The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c32.6

v1.c32.6

The population of Ceylon however is for the most part a mixed race. Besides Väḍḍas, both Dravidians and Āryans have contributed to their blood; and in modern times Europeans—Portuguese, Dutch, and British—and the usual cosmopolitan visitors to their ports have all added something to the strain. The proportion of Väḍḍa blood in the stock is uncertain, but probably considerable. To judge from the legends recorded in Mhv. and Dīp. and from the vernacular ballads, it is not unlikely that in pre-Buddhist times some of the Väḍḍas had reached a fair degree of civilisation, mingling on terms of approximate equality with the Āryan and Dravidian invaders, and by this combination producing the main stock of the Sinhalese race. The relative proportion of Āryan and Dravidian blood is likewise uncertain. The stream of immigration from the Dravidian regions of India, especially the Tamil country, has been constant since the dawn of history, sometimes proceeding in drops, sometimes in great waves, and at the present day the northern part of the island is mainly Tamil; but the Sinhalese language, though marked by traces of Dravidian influence, is Āryan, and is descended from a Sanskritic tongue closely akin to the Vedic¹. This fact, and certain data of legend to which we shall recur in the succeeding paragraph, suggest that at some early date an invading band of Āryans, conquering part or the whole of Ceylon, imposed its language and perhaps something of its culture and institutions upon the mixed Väḍḍa-Dravidian population which it found there, and then gradually became fused in the racial congeries of the island.