The Wanniya-Laetto (Veddahs) of Sri Lanka
Nature Conservation, Human Rights and Indigenous People
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Above: Many Veddah elders, such as Kiri Banda of Dambana, are keen to preserve the age-old Veddah way of life for generations to come.
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by Wiveca Ann-Chatrin Stegeborn
Subsistence Hunting and Gathering
The subsistence of the Wanniya-laeto revolves mainly around
four occupations: hunting and gathering; slash and burn cultivation; livestock
herding, combined with temporary employment as unskilled labourers, i.e. digging
ditches, carrying soil,, or breaking stones or for road metal road
making.
The husband goes out nearly every day in search of game and
honey. He also gathers edible plants and tubers, so that, in case his hunting
luck is not good, he does not come empty handed to his family in the evening.
The hunting tools of the Wanniya-laeto are muzzle-loaders and old 12 gauge
shotguns, knives and axes. For tropping they employ poles, sticks, twigs and
strings, made from the bark of the riti tree (Antiaris innoxia).
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Traditional Wanniya-laeto hamlets in Sri Lanka. Map at quarter scale. Click on map to view at 100% scale.
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Previously the Wanniya-laeto used bows and arrows.
Today these weapons are almost only used for instructing and training young
boys. The bows are made of peeled and shaved saplings of the kobbe tree
(Allophylus cobbe). Bow-strings are made from the inner cortex of the aralu
bark (Terminalia chebula). Arrow shafts must be straight and light; welan
wood perfectly suits this purpose. The three feathers used for fletching are
from the Forest Eagle-Owl (Huhua nipalensis) or from the Hawk-Eagle (Spizaetus
nipalensis kelaartii) or the Crested Honey Buzzard (pernis apivorus
ruficollis). Finally, arrow heads are bartered from a blacksmith. Axe
heads, knives, gunpowder and shot, also are acquired through barter.
Males start to learn the skills of hunting, tracking and 'reading'
nature around the age of ten to eleven years. A boy is given his first bow as
soon as he is able to hold one, which would be when he is around three years
old. This bow is basically built on the same principle as the slingshot; it is
strung with two cords, connected at the centre by a one centimetre wide woven
fiber mat. A small stone is placed in the mat and firmly gripped between the
thumb and the fingers. As the boy pulls the strings and releases the stone, it
projects through the air towards its target. Boys play and learn from one another.
When they are eight to nine years old, they collect honey together.
At the age of eleven, twelve or thirteen years, a boy starts
to accompany his father on one-day hunting trips. And of course, the game he
catches on a successful day becomes bigger each time as he talks about
it. With time, however, he will learn to be less boastful and adopt a more
modest posture. He will go out to hunt with his relatives and the other boys
from the village. Eventually he will start to contribute to the household. Part
of the conversation of the mother at the water hole will be about the boy as he
matures. One of the women may take special interest in the stories and keep
them in mind until it is time to think about a future spouse for her daughter.
Game includes wild boar, macaques and langur
monkeys, hares, monitor lizards, pangolins, porcupines, and several kinds of
deer, and sambar (Cervus Unicolor). The Wanniyalaeto are not fond of eating
birds, neither wild nor domesticated. Some families have four to five chickens
freely walking inside and outside their house. They do not keep them in pens.
The chickens are kept for the eggs. At night they sleep inside the house by the
door.
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Mahaweli Development Scheme resettlement areas. Maps at quarter scale. Click on maps to view at 100% scale.
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Wanniya-laeto hamlets in Maduru Oya National Park.
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Typically, as in most hunter-gatherer
cultures, the men hunt. Girls are not trained to use the bow, and they are not
trained to track animals, listen and interpret sounds, or to engage in any
other physical or mental activity / skills related to hunting. Adult women are
the primary caretakers of the children. A child may nurse until the age of four
to five years. This prolonged lactation serves as a method of birth control.
Hence, it is difficult for a mother to leave a dependent child for a whole day.
Hunting is considered to be a dangerous activity, with animals behaving
unpredictably and perhaps attacking the hunters. Children under the age of
ten, of either sex, have no place on the hunt.
Because of the obvious physical differences
of the writer's height, hair, eye and skin colour compared to the Wanniyalaeto women,
the writer was allowed to accompany Wanniya's hunting team in July, 1978. This
was the first of about fifteen expeditions planned to last for three to four
days. A sister of one of the hunters always accompanied the group if the writer
was one of the party. Since women are not trained to handle the bow and arrow,
guns, or traps, they are not considered to be members of a hunting party.
