“The Veddas have been regarded as one of the most primitive of existing races and it has long been felt desirable that their social life and religious ideas should be investigated as thoroughly as possible.”
“The Veddas have long been regarded as a curiosity in Ceylon and excite almost as much interest as the ruined cities, hence Europeans go to the nearest Rest House on the main road and have the Veddas brought to them. Naturally the Veddas felt uncomfortable and shy at first, but when they found that they had only to look gruff and grunt replies in order to receive presents they were quite clever enough to keep up the pose. In this they were aided by the always agreeable villagers ever ready to give the white man exactly what he wanted. The white man appeared to be extremely anxious to see a true Vedda, a wild man of the woods, clad only in a scanty loin cloth carrying the bow and arrows on which he depended for his subsistence, simple and untrained, indeed, little removed from the very animals he hunted. What more easy than to produce him?”
“Summing up the physical characteristics to which we have briefly referred, we may define the Veddas as a short, wavy-haired, dolichocephalic [long skulled] race. Expressing the results of measurements we may say that chaemaeprosopes [broad faced] and leptoprosopes [narrow faced] occur in about equal numbers, and that the Veddas are mesorrhine [average breadth of nose] or present a low grade of platyrrhiny [flat nose-ness].”
-from The Veddas by Charles Seligman, 1911
Charles Gabriel Seligman (1873-1940) was a physiognomy-oriented medical anthropologist and professor at the London School of Economics, a committed taxonomist of human body shapes who measured African and Asian people with calipers, recording such quantifiable variables as their skull’s cephalic index, nasal index, length-height index, and facial index, and making such qualified assessments as their tumidity of lips, prognathity of jaw, breadth of nose, color of skin, and flatness of face.
He visited Sri Lanka in 1906 to study the Vedda people, who he considered the true aboriginals of the island, and took many photographs of his subjects seated forward and in profile.
When in Sri Lanka recently and visiting the Archaeology Museum in the old Buddhist and Hindu city of Polonnaruwa, I asked the Librarian if she had any early 20th Century photographs of the site. She showed me the book Architectural Remains, Anuradhapura Ceylon: Comprising the Dagabas [stupas] and Certain Other Ancient Ruined Structures, 1894 by James G. Smither, with photos of some of the world’s largest Buddhist stupas, but then whispered, Do you want to see some of Seligman’s pictures? I did not know then that Seligman, most famous for his research in Sudan and book Races of Africa, had also traveled and photographed in Sri Lanka. What I read of his book The Veddas when I returned home was an eye opener.
