanye to speak, kike a small lizard, labacanava to strike, langcenawa to make, lemba axis deer, mambuda tortoise, mangacenawa to come or to go, mola elephant, okma buffalo, pakaragande ganye and puchama ganya to smell, pakerevila bad, pisiawi dance, pitagaca crocodile, rukka squirrel, sakolava sun, sambala axe, sil powa neli rain, taekkiya axe, toli honey comb, yamake areca cutter^[12].

Mr Gunasekara's opinion as to the origin and relationship of these words will be found in the vocabulary at the end of the volume, where we also give his explanation of the many periphrases we collected^[13].

We may refer here to the use of the affix -poja which the Veddas join to many nouns, thus "blood" is called lepoja and the sun irapoja. Inquiries made from Veddas and peasant Sinhalese failed to suggest any origin for this affix, which can scarcely be connected with the Sinhalese words poḍḍa and poda "little," "little thing" as was suggested by some of our Sinhalese informants. We therefore fall back upon a suggestion made to us by Mr Gunasekara that poja is a corruption of Sanskrit pudgala (P. puggala) "individual," "body," "matter," "personal identity." If this explanation is correct then lēpoja is the equivalent of "the individual or thing (called) le blood," irapoja of "the individual or thing (called) ira sun," hulampoja of "the individual or thing (called) hulan wind." The use of this word may have been found convenient when a foreign word was adopted by the Veddas, to make it clear that the borrowed word referred to a concrete object. Later, when the new word had become universally intelligible and was firmly established in the Vedda dialect, poja must have been gradually dropped from a great number of nouns, and this doubtless is probably the reason why at present poja is affixed only to a minority of words, and while commonly used by some Veddas is scarcely heard in other communities. This view is supported by Mr Gunasekara's remark that pudgala has been used by the Sinhalese in the sense of "person" (individual), though he considers that its use as an affix to a considerable number of nouns is a purely Vedda feature.

Mr Parker suggests that there may be more than one origin for -poja as used by the Veddas, "thus, lēpoja might be lēpoda, drop of blood. There is also a Sinhalese word pajā (Skt. prajā) creature, one meaning of the Sanskrit word being 'designating,' 'indicating.'"

The occurrence of a large number of the non-Sinhalese Aryan words in the Vedda vocabulary seems to us of considerable importance. Many of these words are derived or borrowed from the Hindi and Marathi languages or from Sanskrit words which according to Mr Gunasekara "are seldom or never used in the Sinhalese language."

This implies that these languages must at one time have materially contributed to the formation of Sinhalese, and if it could be determined at what period they had passed into the vulgar tongue in Ceylon, this would give us the earliest date at which the Veddas could have adopted Sinhalese.

At present this seems impossible, but valuable suggestions concerning the period or periods at which the northern influence was exerted may perhaps be gathered from the age of the Sinhalese folk-tales of Northern origin collected by Mr Parker from districts in the interior of the Island "where story-books in Sinhalese, Tamil, or Arabic do not appear to have penetrated, and English is unknown by the villagers." This quotation as well as those which follow are taken from the introduction (pp. 37 and 38) to Mr Parker's recent volume Village Folk Tales of Ceylon. Mr Parker, after referring to stories due to immigrants from South India, writes as follows concerning those which he considers were brought in by "settlers from the Ganges valley, or near it.

"With regard to the latter, it is not probable that they consisted only of the early immigrants of pre-Christian times. King Niśśanka-Malla, who reigned from 1198 to 1207 A.D., has recorded in his inscriptions that he was a native of Sinhapura, then apparently the capital of the Kālinga kingdom, which extended far down the east coast of India, southward from the lower part of the Ganges valley; and he and his chief Queen Subhadrā, a Kālinga Princess, must have brought into Ceylon many of their fellow-countrymen. The Queens of two other earlier Kings of Ceylon were also Princesses from Kālinga.

"In the Galpota inscription at Polannaruwa (Prof. E. Müller's Ancient Inscriptions in Ceylon, No. 148), he stated that "invited by the King [Parākrama-Bāhu I], who was his senior kinsman, to come and reign over his hereditary kingdom of Lakdiva [Ceylon], Vira Niśśan̥ka-Malla landed with a great retinue in Lan̥kā" [Ceylon]. Further on in the same inscription he stated that "he sent to the country of Kālinga, and caused many Princesses of the Soma and Sūrya races to be brought hither.

"A connexion with the Kālinga kingdom seems to have been maintained from early times. In his inscriptions the same king claimed that the sovereignty of Ceylon belonged by right to the Kālinga dynasty. He described himself in his Dambulla inscription (Ancient Inscriptions, No. 143) as "the liege lord of Lakdiva by right of birth, deriving descent from the race of King Wijaya," the first king of Ceylon, who, according to the Sinhalese historical works, was also born at a town called Sinhapura, which is stated to have been founded by his father. In the Galpota inscription we read of u Princes of the Kālinga race to whom the island of Lan̥kā has been peculiarly appropriate since the reign of Wijaya."

As we have already stated in Chapter I the story of Wijaya indicates that there was frequent communication between Ceylon and Indian ports; we may now refer to the Mahawansa, in which, as Mr Parker remarks, "there is a definite and credible statement that vessels sailed direct from it [the port of Tāmalitta] to Ceylon in the reign of Asoka in the third century B.C.^[14]"

The respectable, if not the extreme antiquity of the Vedda vocabulary is supported by the existence of a few words retaining their common meaning in Vedda and the kaelebasa language. Although Mr Parker does not explain the origin of the words in the kaelebasa list published in Ancient Ceylon, he has given the derivation of a considerable number of words occurring in the kaelebasa of Northern Ceylon in the Taprobanian (Vol. II, pp. 15—21), in which he discusses the origin and age of the language. Accepting his conclusions "that many of these forms are very ancient;—that they are, in fact, probably survivals from an ancient dialect which was once spoken throughout a great part of the island," the occurrence of such names in Vedda and kaelebasa as manda (or munda) for the monitor lizard (Sin. goya), and of marulu (from maraka a destroyer, a hawk, and luwa great) for the Brahminy kite (Sin. ukussa), shows that the Vedda dialect was formed at least as long ago as that period when the Sinhalese were driven out of the Northern Province by the Tamils^[15].

A single Vedda word sappi or cappi bird closely resembles the Sakai word ciap, cap or cep; in spite of the relationship recognised by some as existing between the Veddas and Sakai we hold this similarity to be of no significance, both words probably being onomatopoeic^[16].