THE MALDIVE ISLANDERSA STUDY OF THE POPULAR CULTURE OF AN ANCIENTOCEAN KINGDOM

by

Xavier Romero-Frias

NOVA ETHNOGRAPHIA INDICA
1999

NOVA ETHNOGRAPHIA INDICA
ethnoind@hotmail.com

Copyright  Xavier Romero Frias 1999
Photographs and drawings not otherwise credited are by the author.
Cover design by Isabel Corral.
Xavier Romero Frias asserts the moral rightto be identified as the author of this work
ISBN 84 7254 801 5
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in retrievalsystem, nor transmitted in any form or by any means(whether electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
including via internet websites), without the prior permission of the
publisher.

“A society, like an individual, reveals the secrets of its inner life only tothose who bring to its study not merely scientific curiosity and a mastery oftechnique, but respect and affection.”
R. H. TAWNEYContents

Foreword .....................................................................................................................

Introduction ................................................................................................................

Part I. An Oceanic Civilization .................................................................................

1.1.1 A SEAFARING NATION ...........................................................................

1.1.2 VILLAGES IN THE OCEAN .....................................................................

1.2.1 THE PROBLEM OF THE MALDIVE PAST...........................................

1.2.2 THE STORY OF KOIMALA .....................................................................

1.2.3 THE CONVERSION TO THE NEW RELIGION ...................................

1.3.1 THE EVIL KING.........................................................................................

1.4.1 THE FIRST MOSQUES .............................................................................

1.4.2 THE STRUGGLE AGAINST MALEVOLENT FORCES ......................

1.5.1 THE LAW OF JEALOUSY ........................................................................

1.5.2 DISPLAY OF ANGER ................................................................................

1.6.1 THE HORROR OF DISEASE....................................................................

1.6.2 IN THE WAKE OF AN EPIDEMIC .........................................................

1.6.3 MASS DEATH .............................................................................................

Part II. The Island Mother ........................................................................................

2.1.1 THE DOUBLE FACE OF FEMININITY .................................................

2.1.2 FROM SWEETNESS TO HORROR ........................................................

2.2.1 SPIRITS AND FEVER ................................................................................

2.2.2 BLOOD SACRIFICES ................................................................................

2.2.3 THE LINK BETWEEN BLOOD AND LIFE ...........................................

2.3.1 THE VILLAGE GODDESS ........................................................................

2.3.2 THE SURVIVAL OF OLD MYTHS .........................................................

2.4.1 THE SORCERER AND THE DEVI ..........................................................

2.4.2 SECRET KNOWLEDGE ...........................................................................

2.5.1 INAUSPICIOUS DEATH ...........................................................................

2.5.2 THE IDEALIZATION OF THE FEMININE ....................................................
2.6.1 THE DANGEROUS SIDE OF WOMEN ...........................................................
2.6.2 THE MYSTERY OF FEMALE POWER ..........................................................
Part III. At the Threshold of the Spirit World .................................................................
3.1.1 ANCIENT SORCERERS: MYTHS OF ORIGIN .............................................
3.1.2 MYTHS OF EXTINCTION.................................................................................
3.1.3 TANTRIC HEROES ............................................................................................
3.2.1 LURKING IN THE DARKNESS ........................................................................
3.2.2 THE SEVEN MOTHERS ....................................................................................
3.3.1 FEAR OF THE BURIAL GROUNDS ................................................................
3.3.2 SPECIAL POWERS .............................................................................................
3.4.1 MONSTERS FROM THE SEA ...........................................................................
Part IV. A Showdown of Doctrines ...................................................................................
4.1.1 TUTELARY SPIRITS ..........................................................................................
4.1.2 THE BIG MAN .....................................................................................................
4.2.1 TRACES OF SYNCRETISM ..............................................................................
4.2.2 FOLK WISDOM...................................................................................................
4.3.1 HONOR AND PRIVILEGE ................................................................................
4.3.2 FOREIGN MASTERS..........................................................................................
4.3.3 UNEQUAL PARTNERS ......................................................................................
4.3.4 A POLICY OF DESTRUCTION ........................................................................
Epilogue - STUCK IN THE SANDS OF ARABIA ..........................................................
Glossary ...............................................................................................................................
Bibliography ........................................................................................................................

