Folk tales of the Maldives
As with most topics that concern the South Asian archipelago country of the Maldives, traditions of orality, story-telling and folk tales have been little investigated. The comparative remoteness and small scale, the dispersion of the inhabited islands over a vast expanse of the Indian Ocean (with few and/or difficult travel links between many of those islands), as well as the relative scarcity of materials assisting a foreigner in the acquisition of the national language (Dhivehi) are doubtless some of the reasons for the paucity of scholarly literature in languages other than Dhivehi.
And, with respect to the topic of this book, native Dhivehi speakers have not reduced the oral tradition to writing. The oral folk tradition in the Maldives has also, as Romero-Frias explains, been in decline over the last three decades, due to transnational ideological flows including understandings of Islam, modernity, and nationalism; sociological change affecting extended family and kinship networks; alterations in historical communal life; and the spread of television, mobile phones, the internet, etc. With the exception of a smattering of periodicals published in the 1970s, Maldivians themselves have not transcribed these stories. Considering the obstacles to a project of this kind Xavier-Romero Frias has made an estimable achievement of benefit both to Maldivians and to foreigners, by at once recording and translating a wide range of Dhivehi folk tales.
The only precedents for this book are Clarence Maloney's observations about the oral tradition (People of the Maldive Islands, Orient Longman Delhi, 1980), Suzanne Pruner (with the assistance of Ali Hussein, Novelty Books in the 1980s [year not given]) and Romero-Frias' own previous book The Maldive Islanders, A Study of the Popular Culture of an Ancient Ocean Kingdom (Barcelona, 1999). As the author rightly indicates, these works did not devote themselves to “atavic folk tales and legends” as does this volume (xxvii).
Representing orality in the Maldives
As an auxiliary to the selection of short stories, this book furnishes the reader guidance on Maldivian names (xiv), a customized Dhivehi lexicon (xv-xiv), a bibliography that may assist even specialists (293-297), a map of the country (xx), and an assortment of artwork - mainly what appear to be pencil drawings by the author, in addition to some (historical) photographs, and a sample Maldivian lacquerware design. The annotations to the stories are most helpful both for the general reader and for those who are more familiar with Maldivian society in more recent times.
The typology of Maldivian oral tradition (xxvii- xxxiv) the author provides succinctly summarizes the range of stories (and the elements they either exemplify or hybridize) across the 80 stories available here: supernatural tales (with spirits or monsters), “long fairy-style myths”, stories with “humorous characters”, animal fables, nautical tales, and “semi-historical” chronicles.
As someone who lived and worked in Malé, the Maldives' capital island, for one academic year (2007-2008) but who did not research folk or oral traditions, this reviewer cannot verify or otherwise check the authenticity of the stories as reported here. However, thinking subjectively and retrospectively, reading these stories struck a resonance with the reviewer's personal experiences with Maldivian students, colleagues and friends; the self-deprecating humor and seemingly simple but somehow also rich and novel narratives rang true. Even if much of the tradition preserved in this book is lost to the younger generation of Maldivians, this reviewer felt his own understanding and experience of the contemporary scene enhanced by reading this volume. Others traveling to the Maldives will likely reap a similar benefit if they should have occasion to interact with Maldivians.
Among the array of themes – many but not all of which have some universal and cross-cultural purchase – are: the relationship of humans with the plants and animals of land and sea; governance (kings, atoll and island chiefs) and relationships of dependency and patronage; love and romance; status and status competition; social cleavages; isolation and relations with the occasional but rare intrusion of the outside world (for example, a Japanese SCUBA diver named Satō who introduced his submarine arts to then uninitiated Maldivians); the representation of women and the supernatural powers some of them were believed to possess; the hardships of life (including leprosy, poverty and hunger); and morality tales (truth-telling, promise-keeping). Far from depicting an idyllic history or a paradisaical place, some of these stories sharpen into a critical edge: instances of deserved comeuppance, and undeserved suffering; authority figures who are portrayed as lascivious, unfair and cruel; the snobbish wealthy. The selected stories are examples of how folk traditions in the Maldives as elsewhere may be read as a form of resistance. They may be read as potentially subversive expressions of the disenfranchised; or, alternatively, as a means of re-inscribing the dominant social order and – through humor and naturalistic justifications – sustaining that order.
Elements that were of particular interest were the changing physical landscape, and the existence of forested areas now largely absent. One tale of the accidental maritime exploration of Maldivians as far south as the Chagos islands (which the Maldivians labeled 'remote' and 'desolate,' p. 190), was interesting in view of recent controversies over Chagos refugees in the UK and the Maldivian government's support for the 2009 UK unilateral declaration of a marine reserve encompassing the Chagos; while such a reserve effectively barred Chagossians from returning, it permitted the continuing lease of the island Diego Garcia to the US armed forces.
From the standpoint of modern nation building and myth-making, and the state-sanctioned version of Islam propagated since the 1970s, the oral tradition recorded here problematizes official narratives inscribing the homogeneity of Maldivian people's religiosity, revealing instead a more complex and syncretistic relationship between Islamic scripture and Arabic on the one hand and indigenous rituals and beliefs about the supernatural on the other. At the same time the volume also contains the official origin myth concerning the arrival of Islam in the Maldives: the story of Ranna Māri (pp. 74-75).
The Maldivian belief in the status of Minicoy ('Maliku'), which is the southernmost atoll of the Lakshadweep Islands of India, may be unknown even by those who are familiar with the Maldives. The author's finding that the inhabitants of Minicoy were unfamiliar with the Maldivian oral tradition or its local counterpart evinces the value of a study such as this, which may not only record but also interrogate local informants' understanding of their own folk traditions.
Romero-Arias claims at the outset that the book was written for those interested in but not yet informed about the Maldives (including possible tourists and visitors) as well as researchers and South Asian specialists or (it might be added) those engaged in comparative work on microstates and island cultures. The inherent novelty and freshness of these stories, with their quirky twists and punchlines furnish ample entertainment for the former. Supported by the author's seamless and consistently understated yet effective translation, the originality and inherent interest of this volume will equally engage the latter. In sum, the book offers unprecedented access for the curious and the specialist alike into Maldivian folk stories. It has also helped to preserve for posterity a tradition that would otherwise not long survive.
Scott Morrison, Associate Professor, Akita University, Japan (smsmorrison@gmail.com)