The Maldive Mystery

Ih
CE COLLEGE
RO5970A0420
WILBERFORCE SIXTH FORM COLLEGE

KINGSTON UPON HULL (0482) 711688
LIBREX
000 080
UMN
[AE AUATUTE UE EEAEITAIAAAAALARAAAALITAAAAAALALALALIALA LL
Pr orm Ce ge DS ;
— = a4 Caspian
I L S=
a ems ec Camemnneony Sea
——— :
——= Y a
8 See aeee
\Tabriz es +
Bz po LF News a
> gs & % ? _
BB
> (rrr
a :
RCTs oneseers,
ena aanma ,
ay x PERSIA :
ag - wee <<
> born
Se ; ; \ \ PS {
Li ss
B a a LP \e~~ 0
B
Bb
Wt \
= .
Bb aot Hormuz
- Ce 2
fe — 3
-< BAHRAIN ES
B
B
ARABIA
_
bs
B
By
BP
B
od
|]
i
i
J
4
4
s
Be AFRICA
Le ee>
—-
a
>
Sa
B:
B
BD
¥-
B
.==
B
=
penis
»S = ui Se Catt
LEVY YYYVVVVVVYVVVVVVVVVVVYVVVVVYVVYVVVVV
VVVVVVVIVVYVY
AY
)
DEEEAEEALALAAETAAAT AAA ALAAAA EEA AAR | |
)
}
AN
af Ez
aaa
()
. Nuh
NN
A G
|
—.}
V7
VV
r¥
@
é
Ss
g
&
=]
PY
g
in
2
Si&
(
@
||
&
re
«
x
ar oa
a Digitized by the Internet Archive
Bi in 2022 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
ed
The Maldive Mystery

By the same author
Aku-Aku
American Indians in the Pacific
Archaeology of Easter Island
Art of Easter Island
Early Man and the Ocean
Fatu-Hiva
Kon-Tiki Expedition
Ra Expeditions
Tigris Expedition
The
Maldive
Mystery
THOR HEYERDAHL
UNWIN
PAPERBACKS
I DON SYDNEY WELLINGTON
First published in Great Britain by George Allen & Unwin
(Publishers) Ltd. 1986
First published in paperback by Unwin® Paperbacks, an imprint of
Unwin Hyman Limited, in 1988
© Thor Heyerdahl 1986, 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission of Unwin Hyman Limited.
Unwin Hyman Limited

15/17 Broadwick Street
London W1V 1FP
Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd

8 Napier Street, North Sydney, NSW 2060, Australia
Allen & Unwin New Zealand Pty Ltd with the Port Nicholson Press
60 Cambridge Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand
a ee eee eee
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Heyerdahl, Thor
The Maldive mystery : a new adventure in
archaeology.
1. Maldives —— Antiquities
I. Title
934-9'5 DS486.5.M3
ISBN 0-04-440194~9
ee
eeeee ee
Cover photo: Sebra Film, Sweden
Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

Contents
A THOUSAND ISLAND MYSTERY page 9
Buried Images and the Sacrifice of Virgins
THE GREAT MOUND OF FUA MULAKU ei!
Who Were the Redin?
THE FIRST FINGERPRINT 60
Voyages through Space and Time
PYRAMID IN THE JUNGLE 76
A Sun-temple en Gaaf-Gan
ARCHAEOLOGISTS COME TO THE
MALDIVES .- ~ 102
Should Sleeping Dogs Be Disturbed?
VI EXCAVATIONS BEGIN 122
The Buried ‘Phallus Temple’ on Nilandu
vil IN THE WAKE OF THE REDIN 139
Redin from the North, Buddhists from the East
VIII RETURN TO THE EQUATORIAL CHANNEL 162
The Lost Inscriptions
IX THE MALDIVES, A CROSSROAD IN
ANTIQUITY 197
The Pre-European Epoch of Free Trade
X A LOST CHAPTER IN WORLD HISTORY 217
The Lions and the Bull in the Sun-temple
XI WHENCE THE BUDDHISTS? 243
Into the Lion’s Den
XII FOLLOWING FOOTPRINTS 261
Buddha's Road from a Hindu Cradle
XIII WHENCE THE HINDU? 277.
To the Harbour of the Long-ears
XIV THE VERDICT 301
NOTES 314
BIBLIOGRAPHY 316
“INDEX 318
illustrations
Between pages 96 and 97
The statue that began the Maldive mystery
A beautiful Buddha and two figurines
Limestone masks of demons
Evidence of prehistoric civilisation
An abandoned bamboo raft on Viringili
Finds from the excavations
Foundations of a pyramidal structure
Maldive islanders — who were their ancestors?