However, once an animal is killed, there are many chores to accomplish. If the
men fell a large animal, it is chopped up and smoked to lighten the burden of
carrying it back to the hamlet. Firewood needs to be collected, smoking tables
need to be constructed, and the meat is sliced into thin strips. With a large
animal such as the sambar, the butchering and smoking may take twelve to
eighteen hours.
The largest animal taken by the Wanniya-laeto is the sambar.
The Wanniya-laeto do not eat elephants. The arrows that the Wanniya-laeto
traditionally used would not kill an elephant and it therefore never became
part of the traditional diet. The shotguns and muzzleloaders used by modern
Wanniya-laeto also cannot penetrate the tough hide of an elephant. Thus, they
still do not associate elephants with food. Since hunting success is
unpredictable, meat is regarded as a welcome if infrequent addition to the
daily diet. The Wanniya-laeto like to eat meat, but circumstances made them
predominantly vegetarian.
Another much appreciated forest product is honey. As it is
nearly always available, it is the main trade item. The flavours vary
depending on the seasonal blooming of trees and of wild flowers and from which
type of bee the honey comes from. The favorite bees are the Apis indica and the
Apis dorsata. Wanniya-laeto families have secret places, passed from generation
to generation, where they go to collect honey and beeswax.
Gathering is primarily a women's activity in which the writer
routinely included. This requires less detailed planning than the hunt, as it
is conducted close to home. After a rain, mushrooms sprout in the old chenas
(maize and kurakkan millet cultivations) in fallow and the women will go
and collect them. Medicinal herbs are also collected by the family of the
medicine-man, and the writer often invited along. The shaman's wife, Tale
Waruge, Huddi, is a gatherer. Since all her children are grown up, she goes for
gathering every day. The medicine-man's wife often joins her. They are approximately
of the same age. Although they come from two different villages, and neither
came originally from Dambana, they have come to know each other. They came as
young brides, brought to Dambana by their husbands. As the writer in the
compound of the shaman's family, when in Dambana, the writer often joined Huddi
and her daughter, Silawatti in collecting tubers, seeds, plants, fruit, nuts,
medicinal herbs or sometimes in cutting straw for the biennial roof thatching.
Large parties occasionally form, but only if
the resources are plentiful as for example when the trees are heavy with mora
(Nephelium longana) and tamarind berries (Dialium ovideum) Owing
to the duties of bearing and raising children, the women always return home by
the end of the day. There is always someone at the house who takes care of the
youngest children, either an older sibling or someone from the extended family.
The hunting dog is a life-long partner in the
Wanniyalaeto family. He is the lively little playmate for the children when he
is a puppy, and the disciplined companion of the hunter when he is an adult. A
well trained dog knows when to bark and when to be quiet. If elephants approach
at night he has to warn the house but he is not allowed to bark. Instead he
runs inside, sniffs his owner and dances around until everybody is alert.
Barking would attract the elephants to the hamlet. They seem to connect the dog
with cultivation, and recognize that the sound means food, and perhaps salt
from burned hearth wood. The domestic dog spends his life like any other member
of the Wanniya-laeto family. He is given food when the others eat; he
socializes when the others socialize. The only difference is that he sleeps
outside at night.
Slash and Burn Cultivation
To add security to the food supply, most Wanniya-laeto clear a
piece of land close to the house to do swidden cultivation. The crops are maize
and kurakkan millet (Eleusine coracana) which is their staple food.
Swidden cultivation is not unique to the Wanniya-laeto. It is called chena in
Sri Lanka and is practiced by both Sinhalese and Tamil small scale farmers.
Burnt logs, branches, soil, grass, and charred trunks are built up to form an
enormous fence surrounding the chena. It must resist the elephants, be taller
than the sambar's leap, and tight enough to keep out the hares. By the end of
August the men have completed the clearing of a chena and the fence work. Just
before the monsoon in mid-September maize is sown, followed by Kurakkan millet
in October. Now it is time for the boys to make use of the double-stringed bow.
They guard the chena from birds who come to eat the seeds. After the first
rain, the plants manage to grow a little taller, the next forager is the
sambar. Wild boars seeking roots are also attracted to the fields.
In February it is time to harvest the Kurakkan millet. This is
done by the wife and the children. It alleviates the pressure to protect the
crops as there is less to look after; there is only maize left. If the crop has
survived this far, the main danger still threatens is the elephant. In spite of
all the fences they get inside. One animal eats 250-300 kg. of vegetation per day.