Foreword
By Rohan Gunaratna Ph.D. FRSA

I first met Xavier Romero-Frias in 1986 during a visit to the equatorialisland of Fua Mulaku, in the Indian Ocean. Together with my father and agroup of seafarers, I wanted to navigate the deep oceans and experience
for myself the trials and tribulations of earlier generations of travelers.
I had been told that the people of Fua Mulaku were beautiful, and they
were. They ate citrus fruits in abundance and that gave their skin a special
colour. In the officially Muslim nation of the Maldives, these islanders
practiced rituals and kept customs that predated Islam.
I had been also told that the archaeological remains of the ancient
Maldivian Buddhist civilization were still well preserved in Fua Mulaku. I
rejoiced at the sight of stupas, shrines and a monastery dating back to2000 years. The island was an almost inaccessible place. Without aharbour, mooring was difficult and the captain of our boat told us that we
couldn’t stay for very long. Perhaps owing to its remoteness, Fua Mulaku
was the place of the Maldives where islanders had kept many of theirancient traditions, practices and way of life still intact.
In my quest for knowledge, I was not alone in Fua Mulaku. Xavier RomeroFrias was living among the native people. They called him “Shavi”. We met
in the night at the light of an oil lamp. There was no electricity, no runningwater and no modern amenities on the island, but Shavi was at ease,living humbly, without any special privilege, just like the other islanders.
Since he hailed from a wealthy Catalan family and had University
education Xavier Romero-Frias welcomed the opportunity of chatting

with me. This was a chance that, according to him, was rare in thatisolated corner of the world. An island almost lost in the vastness of theCentral Indian Ocean, where islanders were only concerned with theimmediate needs of life. Births, deaths, marriages, bad fishing, the chroniclack of food, dominated their conversations in such a way, that there wasalmost no higher intellectual life. And yet, Xavier was able to appreciate
the harmony of the old Maldivian traditions and how important they were
for the long-term survival of that particular society.
The pace of transformation of the world that we live in has been
unprecedented during the past five decades. Cultures and societies
around the world have changed and continue to change. Populations have
exploded; the youth have ceased to be satisfied with the way of life of
their ancestors and have moved to the cities or have traveled abroad insearch of high-paying jobs. Few young people would be happy to stay in a
mountain village and look after goats, like their own family did forgenerations or live in a remote island and be a fisherman until old age.
There seems to be a longing to live “in the centre of the world”, in theplaces “where things happen”, and to dismiss the ancestral cultural ways
as boring, useless and unattractive. The influence of the world-wide
media and consumerism is now felt in every corner of the earth. The
result is that many ancestral ways of life have disappeared irreversibly
during the last decades and only “strong” cultures have managed tosurvive, although markedly altered by the intensity of the recent changes.
Caught in the middle of these changes, Xavier Romero-Frias took the rightaction. ‘The Maldive Islanders’ provides a priceless testimony of the lastdays of a self-contained society that was imminently poised to change. If
Xavier would have not used his position and his skills to preserve all theinformation contained in this book, it is very likely that precious little ofthe traditions of the ancient Maldivians, of which I only could catch a brief
glimpse, would remain today.
We live in eternal gratitude to Xavier Romero-Frias for his careful
documentation of a disappearing civilization. This book is proof that its

author greatly valued, respected and admired the ancient Maldive
folklore. Working incessantly, he took the necessary steps to make surethat not all got lost. To enrich human civilization, Xavier Romero-Frias
followed in the footsteps of H.C.P. Bell, a great historian, archaeologist
and anthropologist of the previous century.

Professor Rohan Gunaratna, Head, International Centre for Political Violence
and Terrorism Research at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies
Singapore, and Senior Fellow, Combating Terrorism Centre, US Military
Academy at West Point, is the author of the international best seller “Inside Al
Qaeda: Global Network of Terror” (Columbia University Press)

Introduction
One or two treasure ships of the Middle Kingdom went there too. They
purchased ambergris, coconuts and other such things. It is but a small country.
(Ma Huan, The Overall Survey of the Ocean’s Shores)

