The folktales of all Southasian countries have legends concerning 'beast-men', and Sri Lanka is no exception. From the island's dimly illuminated past come curious jungle tales of the Nittaewo, a supposedly beastlike race characterised by hairy bodies and extremely long nails. It has been postulated by some that the Nittaewo were confused with a species of monkey or bear, while others are convinced that they must have been early hominids or ape-men. In the absence of skeletal remains, however, no precise identification can be made. And so, the Nittaewo continues to be one of the great enigmas associated with Sri Lanka.
The first person to write in detail about the 'little men' who inhabited the island then known as Taprobane was Ctesias, a Greek physician at the Persian court during the fourth century BC. Ctesias also wrote of cynocephali, dog-faced men or apes "whose clothes are the skins of wild beasts. They have no language; they bark like dogs … Their teeth are larger than those of dogs; their nails are like those of animals, but longer and more curved." Subsequently, during the first century AD, Pliny the Elder mentioned the occurrence of 'beast-men' in the region. The mystery surrounding their identity appeared to be solved in 400 AD, when one Bishop Palladius described a race of primitive people to be found on the island. But Palladius was referring to the Veddah, an aboriginal tribe, racially mixed remnants of which exist to this day – Sri Lanka's last link with its prehistory. The belief in the existence of Taprobanese beast-men was revived during the 14th century after the Moroccan traveller Ibn Batuta visited the island. "These animals are very numerous in the mountains," he wrote, probably referring to the purple-faced leaf monkey (Trachypithecus vetulus), which today is known to the Sinhalese as kalu-wanderoo.
Over five centuries later, new clues emerged that seemed to lend weight to the ancient reports, and gave reason to believe that the Veddah were unlikely to be Pliny's beast-men after all. In 1886, a British civil servant named Hugh Nevill reported in his journal, the Taprobanian, that he had gathered tantalising fragments of information concerning a strange race called the Nittaewo. Nevill's first informant was a district headman A de Zylva of Batticaloa, who claimed to have heard many accounts of the Nittaewo, which he said inhabited the almost inaccessible mountains in the southeast corner of the island.
The Nittaewo were reported to resemble orang-utans or gorillas, and were expert at climbing trees. They had some human traits, such as the ability to walk upright; and they were covered with reddish hair, with claws of great length and strength. Nevill learned that the Nittaewo used to descend from the rocks in gangs to steal meat that had been spread out in the sun to dry by Veddah hunters – who hid in fear of attack from the Nittaewo's fearsome claws. Eventually he met a primary source: a hunter who had known an old Veddah man named Koraliya, who had said that the Nittaewo lived in small social groups, sleeping in caves or on platforms of branches in trees.