It does not take him long to rake off a considerable portion of the cultivation
during one night's uninvited visit. Finally in March or April the corn cobs are
ready and the Wanniyalaeto hurry to harvest before the monkeys steal the crop.
Here all the family members cooperate; men, women and children. The ones who do
not have their own chenas may be hired for some days to help with the harvest
by their relatives.
The chena must be guarded night and day. The
Wanniyalaeto build watch huts on poles in the middle of the field and in the
trees at the edge of it. The husband and sons bear this responsibility. If a
boy is too young to be in the watch but alone, he is accompanied by an older
brother. In this way the younger siblings learn from the older. Not before a
boy reaches 15-17 years does he assume full responsibility to guard the chena
alone. If animals come, the watcher shouts and makes noises, hitting buckets
with sticks and stones. If elephants threaten, the guards shout for assistance,
make torches from bundles of tall grass and chase the elephants away from their
homes. The chena cannot be cultivated for more than two to three years. Then it
must lie fallow for ten to twelve consecutive years (Spittel 1950: 251)
Some Wanniya-laeto families also cultivate a
little garden close to the home, where they grow manioc, beans, chilies; curry
leaves (Murraya koenigii) pulses, pumpkins and plantains. They may also
try to grow some betel vines, but although the betel leaf (piper betel) is
highly valued among the Wanniya-laeto, very little of it is raised. Since it is
an easy item to pilfer from someone's garden, but it is cheap to buy, the
Wanniyalaeto generally obtain it at the local tea-shop.
Betel is chewed together with the bitter tasting arecanut from
the betel palm (Areca catechu). Before putting the wad in the mouth, a 'pinch'
of lime is smeared on the leaf to give it the 'right' taste. To give a mildly
spicy flavour to the wad they sometimes add pieces of cinnamon bark, and cardamom
seeds. The mastication of this concoction is known as 'chewing betel'.
A Wanniya-laeto village, such as Dambana, is
composed of a group of houses which are erected in clearings separated from the
next village's territory by strips of forest. A house is usually occupied for
about two years. When a chena is moved, a new house is built close to it and
the old building is abandoned. It soon becomes a heap of mud and sticks. From
one year to the next a village may have moved but always it will be found
within its recognized territory. Their settlements do not last long enough for
a tree to grow and yield a harvest.
The areca does not grow wild in the Eastern
Province (Seligmann 1911: 329) or in the bordering Uva Province where the
Wanniya-laeto live. They therefore buy areca nuts, betel leaves, chewing
tobacco, lime, coconuts, spices and edible fruits such as jak fruit (Artocarpus
integrifolia) at Sinhalese owned tea shops. Only when they have run out of 'shop
betel' do they turn to the forest produce, e.g. When they are hunting or gathering
and cannot buy it. betel can be made from the bark of the Demate (Gemelina
asiatica) and Davata tree (Carallia intergerrimn) which substitute
for the betel leaf and areca nut respectively (Seligmann 1911: 33) Then they
collect large, white, land snails (Cyclopliorus involvulus) burn them in
fires, pulverize the shells into powder add water to make a paste, and use this
in place of lime (Spittel 1950: 252).
Trade
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Photo: A Wanniya-laeto tribesman tightens his bow string in his village, Dambana, Sri Lanka; about 2,000 members of his tribe remain. Photo courtesy: The Psychedelic Illusionist
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Contrary to popular notions, Wanniyal-aetto people are bright, intelligent and happy when left to live according to their tradition ways. Wanniyal-aetto children of Hennanigala. Photo by 1992 Patrick Harrigan
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Some items used for trade are honey, meat, medicinal herbs,
wild berries, and cultivated grains. The Wanniyalaeto bring their products to
the main road where they sell their merchandise to the-shop keepers. With the
money they can buy clay vessels, cloth, salt gunpowder, and 'betel.' The first
record of trade with the Wanniy-laeto was noted between 337-422 A.D. by Fa
Hsian, a Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who lived in Sri Lanka for some time. To
quote Fa Hsian:
This kingdom had originally no inhabitants, but only demons and dragons
dwelt in it. Merchants of different countries (however) came here to
trade. At the time of traffic, the demons did not appear in person, but only
exposed their valuable commodities with the value affixed. Then the
merchantmen, according to the prices marked, purchased the goods and took them
away. (Beal 1968: 1 xxii).
