Maldivian Folklore
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Maldive Mythology or Maldive Folklore is the body of myths, tales and anecdotes belonging to the oral tradition of Maldivians.
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[edit] Introduction
The Maldives lie in the warm equatorial area of the Indian Ocean surrounded by very deep waters. This nation is made up exclusively of coral atolls. There are about 1,200 small flat and sandy islands, but only about 200 of them are inhabited.
The Maldives have been continuously populated for millennia; therefore the folklore of these islands is very ancient.
[edit] Myths of origin
The main myths of origin are reflecting the dependence of the Maldivians on the coconut tree and the tuna fish. A legend says that the first inhabitants of the Maldives died in great numbers, but a great sorcerer or fandita man made coconut trees grow out of the skulls of the buried corpses of the first settlers. Therefore the coconut tree is said to have an anthropomorphic origin according to Maldive lore. The coconut tree occupies a central place in the present-day Maldive national emblem.
The tuna fish is said to have been brought to the Maldivian waters by a mythical seafarer (maalimi) called Bodu Niyami Kalēfanu who went close to the Dagas (the mythical tree at the end of the world) to bring this valuable fish.
[edit] Myths of extinction
These myths tell that the end of the Maldives will be a great catastrophe where the islands will be submerged by the surrounding ocean. Similar myths are found in the Andaman Islands as well as in the Nicobar Islands.
[edit] The origin of Malé
This is a local legend about the origin of the capital of the Maldives. This is a very poetic legend and it may not be accurate as regards the actual founding and building of the city.
The first settlers in the Maldive Islands were Dravidian people from the nearest coasts, which are in the Indian Subcontinent and coastal Ceylon. The people of Giraavaru, an island located in Malé Atoll (now a tourist resort, after its inhabitants were removed) claim to descend from the first settlers.
It is said that Giraavaru fishermen used to go regularly to a certain large sandbank (finolhu) at the southern end of their atoll to clean tuna fish after a good catch. Owing to the large amount of tuna fish offal and blood, the waters around that sandbank looked like a big pool of blood (maa ley gandeh). "Maa" (from the Sanskrit "Maha"), meaning big, and "Lē" meaning blood. Traditionally the first inhabitants of the Maldives, which include the Giraavaru people, didn't have kings. They lived in a simple society and were ruled by local headmen.
One day a prince from the Subcontinent called Koimala arrived to Malé Atoll sailing from the north on a big ship. The people of Giraavaru spotted his vessel from afar and welcomed him. They allowed Prince Koimala to settle on that large sandbank in the midst of the waters tainted with fishblood. Trees were planted on the sandbank and it is said that the first tree that grew on it was the papaya tree. As time went by the local islanders acceped the rule of this Northern Prince. A palace was built and the island was formally named Maa-le Malé, while the nearest island was named Hulhu-le (Hulhulé).
[edit] Evil spirits
Most of the popular tales in Maldives are about evil spirits and their interaction with the islanders. These stories contain always a lesson in some form or the other. Certain actions became necessary in order to avoid trouble with the spirit world. These patterns of behaviour, like the importance of keeping a secret, as well as the avoidance of certain areas of the island and of inauspicious times, were an essential component of the ancient popular spirituality.
The Maldivian spirits can take human form, even if it is not known whether they have a human origin or not. While in human shape, the malevolence of those spirits is often masked by beauty and youth. Certain Maldivian evil spirits (handi) have the appearance of charming, beautiful women. These stories about female spirits have their origin in the ancient Dravidian mother-goddess worship and they point to the ethnic origin of the Maldive people.
Other evil spirits which are the subject of many folk stories in the Maldives (furēta) are crude monsters coming from the ocean waters. The tales about sea monsters are part of the local cultural background, which is characterized by the oceanic environment in which, along the millennia, the Maldivian culture developed.
[edit] Don Hiyala and Alifulhu
Among the stories in which the spirit and sorcery theme are not essential, the most significant is perhaps Don Hiyalā and Alifulhu. This story about two good-looking lovers is a much distorted Maldivian version of the Rāmāyana. Despite the apparent dissimilarities, the common sequential structure linking the elements of the Maldivian story with the Indian epic (the heroic married couple, the wicked and powerful king, the kidnapping of the beautiful heroine, etc.) is obvious.
