August, 1886.]

VAEDDAS OF CEYLON.

177

we used the term “ marches/’ of Wales or Scot-
land. The respect of the Sinhalese, and this
elaborate title of highest honour, show that this
great Vaedda Chieftain headed an army that
replaced one of the Sinhalese kings upon the
throne of his ancestors. I think it is more pro-
bable he figured in a comparatively modern war
than in a very ancient one.
The prince from whom the Bandara Waruge
descend, is not known to them by name. The
Sinhalese of Nilgala and Bintenne, however,
alike agree he was the Sahara who married his
sister Sabari, and that they were children of
Wijaya by Kuveni. Their names, Jiwahatto and
Disala, preserved in the chronicles, are not known
to the people, who never even heard of them.
They speak of them only as Sahara and Sabari,
or as Kumaraya, and Kumari. Their children, it
is said, intermarried with the Unapana Vaeddas,
then the purest and noblest of the Vaedda clans.
Thus it cannot now be said that they are distinct,
as practically Sahara and his wife were adopted
into the Unapana clan, though from their politi-
cal status, their descendents boasted of the blood
and formed a gotram, in the Unapana clan. For
some reason, presumably from intermarriage
with the great Kimbul-dtbe, another gotram is
said to have afterwards arisen, which gave its
name to the Morana waruge people, and branch-
ed from the Unapana gotram as distinguished
from their cousins the Rugam or Bandara gotram.
It is perfectly likely that Kimbul-Otbe was a
prince of the Sinhala royal ^family, who married
a Vaedda of great power, and through her people
succeeded in restoring his family. Of the chil-
dren of such a marriage the daughters at least
would be Vaeddas of their mother’s waruge, to
the Vaeddas, and both would be treated as pure
Sinhalese by their father’s family, although
possibly not eligible for the throne. Of the
children of such a marriage, the daughters
would be given in marriage to the Vaedda nobles
of their mother’s family, and the sons would
doubtless marry Sinhalese wives, and become
Sinhalese. The daughters could not be given
in marriage to Sinhalese, without incurring
a life-long feud with their Vaedda cousins. The
sons, however, might marry as they wished. If
the Vaedda^ princes were so powerful that their
aid restored the Sinhala noble to power, it fol-
lows he would, apart from gratitude, from policy
alone, avoid the blood-feud that would follow the
refusal of his daughters as wives to their maternal
cousins. Both among Vaeddas and Sinhalese

the daughters should marry their mother’s bro-
ther’s sons, the sons should marry their father’s
sister’s daughters. The supposition that Kim-
bul-Otbe was a Sinhala, and that he married
either a Bandara or an Unapana lady, would
thus account for the otherwise unexplained fact
that the Sinhalese say some of their oldest and
best families also descended from Kimbul-Otbe,
though they did not know whether he was really
a Vaedda or was claimed by the Vaeddas in
mistake, having been their prince.
I therefore conclude that Kimbul-Otbe married
an Unapana Vaedda, whose daughters took the
title of Morana Unapana, and founded, by their
marriage with the Unapana and Bandara sections,
a clan that became distinguished as Morana
waruge, though nevei’ recognised as more than a
gotra of the Unapana.
None of the other clans appear to have gotra,
but it seems to me these three exactly answer to
the gotra or family clan, as distinguished from
the ethnic tribe, and the territorial clan.
Division into territorial clans.
The whole of the twelve sections of Vaeddas
thus distinguished by me, are divided into terri-
torial clans. These vary as drought, intrusion
of settlers, increase or decrease in the clan, and
other causes may dictate. The oldest able-bodied
intelligent man of this territorial clan, becomes
its head, and by amicable arrangement sub-divides
the hunting grounds, &c., as exigencies demand,
The territorial clan takes its name from its ter-
ritory.
Marriage into another territorial clan.
Among the first eight sections, marriage into
another territorial clan was usual. Thus if A and
B are adjacent territories, the bachelor in A, goes
to B, and marries a wife, if possible his mother’s
brother’s daughter, or the nearest collateral
relative similarly connected. The difficulty of
finding out who this might be, was remedied
by adopting the territorial title as a quasi-gotram
division, and our bachelor in A, whose mother
came from A and bore that name, would go to
B and marry the first eligible maiden of the B
name, with perfect confidence that she belonged
to the correct division of his family.
This caused an apparent division into family
clans which however are better termed territo-
rial clans, to avoid confusion with the true
hereditary clan. The necessity of taking a wife
from a territorial clan C, D, or E, if no avail-
able maiden could be found in B, often led
to breaks in the propinquity of the descent.