In the eleventh century, the Arabic
geographer Alberini described the 'silent trade' with the savage Ginn (Spittel
1957: 58) And in 1681, Englishman Robert Knox described the wild beasts and men
of the island as follows: "They kill Deer, and dry Flesh over the fire, and the
people of the Countrey (sic) come and buy it of them." (Knox 1958: 98)
Land Use and Acquisition of Cattle
Within the last ten years, livestock herding has been adopted
by a very few families, influenced by their neighboring Sinhalese
agriculturalists. In 1977, only Kotabakinni had livestock. By late 1992, there
were at least ten families in Dambana that had herds. The process of cattle
acquisition begins with a Sinhalese farmer who needs grazing land for his
cattle. The farmers live along the Maha Oya-Mahiyangana road, one and one-half
miles from Dambana. He asks the shopkeeper by the main road if he knows of
someone who can take care of a small herd of five to ten cattle for him. When a
Wanniya-laeto comes to the shop the shopkeeper offers him the job temporarily
until he finds someone who wants to earn a little extra money by watching the
herd every day. It is a fairly easy work. The cattle graze around the house and
sometimes the man's wife or children bring them to other places where there is
fresh feed.
In addition to the daily pay, which in 1984 was five rupees
(ca. U.S. $0.25), they may receive a calf born that year. If they watch several
herds, they obtain more livestock, and by the end of two to three years they
will have a herd of their own. They milk the cows, boil the milk and drink it,
or they make yoghurt. The livestock is kept as security in case of crop
failure, or bad hunting luck. Then they use can them to plow their
rice-paddies. The Wanniya-laeto do not eat their domestic animals such as
their hunting dogs, cats, chicken or the cows they take care of daily. They are
considered as pets and part of the compound like the children and the other
family members. The mere thought is horrifying and seems barbarous to them.
Household animals share their lives with the Wanniya-laeto until the animals
die a natural death, or until they are sold. The Wanniyalaeto do not practice
endocannibalism and do not eat their dead pets.
Language
The Wanniya-laeto are thought to be a people who inhabited
most of the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka (Pearson 1985: 267) before the
influx of the Dravidian and the Aryan peoples. According to anthropologist
Nandadeva Wijesekera, the Wanniya-laeto language may originate from an 'earlier
linguage' (Wijesekera 1964: 104) He states it is a Munda language, one of the '
tribe languages' of India' Subsequently, with the invasion of the island by the
indo-Aryans and the Dravidians, the Wanniya-laeto language gradually adopted
Elu (an ancient form of Sinhalese) and Tamil words (Wijesekera 1964: 104) The
Wanniya-laeto language itself cannot be traced to the Dravidian languages of
south India, such as Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannarese (Pearson 1985: 68), nor are the people descended from the Indo-Aryans.
The linguist M. W. Sugathapala de Silva may
help to clarify the classification of the Wanniya-laeto language. He looks at
the word 'Wanniya-laeto,' and argues that the Sinhalese People refer to the
tropical forest areas of Sri Lanka as the vanni territory. As already noted the
word vanniya-latto means 'forest-dweller' (Sugathapala de Silva 1972: 2)
assuming that the stem vanni in the Wanniya-laeto language is the same
as the Singhalese nominal stem vanni, meaning forest. The suffix 'aeto'
(aatto) is commonly used for animate nouns, both in singular and plural
forms (Sugathapala de Silva 1972 SOBA / September 1993:27).
According to Sugathapala de Silva, the
etymology of the word vanni is not certain and he suggests it might be a
loan word from the Wanniya-laeto language. He does not explain how, as his book
mainly presents transcriptions from the Wanniya-laeto language to Sinhalese and
English, but he thinks it is improbable that this word has any connection with
Sanskrit, the classic language of ancient India, and the word vana, 'forest,
garden' (Sugathapala de Silva 1972: 2) If the word vanni cannot be
traced to Sanskrit, an Indo-European language, nor to Dravidian, perhaps this
is a language not related to either of the major two linguistic families.
Rather the Wanniya-laeto language may be connected to that of other neighboring
indigenous peoples of South India, such as the Chenchu. The Chenchu are 'typically
Veddoid or proto-Australoid' (Allchin 1966: 79-80 see Appendix) in their
physical appearance. Over time they have been strongly influenced by their
Dravidian, Telugu neighbors and have adopted their language (Allchin 1966:
110-111).
