Mala'ekula
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Malaʻekula or Malaʻe Kula (red square) is the proper name of the royal burial grounds in central Nukuʻalofa in Kingdom of Tonga in the southern Pacific Ocean. The kings of Tonga and their very close relatives (wives, husbands, children) are buried there. Those who are a little farther away from the mainline (cousins, nephews, nieces, inlaws) are buried elsewhere, in other chiefly cemeteries. Kings from older times, (i.e. the Tuʻi Tonga dynasty), are mostly buried in the langi in Muʻa.
Malaʻekula is a short distance south of the royal palace along the Hala Tuʻi (kings road), also known as the Hala Paini (pine road) because of the Norfolk pines (a royal tree in Tonga) which were originally planted along this road (nowadays many have disappeared). The cemetery was established when the first king of modern Tonga died, Siaosi Tāufaʻāhau Tupou I. His tomb is positioned in the middle of the field, such that one can see it there when looking from the palace grounds straight along the Hala Tuʻi .
The word malaʻe means in Tongan: (village)-green, park, playground, etc. but it is also the royal word for cemetery. Kula means: red. It is a reminder of the famous kātoanga kula (red festival) held at that place in 1885. The festival was a fundraising event for Tonga college (whose corporate colour is vermilion-red, opened 1882), and everybody was dressed in red that day.
During the middle of the 20th century expatriates in Tonga used the area as a golf course. After queen Sālote had died and was buried there, out of respect the area was no longer used for such mundane purposes.
[edit] References
- E. Wood-Ellem, Queen Sālote of Tonga, Auckland university press, 1999
- M. Hixon, Sālote, queen of paradise, University of Otago press, 2000
