Focus on BooksA study on
Sri Lanka's indigenous people
Professor Sunanda Mahendra
Vaddo, the Sinhala translation of 'The Veddas' by C. G. Seligman, MD
and Brenda Z. Seligman, translated from English into SInhala by Chandra
Sri Ranasinghe.
Published by Fast and Fast publications (2009)
Page count: 660
Price Rs.
900
The findings and new discoveries on the early settlers in a country
had kindled and thrown new light on various factors related to history,
literature and communication. As such these subjects are normally linked
to the study of anthropology, which is subdivided into two areas known
as physical and cultural anthropology. Still this main subject of
anthropology is not linked even to the popularly known subject like
history and archaeology leave aside literature and communication. This
need to interlink subjects is now required to rediscover more and more
factors pertaining to human communication.
When I started reading the Sinhala translation of one of the
pioneering studies on Veddas, the earliest human settlers in our country
titled as 'The Veddas' by C. G. Seligman and Brenda Seligman which had
appeared as far back as 1911, I felt that the work had been long
forgotten and had remained as a book that deserved a new entry today. In
its translation by the scholar of the discipline, Chandra Sri Ranasinghe,
the reader is made to know more supplementary material via his own
preface and the note on the part of the Sinhala translation.
As social studies are gaining more and more attention, books of this
type are felt as essential research material that would enable the
student and general public to gauge the value of such studies. As such
the foremost factor is the very translation done with honesty and
painstakingly. The chapter breakdown, I see as a reader, is quite
modernistic though the work first appeared in the past. The original
researches have shown how much trouble they have undergone in order to
collect basic source material on the Veddah community in the backdrop of
a gradually changing socio-cultural matrix.
In this direction the first chapter underlines various fields,
geographically denoted as sites where these early settlers made their
habitats and environments (see pages 1 and 44). A number of early
photographs of these places are included.
Reference is also made to chronicles such as Mahavamsa, where they
are cited and relevant pioneering information via insights are provided
for further studies. Together with these historical material some of the
folklore materials such as stories, parables and legends too are
interspersed denoting folkways. The original researchers as well as the
translator use copious but interesting footnotes to clarify the complex
issues, relating to the study.
Pictures and illustrations relating to the textual material are
provided. The changing nuances and aspects of the Vedda community are
traced from sociological standpoint in chapter two.
Herein the two researchers indicate the various material struggles
that are undergone by the Veddas to sustain their living conditions in
the traditional manner accustomed to them. Then comes some of the more
fascinating factors relating to the family lifestyles of the Veddas. The
researchers have patiently traced the identities of the family life
style of Veddas where they state that they have made a better
understanding of the marital life than their allied humans of the
command life outside their cultural frame of references.
A number of case studies are presented to justify the intimacies that
exist within their life style. The factors that lay embedded in these
pages are clinically examined in the content of the social structure as
a whole in chapter 4 and 5 respectively (157 and 180pp). The Veddah
rituals, folk mannerisms, their hunting skills and how they train their
peer group members, the restoration of their beliefs and the various
forms of religious associations like worship etc are enveloped in the
chapters that follow. Some of the innovative rediscoveries in the
research are the factors related to the arts and crafts of the Veddas
(see 465 - 490 pp), where the researchers with needed illustrations
depict the salient features in the arts and crafts of the Veddas.
The chapter on the Vedda songs and music, I felt, could go into a
further rediscovery on the part of the modern musicologists. Though from
time to time we have heard of Vedda songs as sung by singers, like
Amaradeva our knowledge about the subject is quite limited.
As the subject area is taken today at the university level of
education, with reference to the study of early settlers and their
cultural impact the present work as a translation could be made use of
as a useful source book. Here I refer to the unit of studies known as
Adivasi Adyana Kendaraya (the centre for the study of early settlers,
attached to the university of Sabaragamuva). The term Vedda does not
mean a hunter or any other disrespecting connotation. It simply means a
group of people who had fled to live in forest. As such the Sinhala
title is apt.
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