Opinions differ, however. Linguist Merritt
Ruhlen divides the Austroasiatic family, which includes the Munda languages,
into two branches: the small Munda family in northeast India and the larger,
more diverse Mon-khmer family, found in Southeast Asia and on the Nicobar
Islands in the Bay of Bengal (Ruhlen 1987: 125) According to Ruhlen's
classification, the Wanniya-laeto language is not included in either of the two
Munda families. Ruhlen categorized their language as Indo-Iranian, the largest
subfamily of the Indo-European family, and so does linguist Barbara Grimes of
the Summer Institute of Linguistics in the U.S. (Grimes 1988: 595). The
language of the Indo-Aryans, Sinhalese, also belongs to the Indo-Iranian group
(Ruhilen 1987: 38). Sinhalese is now the dominant language of Sri Lanka.
To exclude a language from a linguistic
family on the basis of one word is questionable, but I would like to advance
the hypothesis that the Wanniya-laeto did not speak Indo-Iranian or Dravidian
before the influence of Indo-Aryans and Tamils. As these foreign peoples migrated
to the island, many Wanniya-laeto were absorbed by intermarriage, migration,
or relocation, while others maintained their indigenous identity. Those who
were not absorbed retained their language but borrowed words from their
neighbours. Thus, old component of archaic Sinhalese (Elu) still remain in the
Wanniya-laeto language, in the regions where the Wanniya-laeto were influenced
by the Sinhalese.
Because a civil war broke out on Sri Lanka
in 1983, preventing travel to the north and east coast, and because my
knowledge of Tamil is limited, I have not been able to record any of the 'Tamilized'
Wanniya-laeto. I observed, however, that the Wanniya-laeto of Dambana who
visited Yakkuri, one hour's drive north-east of Dambana found it difficult to
understand the Yakkuri Wanniya-laeto. Comparison of the transcriptions made by
the Seligmanns, Spittel, and Sugathapala de Silva of the Wanniya-laeto language
in the areas where they worked, reveal slight differences from the language of
the Dambana area.
Social Organization
The Wanniya-laeto children consider the sisters of their
mother as small, middle and/or big-mothers, relative to the age of their real
mother. Similarly on the father's side, the biological father (appachi-laeto)
and his brothers are addressed as 'father' by their own, and their
brothers' children. Cross-cousins are possible marriage partners and the
closest kin the Wanniya-laeto can marry.
The Wanniya-laeto use special kinship terms for their
cross-cousins different from the terms for their parallel cousins. The parallel
cousins are considered as siblings and they are addressed with distinct sibling
terms according to sex and age relative to go. James Brow, and anthropologist
who did a detailed study of villages in Anuradhapura states that the
Wanniya-laeto use a Dravidian system of kinship terminology and although there
appear to be many similarities to the Iroquois system, there are significant
differences such as in the classification of kinsmen beyond first cousins and
in the treatment of affines.
A Wanniya-laeto girl is marriageable when she
is around fourteen years old. The longer she stays with her family, the longer
the parents have to provide for her. Her husband may be two to ten years older.
Until then she has been a girl, without heavy responsibilities at home. Her
duty was to help her mother with the smaller siblings, fetch firewood, carry
water, and cook food. Often the young couple's parents will have been
acquainted with one another since their own childhood. The girl's parents
therefore feel confident when the future son-in-law comes to ask for the
daughter as his wife. Marriages are not usually pre-arranged by the parents,
although sometimes they have indirect influence.
Marriages usually last a lifetime, but if a
couple breaks up, the woman returns to her parents with her daughters and the
small children. She may also go to her new however, the couple has found
someone else. Normally however, the couple has too great a sense of
responsibility and of partnership with each other, their children and their
extended family to divorce. The husband needs his sons in the hunt and for the
preparation and guarding the chena and the wife cannot do without her
sisters-in-law and daughters.
Until 1989, Wanniya-laeto couples lived
together without formal ceremonies or signing of papers. Since 1989, however,
the government has arranged mass marriages among the Wanniya-laeto to 'legalize'
their life long marriages. Today, even in their own minds, the Wanniya-laeto do
not consider themselves married unless they put their fingerprint or signature
on an official marriage license.
The nuclear family, the consistent face-to-face group, is the base of the Wanniya-laeto society. A Wanniyalaeto hamlet
may involve three to nine families clustered together, each family in its own
house. An average family includes a husband, wife, and approximately three
children. There is no rule requiring patrilocal residence, but this is rather
frequent and practical because a set of sons constitutes a trained
hunting-team of brothers. Sometimes close collaboration is required by several
men to butcher and carry the game back home.