When I visited Maldives for the first time, in June 1979, I used to spend a
lot of time in the Majeedi Library. It was the main one in the capital,
Male’, and it has since been renamed as the National Library. Back then, it
was a very quiet place where there was a pleasant atmosphere andemployees were friendly and helpful. As I wanted to know about the land,
which incidentally is, like Siam, one of the few Asian countries which were
spared foreign colonization, I read all that I could find there, which was
not very much. I remember very clearly that what struck me most at thetime was how few books of substance had been published about theMaldives, and the fact that most of them had been written long ago.
Those few old books dwelt at length on royal genealogies and life in the
Sultan’s court, where the few foreign travelers visiting the country (Ibn
Batuta, Pyrard de Laval) had been entertained. Modern publications were
little more than shallow statistical reports or glossy tourist guides. I feltthat the country had been described but not understood. The Maldivian
people, their way of life and their feelings had never been given a voice.
They seemed to have been dismissed as ‘just a silent presence in the
background,’ like servants in a palace. Thus, vast areas of knowledge
about this island country had still not come to the light.
As years went by, I became fluent in Divehi, the local language, and I
developed a sense of perspective concerning the Maldivian cultural
heritage. However, I was puzzled by the inconsistent Maldivian attitude
towards history. A few gentlemen belonging to the educated elite were
aware of an obscure and distant Buddhist past which, they would know

little about. They claimed that the present country had nothing to do with
it. Years later, a few Maldivians acknowledged a form of what they called‘mysticism’ within the autochthonous culture. However, they treated it as
an isolated, purely local phenomenon of ‘mysterious’ origins.
At a popular level things were even more clouded: most islanders didn’t
want to have anything to do with their Buddhist ancestors. They preferred
to say that other folks had been Buddhist in their country, not them. It
sounded as if the people of the Maldives had always been Muslim andcould not have possibly been anything else. In what looks like a blind formof destructiveness, Maldivians, instead of acknowledging and giving due
honor to their ancestral Buddhist heritage, in which most of their culture
is still rooted, spared no effort to dissociate themselves as much as
possible from their own past.
The Maldivian past is like a misty region, where even events of recent
history seem to be far away in time. To the outsider, this gives theimpression that the actual character of the Maldives is concealed behind amask. At the same time, I could not avoid realizing that the visible face ofthe country was changing rapidly around me. During the 1980’s theMaldive Islands underwent a profound transformation. I witnessed how
the new aggressive Islamization and modernization of the country,
paradoxically happening simultaneously, upset the traditional Island
society, stifling most forms of popular expression. In a scenario where theforces of Islamization and technological consumerism were poised for a
combined onslaught on the Islands, the stresses for the concealed
ancestral cultural heritage were so huge that I wondered whether any
traces of it would survive at all.
The awareness about a whole country losing its true personality, graduallytranslated itself into concern. In the face of the general passivity, I felt
responsible for keeping the fragile legacy of the ancestral Maldivian
expressions alive, which led me to collect clues about the country’s past.
This book is the fruit of many years of observing and collecting samples
not only of tales, but also of the iconography, popular beliefs, festivals,
rituals and customs of the Maldive Islanders. In the end I gathered such avast amount of data that it took me almost as many years to analyze
them, categorize them and evaluate them in the context of the art andtraditions of the Indian Subcontinent. This comparison was necessary
since the Maldivian folkways didn’t just pop ‘mysteriously’ out of the blue
and, certainly, it is not merely an ‘Islamic Country’ as the local authorities
would like us to believe: The present work, by comparing myths and wayof life, tries to establish that the first people settling the Maldives werefisher folk from the nearest maritime regions, the coastlines of South
India and Ceylon. Besides the racial affinity, we will see how below theIslamic veneer the folk culture of the whole area is still very similar.
There are clear indications that sometime in Maldivian antiquity (probably
about two millennia ago) a kingly dynasty from the northern regions of
the Subcontinent established their power in the Maldive Islands without
much local opposition. It is likely that those first ‘noble rulers’ brought the
Buddhist Dharma in their wake, although there are legends that hint at alater conversion to Buddhism. In clear divergence from Sri Lankan myths,
in the Maldives those northern kings perhaps became Buddhist centuries
after beginning their rule over the Maldivian atolls. Next follows ananalysis of the traces of Goddess-worship and the fear of spirits of thedead which are still present in Maldivian popular traditions. The Dravidian
Devi cult and a form of tutelary spirit and ancestor worship are prevalent
among the coastal peoples from the Tulu region of India (Coastal
Karnataka) to the southern shores of Ceylon.
Maldivian archaeological remains and some inscriptions found therein,point to influences from 8th or 9th century Bengal, in the form of
Vajrayāna Buddhist iconography and writing. This work describes theisland world of esoterism and demonstrates how nowadays, to a certain
extent, the Vajrayāna Tantric teachings have endured in the Maldives in a
syncretistic form of occult magical practices, known locally asfaṇḍitaverikan. Thus, the traditions described in this study are not yet athing of the past. Many aspects of the ancient Divehi folkways remain
alive and form a part of the present-day culture of most Maldivian
individuals. This survival has not been easy, and towards the end of thisbook I describe how, since the thirteenth century, there have been quite anumber of kings and ‘holy men’ who tried to make the Maldives more
Islamicized disregarding local cultural needs and values in the process.
I am aware that quite a few aspects of this study may offend somereaders. Folklore is close to the more immediate realities of life, theworries of the common man and woman, young or old. Thus, in the text
there are many explicit references to blood, sex, defecation, disease anddeath. To add to the difficulty, this is a field where nothing seems to beholy, for folkways consistently display a casual lack of respect towards
established religions and government authority. However, instead ofbeing ingenuous and condemn, one must keep in mind that folklore isrooted in emotions and deviations that all human beings manifest. Reality
doesn’t leave much room for idealization, and those who may bedismayed by Maldivian popular culture should remember William Graham
Sumner’s testy dictum that anybody likely to be shocked by reading about
folkways, of whatever sort, had better not read about folkways at all.
Since Maldivians were reluctant to talk about their popular beliefs, it was
initially not easy for me to get to the core of their culture. It took years ofpatient work and living among the average folk, sharing one roof, theirmeals, their preoccupations, their joy and their pain, to finally be able tounderstand their ancestral soul. After spending a great part of my life
among the Divehi people, I came to admire the way in which they haveadapted to their environment. My hope is that this book will help them torecover their pride in their heritage.
Note: For the transcription of the Maldivian language the ISO 15919
transliteration of Indic scripts has been used, save a few exceptions