The author and Ake Karlson heading for adventure
Approaching the atolls of the Maldives
Excavating a man-made mound
A pyramidal mound on Gaaf-Gan and temple walls on
Nilandu
The remains of a temple and a circular bath
A lion sculpture from an oceanic island
Maldive islanders preparing food
A modern mosque of palm leaves

A basketful of money
Fallen sculptured stones
Traditional dhonis of the Maldives
The specialised masonry technique of the Redin
Loutfi with the head of a Hindu water god
A pre-Moslem ancestor gallery
Archaeological clues for solving the mystery
The highway of the sun
Ts
GHAPTERT
A Thousand Island
Mystery
Buried Images and the Sacrifice of
Virgins
-
Wie
BITS OF BLACK soil and green moss spilled over the red carpet in
the President's Palace as our old potato sacks were cut open and
the heavy stones rolled out. They were fresh from the jungle,
and still covered by lichen and moss.
His Excellency Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the
young Republic of Maldives, made no attempt to conceal his
joy, nor did the high officials in dark suits who stood respect-
fully at his side. But the servants and soldiers who had brought
in the sacks withdrew puzzled, with a mixture of awe and
bewilderment. Nothing like this had ever been brought in
amongst the elegant furniture of the Palace. Nor, for that matter,
would they ever have dumped it on the floor of their own huts.
On the carpet before us lay a row of weatherworn limestone
blocks, once neatly carved out of the white island rock, but now
dark grey with age, with reliefs still clearly to be seen on one
side under the covering of lichen. Their opposite sides were
shaped with a neck and shoulders designed to fit into a wall.
The carved symbols had been cut to stand out, by about a
finger’s thickness, from the rest of the stone. The most striking
of these were the big sun-symbols. Big as dinner plates. A
round central disc representing the sun was surrounded by a
series of raised rings one enclosing the other. This has always
been the classical image of the solar deity among sun-worship-
pers since the oldest civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt.
Some of the stones had a more elegant decoration. They had
y
The Maldive Mystery
wings added on each side of the sun, resulting in a design that

resembled a modern airline emblem. The winged sun was also
typical of the ancient art of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
Two of the stones were quite different and much more ornate.
A row of free-standing sunflowers alternated with a raised
symbol composed of vertical bars flanked by three dots set
above each other, almost like numerals in Mayan hieroglyphics;
and above this row was a wider band of lotus motifs running
along the edge of the stone. The sunflower, too, was an emblem
of the early sun-worshippers, and the lotus flower was the
symbol of the sunrise not only in Pharaonic Egypt but in
Mesopotamia and ancient India as well.
Clearly we had discovered something which nobody expec-
ted to see on islands that lay far out in the Indian Ocean. Even
the islanders themselves admitted that they had never seen
anything like these before. They were Moslems. Everybody in
the Maldive archipelago was Moslem, as their ancestors had
been for over 800 years, that is, since the Islamic faith had been
embraced and enforced as law by the ruling Sultan in the year
583 of the Holy Prophet, or ap 1153 according to our Christian
calendar. Since that time nobody would have either cared or
dared to carve motifs like these in the Maldive archipelago,
indeed no one can settle there without accepting Islam as their
faith.
Yet, although we had barely arrived in the Maldive Islands,
we had already found these non-Moslem stones. They were not
easy to detect, since they were covered by moss and hidden
under ferns and foliage in dense jungle. Moreover, we had
found them on an uninhabited island, as far south and as far
from the capital island Male (pronounced Malé) and the tourist
routes as it was possible to go in the 960-kilometre (600-mile)
long archipelago. What we had brought to the Palace, however,
was a mere sample of what we knew was still left in the jungle.
At first we had brought them to the little Moslem museum in
the capital, but the President then insisted on inspecting the
carvings himself. He gave us a friendly reception, but when he
saw the contents of the potato sacks his face lit up like a boy
enraptured by Father Christmas’s gifts.
He finally rose to his feet and said with pride:
‘We are a young republic, yes. But now we have proof that we
10
A Thousand Island Mystery
too have an old history, just like our neighbours on the con-
tinent!’
The stones still lay on the red carpet as we left the Palace. The
guards were to carry them back to the nation’s only museum
where they had temporarily to be tucked away in a corner, for
they did not fit in at all among the Islamic art and history to
which the building was devoted.
I myself left the Palace with a beautiful whalebone model of a
Maldive sailing dhoni, and with a personal invitation from the
President to organise the first archaeological excavations ever to
be attempted on the 1,200 or so islands in the archipelago that
made up his nation.~
Ilay down on the bed in my roomat the little public guest-house