Women's gathering activities ordinarily do
not require such coordination. This agrees with the anthropologist Service's
general statement about hunters and gatherers, that women could be lost to
their own family when they marry, and others gained, without weakening it as
much as it would be by breaking up the teams of brothers and male cousins who
grew up together and share each other's sorrows and joys through childbearing
and child raising.
As a married woman the young female has to take
care of the family and gather the daily food. The mother-in-law is there to
console in times of worry and make peace when there is turmoil. As she knows
her territory she also knows where the edible tubers the berries, plants, and
the seeds. In more than one way she is her daughter-in-law's guide, mother and
teacher. If the distance is not too great, the newly married daughter visits
her parents and siblings almost every day at the beginning of the marriage. The
shift from childhood to adulthood is therefore easier.
There is often a close relationship between
the descent system and the economy of a society. Matrilineal systems are
usually found in non-intensive farming societies, or in horticulturist
communities in which women perform much of the productive work (Haviland 1991:
479-484).
Such systems are found in the cradles of the old World's food
production, in India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and south China (Haviland
1991:479), but the Wanniyalaeto are not matrilineal. The Wanniya-laeto
affiliate themselves with close relatives through both sexes; in other words,
the individual traces descent through both parents simultaneously and
recognizes multiple ancestors. One way of knowing this is by listening and
recording Wanniya-laeto divination rituals. When a person believes he is
haunted by an ancestral spirit, the oldest male of the household will have to
determine who among the ancestral spirits is angry. He will name all the dead
relatives from both sides of his parents' and his wife's families. Seligmann
(1911:30, 74) Spittel (1950: xiv) and Wijesekera (1964:91) classified the
Wanniyalaeto as matrilineal. It is not clear from their writing how they
arrived at this conclusion. According to Brow (1978) the work of Spittel and
Wijesekera were 'theoretically unsophisticated and largely anecdotal' (Ibid.
1978:6). He further states that the Wanniya-laeto's exogamous matrilineality,
as described by the Seligmanns has not been critically scrutinized by those who
have had firsthand experience of the Wanniyalaeto (Brow 1978:6).
Most Wanniya-laeto cannot read and write.
They have not read the Sinhalese origin myth in the Mahavamsa, but the epics
have been sung or told to them by literate Sinhalese (see below, The Aryan and
Dravidian Invasion of Sri Lanka) Parts of the Mahavamsa subsequently been
retold among the Wanniyalaeto themselves until it has become an integrated
part of their own history.
This mythological history narrates that there
were no humans, only evil spirits in Sri Lanka before the Sinhalese conqueror
Vijaya arrived. Vijaya had a son and a daughter with Kuveni, a female spirit
from Lanka. Those children were the first Wanniyalaeto. The siblings grew up
and reproduced. The present Wanniya-laeto are, according to the Mahavamsa, the
result of that relationship. The Wanniya-laeto trace their ancestry from both
of these individuals, but do not distinguish any type of lineage organization.
The Wanniya-laeto who do not embrace the Mahavamsa story believe their
ancestors have lived on Sri Lanka since time began, and do not trace their
descent from any specific progenitor.
There are no full time specialists among the
Wanniyalaeto. The shaman, for example, only exercises his craft upon request.
He passes his days like everyone else, hunting, collecting honey, and working
on his chena. His sons may or may not become a shaman. No one insists, if the
sons are not interested in learning the skills of the father. Any Wanniya-laeto
who feels ready to learn about the spirit world can ask other shamans.
Women, children and old people do not engage
in shamanism as it demands physical strength to perform the ceremonial dances,
sometimes for two full nights and days. It is also not morally 'good' for a
woman to-walk from hamlet to hamlet. She is supposed to be at home and take
care of the house and the children. While letting the spirits take possession
of the body the dances can become very intense, with shaking, shivering jumps,
swirls, and leaps. It is not socially acceptable for a woman to perform
such acrobatics as the movements are not considered feminine.
It the father dies, the oldest son assumes
responsibility for his mother and siblings, that is if he is old enough to
hunt and take care of the chena. Hence, he takes his father's tools and continues
the work. Eventually he will form his own family. Therefore when the annual
cycle of the year is closed and the crops harvested, the widow moves back with
her parents. If her parents are not alive she may marry an unmarried brother or
a relative of the deceased husband, who can take care of her. Polygynous
levirate is not customary among the Wanniya-laeto. It is economically too
burdensome for Wanniya-laeto man to maintain two women. In some instances two
sisters marry two brothers, in that case the widow may remain in the deceased
husband's hamlet and carry on with her chores as she has her sister there.
