Mr Gardiner, The Natives of the Maldives. 21 



mine (huwanduma), are common throughout the East in any open 

 place where people lave and meet together. 



The charms, which might be expected to retain some of their 

 primitive facies longest and to be less affected by Islamism, show 

 no leaning to Buddhism. That of Kassoderie Dzhin might be 

 taken to represent the Vishnu lingura ; of Oadee-ver-Risa Dzhin 

 the Shiva lingum ; of Kudaffoor a sixteen- legged scarabaeus with 

 a Shiva head. Further those of Mas and Beembi Dzhin have also 

 distinct phallic possibly Vishnu indications. Other charms are 

 purely Arabic or Islamic. All are covered with quotations from 

 the Koran or Sonna books. It is possible that many of the 

 charms may have been introduced from Brahmin India, but it is 

 more probable that the lower features of Brahminism arose 

 among people, who gave rise to the Maldivans as well. 



The Maldivans themselves have no stories of the origin of 

 their race nor islands, and always asseverate the indigenous 

 character of their occupation, quoting as arguments the complete 

 dissimilarity of their cloth, dress, mats, lacquer work and boats 

 from those of the mainland. This however is not strictly true, as 

 I found an outrigged boat (digu doni). It is now only used by 

 the children as a toy, but formerly it was in common use for 

 inter-atoll voyages. I saw the hulls of several, in all cases hol- 

 lowed tree-trunks, and the fully rigged vessel would seem to 

 have been very similar to the regular Singhalese and Polynesian 

 canoes. 



As to the language I have no personal knowledge of Singhalese, 

 and so doubtless failed to see the close similarity which is said 

 to exist. From a comparison of words of everyday use the rela- 

 tionship was very clear, especially in the southern atolls. Mr Gray 

 in the Jour. Asiatic Soc. points to the great resemblance between 

 Maldivan of the present day and Elu, the pure ancient Singhalese 

 of 2000 years ago, which was later corrupted by Sanskrit and 

 Pali. The close likeness between the two peoples bears this 

 out, and the two races would seem to have been the result of a 

 dichotomous branching of a common stem, one division perhaps 

 travelling along the west coast of Hindustan to Ceylon and the 

 other sailing through the Laccadives to the Maldives. 



I hope subsequently to publish a full report on this most 

 interesting people in collaboration with Mr C. Forster Cooper of 

 Trinity College, who has paid especial attention to their manu- 

 factures, games, boats, etc. 



