The more extensive social groups generally result from the fact that during the rainy season families withdraw into caves among the hills. The larger caves are frequently occupied in common by a number of families, particularly by such as are most closely related. Yet the groups of co-dwellers are not so much determined by considerations of kinship as by the size of the places of refuge; a single family occasionally occupies a small cave by itself. Nevertheless, this community life plainly furnishes the incentive to a gradual formation of wider social groups. This, no doubt, accounts for the fact that during the favourable season of the year several families of the Veddahs claim for themselves a specific plot of ground, whose supply of game, as well as of the products of the soil, which the women gather, belongs exclusively to them. Thus, there is a division of the people into districts, and these are determined geographically rather than ethnologically. Every one is entitled to obtain his food, whether game or products of the soil, from a specified territory. Custom strictly guards this communal property, just as it protects the single marriage. The Veddah, for example, who encroaches upon the territory belonging to a group other than his own, is in no less danger of falling a victim to an arrow shot from an ambush than is the one who trespasses on marriage ties.
These various institutions form the beginnings of social organization, but as yet they do not represent developed clan groups or established joint families of the patriarchal type. On the contrary, as they arise through the free association of individuals, so also may they be freely dissolved. Each man has exclusive possession of his wife. Without interference on the part of his clan, moreover, he exercises absolute control over his children, who remain with the individual family just as in the case of a developed monogamy. There is no trace of sex-groups, such as are later to be found in the case of the men's houses and the age-groups. Only temporarily, on the occasion of common undertakings, such as the hunting of large animals, which requires a considerable measure of strength, or when new hunting-grounds are being sought, is a leader appointed from among the older men. His leadership, however, ceases with the completion of the undertaking. There are no permanent chiefs, any more than there are clans or tribal organizations.