Inheritance in a Wanniya-laeto family is divided equally among
the sons (Tambiah 1958;23). A daughter who has married and moved to live
patrilocally with her husband becomes separated from her parental family and
therefore shares the inheritance acquired by her husband. The children
automatically share the family name of the father. In the case of matrilocality
the daughter inherits equally with her brothers and her children carry the same
family name as she does. Matrilocality does not happen frequently, but if there
is a lack of sons in the family or they are very few, the daughter may settle
by her parents' house with her husband to bring up heirs to the family (Tambiah
1958:23).
It the wife dies, the mother of the deceased
may retrieve the cooking utensils. She gave those to the daughter's new
household when she married. As the widowed hunter cannot alone take care of the
small children, the mother of the deceased therefore takes them home to her
house. The teenaged sons may choose to stay with their father. Clothes and
private belongings of the wife are burned or buried with her body. The
Wanniya-laeto find it emotionally difficult to see someone else wearing their
mother's/wife's or daughter's clothes. Dwelling in the past too long is not
regarded as healthy. In the best of circumstances the husband may still marry
an unmarried sister of his former wife. In that case affinities and old
routines can continue like before. A non-affiliated new bride will require new
adjustments for the hamlet.
The Wanniya-laeto can be classified as
sedentary people, as they generally stay at one place for several years.
Normally the group moves together and the new site is located quite near the
old one. Nevertheless a hamlet is an ever changing organism. It expands and
contracts depending on the needs of its families and contracts depending on its
needs of its families and the resources available. Sometimes a man with his
family will move to the hamlet where his sister is living because more men are
needed, or because food is scarce at his own settlement.
In this instance, the brother should be of
the same generation as his brothers-in-law, as a man of the same age as the
patriarch may disturb the hamlet. Immediately his children become fictive siblings
to the other children in the hamlet, and although they are cross-cousins they
will most likely not marry any of their 'brothers' or 'sisters' in their
paternal aunt's compound. The kin terminology is very flexible. It serves to
accommodate the biological and social realities and it softens the formal
rigour of the age grades (Brow 1978:72). When a hamlet becomes too big and the environment
becomes exhausted, the extended family divides into two or more groups, each
forming a new camp.
There are no headmen or chiefs in the forest. Leadership is
based on recognized ability in different activities. Full time specialists and
differentiated economic, political and religious institutions are alien to the
Wanniya-laeto. They do have shamans and people who know about herbal
medicines, but other than the family itself is the group that fulfill all
roles. The division of labour is based on age and sex. The only consistent
supremacy of any kind is that of a person of higher age and wisdom who might
lead a ceremony. A person with a special skill may be asked to give advice or
occasionally to lead. A hunter with sharper eyesight may walk some steps ahead
of the others when searching for game. The Wanniya-laeto base their identity in
their role as a son/ daughter, wife/husband, father/mother, uncle/aunt and
friedn rather than in the skills they may possess. No one is a
professional i.e. a bus driver, a car mechanic, or a banker. Leadership is
taken up by one person or another depending on the type of activity being
planned.
The hot climate and sometimes the high humidity, during the
monsoons, allow nothing to remain fresh for more than a day. These
environmental factors have influenced the development among the Wanniya-laeto
of a lifestyle of balanced reciprocity. It is therefore a bad investment to
store and save. Accumulating goods promotes envy and distrust, and reduces the
prestige and esteem that a person normally might enjoy. Instead, the
Wanniya-laeto give things away, and giving has to be done modestly. The word 'gift'
has overtones of charity and is considered to be damaging both to the giver and
the receiver if s/he is put on an inferior level or in a situation of
dependency. There is no such phrase as 'thank you' in the Wanniya-laeto
language. The giver is happy that his 'gift' is accepted. The opposite would be
terrible. It could be a sign of resentment. The Wanniya-laeto admire generosity
and hospitality and punish thrift as selfishness.
Reciprocity is based on the fact that the people who exchange
are going to be associated for a very long time. In the long run things even
out. No one is denied access to the natural resources on which all of them
depend. No individual owns the forest. The families have equal rights to
acquire these resources but each extended family knows its traditional hunting
and chena circles and those are respected by others. The Wanniya-laeto system
is a complex of rights and duties, with compromises and agreements made
directly between the community members.
