They usually have the frizzly hair of the Melanesians, and paint their bodies in brilliant colours, especially yellow.
Their hair is dark brown or black; smooth and curly, very different from the frizzly mop of the Papuan or the lank straight locks of the Malay.
Their colour is black, their skull decidedly round, their hair thick and frizzly, their legs thin and almost without calves, and their toes so prehensile that they can use them nearly as well as their fingers.
There is, however, in Travancore, on the mainland, a low-caste "Veda" tribe, nearly black, with wavy or frizzly hair, and now speaking a Malayalim (Dravidian) dialect (Jagor), who probably approach nearer than the insular Veddahs to the aboriginal pre-Dravidian "negrito" element of southern India and Malaysia.
His hair is black and frizzly, worn generally in a mop, often of large dimensions, but sometimes worked into plaits with grease or mud.