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 lingum ; of Oadee-ver-Risa Dzhin 
the Shiva lingum ; of Kudaffoor a sixteen- legged scarabaeus with 
a Shiva head. Further those of Has 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 everj^day 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. 
