Colonial Histories and Vädda Primitivism
Conclusion
An adventure while gathering honey: Leap or Starve. The Graphic, November 26, 1887.
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I want to conclude this discussion by addressing the implications of the physical
omnipresence of the Väddas, if not their demographical significance, in a
tentative manner. Let me emphasize that as far as Sri Lanka was concerned
there were no "indigenous peoples," no "aborigines," no "wild men" and "tribes"
of the Western imagination. I am as much an aborigine as Tissa Hami and as
genetically and culturally hybrid. Further, unlike in many parts of the world
colonized by Europeans, there was no forcible extermination of Väddas by
Buddhist and Hindu rulers. Nor, until recently, when Sinhalas have mimicked
colonial practice, were the Väddas seen as an inferior group. They were feared
and respected even if they were outside the pale of Buddhist civilization.72
There is no doubt that that civilization was a hegemonic one but not
necessarily an intolerant one, as far as the Väddas were concerned. The kings
were Buddhist and defenders of the Buddhist faith. But there has been no
instance, as far as I know, of "internal colonization" through violence, or a
forcible absorption of Vädda communities into the Buddhist polity.73 The
presence of Väddas as different and yet similar to the Sinhalas and living in
close propinquity to them is recognized in several symbolic performances in
Sinhala society in the recent past. There is a short rite known as the vädi
dāne or "the almsgiving of the Väddas" performed during the Sinhala
post-harvest rituals of both the kohombā kankāriya and the gammaduva
which recognized this separation and unity. A similar sense of exclusion and
inclusion is dramatically recognized in the wonderful enactment known as the
vädi perahara performed annually in Mahiyangana.74
Nowadays, we are accustomed to think that the main structural opposition in history is
between Sinhalas and Tamils. Yet, this appositional relationship is a
historically contingent one, that is, it depends on particular historical
circumstances such that periods of Sinhala-Tamil opposition might be followed
by alliances expressive of amity; or both opposition and amity co-exist in the
same time span; at other times neither opposition nor amity seem to matter and
both communities went on living and partly living. By contrast, as the Mahāvamsa
clearly recognizes, the opposition between Väddas and Sinhalas was much more
stable and permanent though not a hostile one. Right through history, even when
Väddas practised agriculture, they were depicted as a different ethnic group,
that is, as hunters. Though I cannot discuss the issue here, Väddas in general
were not Buddhists either but practised the ancestral cult of nä
yakku. Eventually they do become Sinhalas and Buddhists (and Hindus in the
Tamil areas) but, according to the texts that I mentioned earlier, this is no
different from the manner in which different migrant groups, mostly from South
India, eventually become Sinhala and Buddhist, the more passionately patriotic
being the more recent arrivals.
But the question remains that even if Väddas have been assimilated into Sinhala and Buddhism,
why the drastic reduction in numbers in the 19th and 20th centuries? I am
afraid the details are not entirely clear. When the British came on the scene
the so-called wild Väddas or those who lived mostly by hunting and gathering
were confined for the most part to the palu rata or "desolate lands,"
the plains of the Vanni, the Bintanna. Many had been physically decimated by an
epidemic of fever (perhaps the flu) around 1809, according to oral histories. And
after the rebellion of 1818 those Sinhalas and Väddas living in the vast area
known as the Vadi Rata and Maha Vadi Rata died during the resistance or fled
elsewhere, some to the hills and others to the Batticaloa district where many
of them became absorbed into the Tamil communities in that area. Coffee and
later tea took over the wild country where many Väddas lived, especially the
area of Namunukula right down to Passara. What happened to them and many others
living in the hill country is anybody’s guess.
A final word: as with the relations between Tamils and Sinhalas it is obvious that the
constant genetic and cultural interchange between communities must disillusion
us against stereotying and essentializing identities constructed over a long
historical period. Take the case of the Vädda-Sinhala cultural interchanges. Väddas
have Kataragama who is a Hindu and Buddhist deity as one of their own; and
there is the great god Saman, whom many Väddas of the Mahiyangana-Maha Oya area
claim was one of their own ancestors before he foolishly invited the Buddha to
these shores. Saman is also the younger brother of their own mother goddess
Maha Lokuvo or Maha Kiriamma, and yet he is also a major deity of the Sinhalas.
The great Vädda gods were, until very recent times, also propitiated by the
Sinhalas who, at best, would substitute the word ‘deviyo’ (god) for Yaka. Thus
Kande Yaka becomes Kande Deviyo. I have showed in another paper that the
mortuary rites in the practical religion of Buddhists are very likely derived
from Vädda ideation.75 These cultural interchanges facilitated
movement from Vädda to Buddhist paralleling the movement from hunting to
agriculture, as well as the other way around. This form of hybridity does not
abolish the distinction between Vädda and Buddhist; only that at a particular
historical conjuncture, the distinction becomes fuzzy such that Buddhist informants
living in what was historically Vädda country even now proudly affirm their Vädda
ancestry. But this affirmation of hybridity is not that of our postmodem
situation where one can self-consciously affirm one’s fragmented and hybridized
identity. The Sri Lankan historical conjuncture is but a phase in a larger
movement from Vädda to Buddhist, accelerated in our own times where the
dominance and new hegemonic intolerance of Buddhism cannot be gainsaid, quite
unlike in the past where Buddhists also could become Väddas. In this situation
I think it is the role of the analyst to excavate the past and hold up to
critical reflection the hybrid nature, not just of Väddas and Sinhalas, but of our
human condition in general. In the current political situation in Sri Lanka
where identities are congealed and sometimes fanatically affirmed I think it
our scholarly duty to point out the historically contingent bases on which such
fixed conceptions are grounded, even if many remain indifferent to what we say
and turn a blind eye on such "restorative" research.
End Notes
- For more evidence on this subject, see K.N.O. Dharmadasa,
"Veddas in the History of Sri Lanka", in K.N.O. Dharmadasa and S.W.R de A
Samarasinghe, The Vanishing Aborigines, p.37.
- 73. I borrow the notion of ‘internal colonization’ from
Eugen Weber who I think got it from Franz Fanon. See Eugen Weber, Peasants into
Frenchmen, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976, pp.490-96.
- 74. For details see my paper "Where have all the Väddas
gone?" in Neluka Silva, editor, Hybrid Island, forthcoming.
- 75. See end note 73.
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