Acknowledgments
I have to thank all the Maldivian people who told me stories, anecdotes
and even mere hearsay, mostly without thinking that what they weretelling was important at all. I am especially grateful to Aishath Naazneen
for constantly providing valuable advice and guidance in the translation
into English of difficult concepts in Divehi. I also have to thank her for
succeeding in making me grasp certain nuances of her culture which I
would easily have overlooked or misinterpreted.
The foremost of the Maldivian storytellers was the late Magieduruge
Ibrahim Didi of Fua Mulaku, who ended up becoming a very good friendof mine; I cherish the memories of his patience, consideration towards me
and his never-failing sense of humor. I also made many other good friends
in that island, such as ‘Light’ Hamidu and his dad Vaijehēge (Unakeḍege)Ali Didi, whose company I thoroughly enjoyed; Kenerige (Madarusāge)
Muhammadu Saidu, the kindest government officer I have ever met;Nuḍalhī (Mādaḍibeage) Nasīmu, captain of the Funāḍu boat, with whom I
often had the chance to travel to Huvadu and Addu Atolls practicing how
to use a sextant; Daḍimagi Rafigu and his family; Bondorāge Muhammad
Didi the last faṇḍita man in Maldives having performed a ‘Bahuru
Kiyevun’, Muhammadu (Kalhu) Maniku; Hudufinifenmāge Ahumad Didi;
all the people in Karānge, Shabnamvilla, Hittange, Himitige andFinifenmāge; Bēremagi Aliu, and also Tuttu, Mubinu’s dad, who went withme crisscrossing Fua Mulaku convincing the sorcerers to let me copy thesecret drawings in their books.
In Male’ I have to thank Nedunge AliNajibu and Ba who gave me copies ofsome rare old pictures; Ahumadu Shafigu and Hirunduge Donkokko forgenerously sharing information about the old times in the Radun’s palace.
In other islands: Rashidu in Hurā (Male’ Atoll) Ahumadu Saidu and Hasan
Maniku from Gaddu (Huvadu Atoll) whose company was so pleasant; Afifu
in Ratafandu Island (Huvadu Atoll); Kuḍafari Kalēfānu (South
Miladummaḍulu Atoll); Abdul Hādi in Kuḍa Huvadu Island (Nilande Atoll);and Abdurrahim Abdul Majid the former Nilande Atoll Chief, whoprovided me with the opportunity of visiting many islands in Central
Maldives and who taught me Tāna calligraphy.