Warfare is unknown in modern times and as the Wanniya-laeto do
not write their language there are no written sources of such occurrences.
Other than the men who were used as bow-men by the Portuguese against the Dutch
(see next chapter), I have not read or heard of other types of warfare.
Colonization by foreign powers has reduced the indigenous population to a very
low level. Resistance against outsiders taking their land means retreat farther
into the forest. The Wanniyalaeto do not have the economic base to sustain a
military effort for a protracted period. The Wanniya-laeto are not accustomed
to being organized that can mobilize or draft warriors, direct them, and give
them reasons to fight, a war cannot be conducted. Secondly, there is not much
to gain by plundering other Wanniya-laeto people. There are no standard items
of exchange that serve as capital or as valuables, and the material wealth of
these hunters and gatherers is inconsiderable.
Justice as employed by the Wanniya-laeto is based on common
understanding. Relatives and friends of the accuser and the accused discuss and
negotiate with each other until an acceptable agreement or a compromise is
made. Direct confrontation between the parties is not the rule. After the
consensus the two main protagonists meet directly to clarify and to confirm
what they have agreed to, mediated by their delegated relatives. This is
usually accomplished in a polite and cordial manner, which prescribes a symbolic
contribution of betel by the accuser to the family of the defendant, who in
return is invited to share a meal with them. Both parties find it equally
important to maintain good relations and peace between the hamlets.
Religion
The Wanniya-laeto believe that their dead relatives are always
with them although they live in another dimension. Their belief embodies the
thought that no one really dies until those who knew him and loved him are also
dead. The closest spirits are the recently dead family members, the
Nae-yakkha.1 These forefathers' spirits stay permanently close to the abode in
order to help in daily life. They stay in trees, hills, streams, caves, and
rocks and they protect the Wanniya-laeto with loving kindness day and night. As
a rule they are benevolent, but just as when they were alive, the ancestors
can feel offended or neglected. As they cannot communicate their annoyance
verbally they make the living relatives understand in other ways. They send
elephants, wild boar, or monkeys to eat from the Wanniya-laeto chena, or they
send rats and insects to infest the harvest of maize and Kurakkan millet. When
the father and the sons track game, they soon realize the hunting spirits are
absent as no animal appears in front of their muzzle-loader.
Wrathful forefathers may even let leopards or bears attack the
hunters. The family has to know who and what is causing the anger of the
spirits and invites them, the yakkhu, to come to a yakkhuma, 2 a
healing ritual with offerings to appease them. In the course of time the spirit
of a dead person loses its individuality and enters into a general spirit world
without a name, the sphere of the long forgotten naeyakkhu. The spirits
of the more recently dead replace the older as they are better known to succeeding
generations.
The Wanniya-laeto also honour great hunters and heroes/heroines
who lived earlier. The most important hunting spirit is kande Yakkha, the
spirit of kande Wanniya, a celebrated hunter who lived many generations ago.
Another is Kalu Bandara Deviyo who, states U.W. Wanniya, is the elder brother
of the legendary Kuveni. He advised Kuveni's son and daughter, the first
Wanniya-laeto according to the Sinhalese legend, Mahavamsa, about their arrival
in Sri Lanka, to run and hide in the forest after their mother had been killed.
The name reveals an influence from the Bandara cult of the highland Sinhalese.
The addition of either deviya (pl. devio) or yakkha behind a
spirit's name is arbitrary (Seligmann 1911:144 n.2). A yakkha for the
Wanniyalaeto is simply a superhuman being, a god, a dead relative, or a
malicious spirit. The yakkha does not necessarily have to be evil. Quite
to the contrary, most of the spirits are the beloved forefathers.
Aside from the famous spirits mentioned above, there are also
well known local and family spirits living in the forest. They frequent
mountains, caves big trees and streams. Each locality carries its own story
about the spirit (s) who live there.
It is important to re-emphasize the importance of the land for
the Wanniya-laeto both mythologically and etymologically. When government
planners decided to relocate the Wanniya-laeto from their ancestral homeland
to other areas similar to their previous habitats, they did not consider that
the forest of the Wanniyalaeto encompasses both people, their forefathers,
their gods and spirits. It cannot be exchanged for money, property or other
land.
- Nae meaning relative in Sinhalese; yakkha
is spirit, Pl. yakkhu (Clough 1982).
- Yakkhuma derives from yakkhu, -ma,
is the emphatic particle.
This article appeared in the September 1993 issue of Soba published by the Ministry of Environment of the Government of Sri Lanka
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