The Veddas

Dr C. G. Seligmann (1873–1940) was a renowned anthropologist who was President of the Royal Anthropological Institute between 1923 and 1925. After joining the Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to the Torres Strait in Melanesia in 1898, he changed his career from medicine to anthropology and began his career as a distinguished field anthropologist. This book contains his pioneering ethnology of the indigenous Vedda people of Sri Lanka. The social, political, religious and economic life of the Veddas is systematically examined in this detailed study, first published as part of the Cambridge Archaeological and Ethnological Series in 1911. This ethnology remains the standard reference work for the social structure and material culture of the Vedda people, as they have ceased to exist as a separate community in Sri Lanka. This volume contains views on ethnicity which were acceptable at the time it was published.