This parallelism between Don Hiyalā and Alifulhu and the Rāmāyana is hardly unexpected, for all South and Southeast Asian countries have local Rāmayāna variations and the Maldives is definitely part of the South Asian cultural sphere.
[edit] Local fauna
Folktales where fishes, crabs and seabirds are the heroes, like the tales about Mākana, Findana, Kalhubondage Diye, Fandiyaaru Kakuni, or Don Mohonaai Miyaru, introduce us to the world of the local fauna of the Maldive Atolls, where land animals are very few. Many of these are tales for children and some are still quite popular. Although most of the stories of this type are original, a few are foreign tales or fables which have been adapted to the island context through local storytellers or by Maldivian learned men, like the late Muhammad Jamil.
[edit] Mighty sorcerers
In the ancestral oral literature of Maldivians, the sorcerer, or learned man of the island who knew the magic arts. Magic or sorcery is known in Maldives as fanḍita.
The Maldivian sorcerer or fanḍita man is always portrayed in the folklore of Maldivians as a hero. Only he knew how to appease the spirits that terrified the average island folk on a daily (or better nightly) basis. Some recent stories tend to cast the sorcerer in the role of a villain, but these are totally disconnected from the ancestral Maldive lore.
The Maldivian folklore contains legends about sage Vashishta. Vashishta is known locally as Oditan Kalēge, a mighty sorcerer. Oditan Kalēge's wife is a beautiful woman called Dōgi Aihā who possesses a fiery temperament and who is a powerful sorceress as her husband. Her name is derived from the Sanskrit word yogini.
[edit] The conversion to Islam
According to the well-known Moroccan traveler Ibn Batuta, the person responsible for converting the Maldivians to Islam was a Sunni Muslim visitor named Abu al Barakat ul Barbari. He subdued Ranna Maari, a demon coming from the sea and convinced the King to become a Muslim.
However, the more reliable local historical chronicles, Raadavalhi and Taarikh, mention that this saint was actually a Persian from the city of Tabriz, called Yusuf Shamsud-din. He is also locally known as Tabrīzugefānu. The much venerated tomb of this saint now stands on the grounds of Hukuru Miski, in the centre of Malé, the capital.
[edit] Local characters
Stories about local characters, like Rōnu Eduru, Kuda Tuttu Didi, Karukuru or Naalaafushi Fagīru (the poor man of Naalaafushi) give us a glimpse on the way of life in the Maldives when the archipelago was a kingdom, and Malé, the capital, was a quaint, laid back place. In those stories we learn much about the life in the court in Malé and about the mutual interaction between the Radun (the king of Maldives) and his subjects.
[edit] Modern variants
Since there are a great number of islands in the Maldives, many folkstories have different versions according to the particular island and the storyteller in question. In recent times some stories have been abridged by contemporary Maldivian writers, like Abdulla Sadiq or Ahumadu Sharīfu (Maradū) because of their extreme length.
Other stories (Karukuru, Telabagudi and the Māmeli tales) have been sanitized, because there was much casual reference to defecation and bodily fluids, particularly in ancient folk-stories from the outer atolls, where local values found this acceptable.
[edit] References
- Xavier Romero-Frias, The Maldive Islanders, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom. Barcelona 1999, ISBN 84 7254 801 5
- Doń Hiyala āi Alifulu. Abdullah Sādigu, Mulī. Novelty Press. Malé 1996.
- Asian Variations in Ramayana. Edited by K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar. Sahitya Akademi. Delhi 1983.
- Furatama Satēka Raivaru. Divehi Bahāi Tārikhah Khidmaiykurā Qaumī Markazu. Malé 1996.
- Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, Austin, Texas 1984, ISBN 0 292 78376 0
- Divehi Ādakāda. Bābāgē Donmaniku. Divehi Bahāi Tārikhah Khidmaiykurā Qaumī Markazu. Malé 1993.
- Dońkamanā. Ābāru. Malé 1974.