a short walk away from the Palace. Indeed, on this tiny capital
island of Male, everything lay within walking distance.
I turned on the ceiling fan, then turned it off again because I
needed to think. But thoughts seemed almost an intrusion in
this pleasant tropical temperature. The sun, the sea, the white
sand and the coconut palms outside all induced a sense of
contentment and relaxation; even so the situation, as I thought
about it, seemed clear enough. A month ago I had hardly heard
of the Maldive Islands. Last week I had come here for the first
time, and stopped over for one day in this same hotel before
Bjorn Bye and I went to visit the southern atolls. Now we were
back again in Male and I was lying on the same bed pondering
an unexpected invitation from the President to try to unravel
the lost past of his nation. At the same time, five heavy stones in
dirty potato sacks were being carried from the Palace to the
National Museum, and eleven more were on their way by water.
Embarrassing.
Embarrassing because I knew next to nothing about this
country. For lack of time I had come utterly unprepared. Indeed,
the average tourist equipped with his brochures probably came
better prepared than I. Until last week these islands were
nothing to me but dots on an ocean map, with names so strange
that I stumbled as I tried to read them. I could not speak the local
language, which they call Divehi, nor could I even understand
the strange signs in their writing system. To me their peculiar
script looked like chopped-up spaghetti tossed into lines. They
11
The Maldive Mystery
call it gabuli tana, or thana akuru, and it is written from right to

left.
How could I, therefore, start a meaningful search for some-
thing that lay beyond what these intelligent and literate people
already knew about their ancestral past? _
And where among the 1,200 or so islands?
This surely was a task for someone who knew more about
local problems than I did. Yet it offered a tremendous challenge.
Here was a country in the middle of the ocean, a member of the
United Nations, and yet with origins that were lost in mystery.
No archaeologist had ever come to investigate these islands,
because they were thought to be too remote from any mainland.
But I did have one advantage. I knew something about
navigation and prehistoric watercraft. That was why we had
found these stones in the first place. I had deliberately searched
in places where it was likely primitive craft could have landed.
For too long it had generally been accepted that the mariners of
pre-European civilisations only hugged continental shore-lines
for fear of being lost in the open sea, and for the lack of
oceanworthy ships. But in recent years my friends and I had
tested prehistoric types of raft ship, and sailed them across the
three main oceans. During our last experiment, after sailing the
reed ship Tigris from former Mesopotamia to the Indus Valley,
we could easily have continued down the coast of India and out
to the Maldive Islands. But we chose instead to sail straight
across the Indian Ocean to Africa. Thanks to this experiment the
Maldivians had now lured me to their country. They did not
believe that pre-European navigators had only hugged the
coasts. They knew that their own ancestors had crossed the
ocean in pre-European times; but they did not know where they
came from. They also knew that these ancestors had later been
visited by maritime Arabs — Arabs who sailed the ocean cen-
turies before Columbus. Their written history went back as far
as the twelfth century ap, with their own types of letters
engraved on copper plates bound together to form regular
books. This is how they knew that the Islamic faith had been
introduced by seafaring Arabs in ap 1153.
Now, in their forests, we had hit upon carved stones, the
remains of the people who had sailed to these islands before the
Arabs, and who worshipped the sun instead of Allah.
12
The President was right. The Maldive archipelago may have

