LIGHT AFFORDED BY TRADITION: 121 



— dark and light in colour — cross the space between the 

 Malayan region and Madagascar? 



The absence of any ancient writings and monuments leaves 

 us little besides tradition and language to fall back upon. 

 The former of these is vague and uncertain, but one or two 

 probabilities may be gleaned from it, as well as from language. 



We know little as yet about the traditions of the coast 

 tribes, but Hova tradition points very clearly to their ances- 

 tors having come into the central province from the east 

 coast. In a native history which was published at" tl?e 

 capital in 1873, a list of Hova chieftains and kings is given. 

 The present sovereign makes the thhty-sixth on this Hst, but 

 it is distinctly said that the first-named of these thirty-six 

 was not actually the first, but that " the beginnings of the 

 sovereigns who reigned here from the very first is still a 

 matter veiled in obscurity," the accounts " being so mixed up 

 with fabulous legends that the whole of them cannot be con- 

 sidered as reliable." Then follows a story deriving the origin 

 of some of these chiefs from a son whom Aiidriam^nitra (God) 

 cast down to the earth to play with the Vazimba (the early 

 inhabitants of the central province). Now this list seems to 

 give us some slight indications of a date, after which it is not 

 probable that the Hovas arrived in the centre of the island, 

 and it is most lUcely that it was considerably earlier. For 

 if we look at a list of English sovereigns, we see that from 

 WiUiam the Conqueror to our present Queen, their number 

 is (curiously enough) exactly the same as that of these Hova 

 chieftains. It is not quite certain that all these Malagasy 

 princes reigned successively, but most of them no doubt did 

 so ; and therefore, supposing that the average length of reign 

 was about the same in Madagascar as in England, probably 

 the Hova incursion was not much, if at all, later than our 

 Norman Conquest, and perhaps was much earlier than that 

 event ; while the date at which they arrived in Madagascar 

 itself is lost in obscurity, as well as the probably much 

 earlier invasion of the island by the other races. 



Philology gives us a little additional light here, but only 

 a little. The Eev. L. Dahle has pointed out, in a valuable 

 article on "The Influence of the Arabs on the Mabgasy 



