Vedda

The Vedda, who call themselves Wanniyalaeto, are the indigenous forest people of Sri Lanka and probably its oldest inhabitants, predating the Indo-Aryan settlers from whom the Sinhalese descend. Their name comes from a Tamil word meaning hunter.

In the interior they kept their old ways around Bintenne and Dambana, while the Anuradhapura and Coast Veddas drew closer to their Sinhalese and Tamil neighbours.

Their tongue, built on a language isolate of unknown origin, became a stable creole through contact with Sinhala by the 1200s. Most Vedda came to speak Sinhala, keeping their own tongue for hunting calls and religious chants; their traditional religion was polytheistic, overlaid among interior groups by Buddhism. Assimilation steadily narrowed the communities preserving the old life.