been young as a republic, for the last autocratic Sultan was
replaced by a democratic government in 1968. Nevertheless
these islanders could teach the world their own peaceful history
with more than eight centuries of written records. What had
happened here before then, nobody knew. It was virgin terri-
tory for anybody to explore.
If Iwere to investigate the mystery, therefore, I would have to
start from scratch. First, |would have to find out what others
already knew. But from then on I had a clear advantage. I had as
a guide-post a tenable theory which had helped me go straight
to those stones which the Maldivians themselves were now
bringing into their museum. Certainly other scientists had
visited the Maldives: some as tourists for modern sun-worship;
a few to study and feport on the life and language of today’s
people. No professional archaeologist had apparently been
among them; and although a couple of enthusiasts had tried
their luck with pick and shovel several decades ago, their
initiative had not been followed up.
The drone of a jet engine overhead brought me to the win-
dow. A twentieth-century giant landed on the narrow airstrip
recently built by Arab brothers in faith by extending a shallow
islet just off Male island. German, Italian and Swedish tourists
swarmed down the gangway and into the little airport building.
No other nations seemed yet to have discovered this sun-baked
paradise. Hardly any of these tourists would come to Male,
however, or to any of the other Maldive islands where the local
people lived. The government had reserved for tourists a selec-
ted number of hitherto uninhabited islands on the atolls next to
Male and the airstrip.
For one reason or another it seemed as if the sun had a very
long tradition of attracting people to the Maldives, even in
prehistoric times. What we had found was the ruins of a sun-
temple, and it was nothing but the sun itself that had led us
there. As simple as that. The road had been fast and direct.
It was the sun that had brought me to the sun-temple, but it
was an airmail envelope that had brought me to these islands in
the first place. Slightly more than a month ago I had found in my
mail box a stiff envelope with exotic stamps from Sri Lanka.
The envelope contained a large photograph. I was expecting
13
The Maldive Mystery
from Sri Lanka to see colourful pictures of palms and beaches,

but this was a black and white picture showing nothing but the
head and shoulders of a big stone image emerging from the
ground. The head was masterfully carved and well preserved—a
faintly smiling, friendly-looking figure with one strange feature
that immediately caught my eye: the ears. The ear lobes had
been carved to hang right down to the folds of the cloak which
the figure had over his shoulders. Although it was the sculpture
of a man the curly hair appeared to be tied into a small knot on
top of the head.
A stone statue of'a man with long ears and topknot.
I felt a sudden thrill of excitement. This was a repetition of the
Easter Island mystery that had puzzled me for so long. If the
picture had been taken somewhere not too far away from Easter
Island perhaps there could be a distant connection between the
ancient stone sculptors? On Easter Island there were hundreds
of giant stone busts emerging like this from the ground, repre-
senting men with long ears hanging down to their shoulders
and a topknot superimposed on the head. Certainly the style
there was stiff and conventionalised. In contrast, the image in
this picture was most realistic.
Impatiently I unfolded the accompanying letter to learn
where this photograph had been taken. The letter was indeed
from Sri Lanka, but the photograph came from an atoll in the
Maldive group.
So there could be no connection. The Maldive Islands were on
the opposite side of the planet, half the world away from Easter
Island. When we sailed our reed ship Tigris from the Indus
Valley into the open Indian Ocean, we had discussed whether
to steer for the Maldive group.
I pulled down my globe from the shelf to check the position of
the Maldives.
As I had thought. Easter Island and the Maldive group were
on exactly opposite sides of the earth. Precisely 180° apart,
half the earth’s circumference. Indeed, the Maldives were closer
to the Indus Valley than Easter Island was to Peru, and the
ancient artists of the Maldive Islands could have brought the
custom of ear extension from continental Asia, where it had
been practised on the coast since the time of the ancient Indus
Valley civilisation. The Easter Islanders had brought it from
14
Peru where it represented a characteristic custom of the Incas.

