They make a living by fishing, slash and burn agriculture, paddy cultivation of rice, basket weaving for market and occasional wage labor.
[5][6] Anthropologists have considered them to be at least partly descended from the Veddas of the interior of the island who had migrated at some unknown period in the past to the east coast, intermarrying with the local Tamils.
Settled Veddas have tended over a period of time to assume Sinhalese or Tamil identity based on the area of residence.
[9] Residents of Eastern Province consider those who maintain a primitive life style, or are partly dependent on hunting and gathering, as Vedar without any connotations of ethnic origins.
Vedar themselves claimed that they would not marry into lower Tamil castes such as Ambattar (barbers), Vannar (washerman) and Pallar (agricultural workers), but field studies indicated that such unions did sometimes take place.
Sri Lanka has also yielded Megalithic burial sites, one of which was excavated close to a present Vedar settlement, Kathiraveli.
The earliest written reference to Vedar is a Tamil chronicle, Nadukadu paraveni kalvettu, which is maintained amongst the custodians of a prominent Hindu temple in the town of Tirukovil in the Ampara District.
The chronicle documents the presence of a people who practiced hunting and gathering for survival, exercising jurisdiction over vast jungle tracts close to the Akkaraipattu township.
[12] Emerson (1858) documented the presence of Vedar north of Eravur who subsisted by fishing or helping the traditional fisherfolk, as well by cutting wood for Muslim traders.
He also recorded that it was the British colonial officers, as well as Wesleyan missionaries who provided land for them to start cultivating yams and other vegetables.
[15] By the 1980s the Vedar had no knowledge of any word Waruge, although they vaguely used the Tamil term Vamisam (family origin) to indicate some division amongst them.
Some had come up with a two-fold division of the Vedars based on the Kuti or matrilineal descent system popular in the East coast.
Vedar are nominally Hindus; they were known to wear the marks of Saivite Hinduism such as Vibuthi ("sacred ash") on their forehead even in the 19th century.
Seligman (1911) encountered two unique deities, Kapalpei (“Ship spirit”) and Kumara Deivam (“Young god”)[17] who are peculiar to Vedar.
[19] The worship pattern is a combination of Devil-dancing called Sandangu ("ceremony" in Tamil) and orthodox Hindu Agamic rituals.
During devil-dancing ceremonies, related family groups congregate in family-owned worship centers and build platforms known as Pandals.
These Pandals may have a weapon, such a lance known as a Vel, installed in their middle, a construction similar to the Kirikoroha function of the interior Veddas as well.
Vedars also participate in Tamil folk dramas called Kuttus that depict scenes from Hindu epics such as Mahabharatha and Ramayana.
[23] Native chronicles such as Nadu Kadu Paraveni Kalvettu mention the socio-economic status of the Vedar as that of primitive hunter gatherers.
Vedar also seem to have provided manual labor to clear forest lands, in exchange for an annual portion of the food crops harvested.
His studies did indicate that some Vedar had successfully integrated in Eastern society, with worldly possessions that did not much differ from those of their non-Vedar neighbors.
[16][22] The marked impact of the Sri Lankan civil war was also noted, due to the proximity of the Vedar's native villages to the theaters of operations of both rebel LTTE and government forces.