I extend my thanks to Kambulō Daitā and her family in South
Miladummaḍulu Atoll, Holhudu Island; in Addu Atoll: Saidu and Nasimu in
Fēdu Island, Havvā Diye and Ibrahim Didi in Hitadu Island, Sēbuge Ali Didi
in Mīdu Island; besides a number of families in Haddummati Atoll
Māmendu; Huvadu Atoll Gemanafushi, Kolāmāfushi, Māmendu and
Tinadu islands for their generous hospitality.
I thank also the officials at the Spanish Embassy in New Delhi, especially
Carlos Fernandez Espeso and Isabel, for their generous assistancewhenever I needed something from them between the years 1979 and1999. Next I thank all the people who provided me with jobs which helped
me to survive during the many years I lived in Maldives, among which theforemost are Ewald Kiebert, Pitt Pietersoone, Cos Rousso, Shakeeb in
E.D.C., Muhammad Asim, Eddy & Ursula Drzensla in Hembadu, Ernesto in
Halaveli, Philippe Coigne in Makunudu and several people at Club Med.
I have to give also special thanks to Rohan Gunaratna for providing accessto the Maldivian Section in the National Archives in Colombo; Prof. V.
Sudarsen of the Department of Anthropology, Madras University for his
generous assistance by providing rare books and documents on Minicoyisland; Bernard Koechlin of the C.N.R.S. for encouraging me to study the
Maldive island poetry; R. Ramachandran Nair, the former Vice Chancellorof Sri Sankaracharya Sanskrit University (Trivandrum Branch) for
graciously waiving the proverbial Indian red tape and getting me admitted
as a student without further ado, and the campus director Bernard Fengfor his kind assistance with the problems I always faced as a foreign (in all
the senses) student in India; my classmate S. Neelakanta for his help andalso for his zeal in making sure I did learn Sanskrit.
I thank Edward L. Powe for giving me advice on how to put into writing myknowledge about the Maldivian spirit world; Austin Hale for the fonts I
needed in my computer; Bruce Cain for helping format my text and index;
Kitty Holloway for editing my manuscript; Bob Sluka for making the lastminute corrections; Ali Manikfan and his daughter Amina Manike of
Minicoy for providing me with information about their lonely island; theArchaeological Survey of India for pictures about Buddhist remains inMinicoy; Paul Johnson, from the U.S. Navy, who was based at Diego
Garcia in the 80’s and sent me information and pictures of the littleknown Chagos; Habeeba Husain Habib from the National Library in Male’for allowing me to photocopy certain books and M. Loutfi for giving me
permission to take a few pictures in the Male’ Museum.
Last but not least, I have to thank certain people who provided me withbooks when I was in a very isolated environment. First my friend Manolo
Martinez Marti and his wife Mercedes Sanchez Lodares, who even went
all the way to Paris, to the French National Library, to photocopy a veryrare manuscript, the ‘Voyage de François Pyrard,’ in its original 17th
century French edition. Next Tashi Recordati for providing me with books
about Buddhism in the middle of Maldives, and also Andreas Loetscher,
Roque Romero (my dad), Nina and Rosa Romero (my sisters), Avel-li
Bassols, Massimo Gattuso, Katy Rasera, Jacques Riolacci, Amet Belig,
Elfriede Kopf, ‘Manta’ Hans, and Germana Citterio for sending me books
which were crucial for my studies when I asked for them in similar
circumstances.
I thank also my two fellow countrymen Ramon Faura Cunill and Eduard
Masdeu Jorda whose love for the Maldive Islands and their recollections
from their travels there made this country the main theme of most ourconversations during the 1990’s. Their never-fading interest in my stories
about the Maldives has been a major source of encouragement.
Finally, I have to express my deep gratitude to many Maldivian men andwomen that, unfortunately, I have not mentioned above. Time has passed
and it is impossible now for me to recall all names and faces. However, I
do remember clearly that many people kindly shared their time with me,
putting up with my numerous questions and casually telling me stories
and memories of their childhood, when the Maldives was a very different
place.

Trivandrum, October 1999