No connection. I had better pack my suitcase. I was due to fly
the next day to Japan by way of America anyway.
Yet I could not dismiss the long-eared statue from my mind. I
pulled out the picture once again and read the letter more
carefully. It was sent by a man |!did not know, Bjorn Roar Bye,
Director of Worldview International Foundation, with head-
quarters in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. We had called it
Ceylon when I went to school. The Worldview International
Foundation I knew. I had once signed on as a member because
WIF’s aim was to work for better understanding between
developed and developing nations. WIF trained third-world
students to produce their own video films for the education and
edification of the industrialised world. Both worlds had some-
thing to give to the’other. Communications, once by means of
early ships, had helped build the first civilisations. We still had
much to learn from the simple communities before we caused
them to disappear.
This letter told me that Bjorn Bye had just been to the Mal-
dives to establish a local branch of the Worldview International
Foundation. The photo had been shown to him by a Maldive
official who had noticed my name on the membership list. The
voyage of Tigris had been eagerly followed in the Maldives in
the hope that the reed ship would land there. Recently a local
islander had found this stone figure on a small atoll, and the
Maldive official had the idea of sending it to me. It might tempt
me to come and probe the puzzle behind this evidence of
ancient navigation.
I continued to study the picture. It could be an old Buddha
image. Buddha had such extended ear lobes. Indeed it was
Buddha who spread this custom of ear extension with his own
followers throughout Asia.
Buddha was born in the sixth century Bc. Ear extension did
not start with him, however. In certain parts of India this
strange custom was practised by nobilities long before Buddha
was born. Buddha was a title adopted by an historical person,
Siddhartha Gautama, who was born a Hindu prince. It was as a
Hindu prince that he had had his ear lobes perforated and ex-
tended with large plugs, because it was a very old Hindu custom
in noble families. But ear extension did not begin with Hindu
15
The Maldive Mystery
nobles either. Big ear plugs, just like those used by the Inca
nobles and the ‘Long-ears’ on Easter Island, had recently been
excavated in large numbers at Lothal, the prehistoric port of the
ancient Indus Valley civilisation.
Was it pure coincidence that remote oceanic islands like the
Maldives and Easter Island had been found and settled by
navigators whose gods and nobles were supposed to wear big
discs in their ear lobes? Perhaps yes. Perhaps no, because we
were dealing with people, and migrating families, whose re-
mote island discoveries had proved them to be skilled, long-
range ocean explorers.
Whether the statue in the picture depicted Buddha or one of
his long-eared predecessors, I knew at least that I was looking at
an image sculpted in the Maldives before the introduction of
Islam had outlawed any art depicting the human form. What
was more, the picture showed a statue buried almost to the
shoulders in the ground, so how much more was there to
discover through excavation?
It was now only a week since I first came to the Maldives. And
only five weeks since I received that photograph. My suitcase
was ready even as the photograph arrived, and a flight ticket for
Japan was in my hands. There was no time to organise a visit to
the Maldives, so] left it to a friend to answer the Director of WIF
on my behalf. He was to say that I would come to the Maldives
on a detour from the airport at Bangkok if somebody could be
there to meet me with travel instructions on the day my con-
gress ended in Japan.
It was with some feeling of uncertainty, however, that I left
the airplane in Bangkok a fortnight later and went through cus-
toms and immigration. I had heard no more from the Maldives.
Butin the crowd outside I recognised acameraman I had recently
met in Oslo, Neil Hollander, asmall man witha bushy beard and
large glasses. He grabbed my hand andassured me thataside trip
to the Maldives was all organised. He was coming along himself
to film the unique sailing vessels of the Maldives, called dhonis.
They had a curious bow, swung up high and ending in a fan
shape, like the papyrus stem ofancient Egyptian ships. Neil said
that he was in Asia to shoot a film about the last working sailing
people in the world, so now he volunteered to join me in the
Maldives. The next day we flew on together to Sri Lanka.
16
Another bearded man was waiting for us as we landed in

Colombo. I had not met him. Tall and broad shouldered, he
moved us through all the airport formalities with the audacity of
a blue-eyed Viking but with a smile as peaceful as a mission-
ary’s. Bjorn Roar Bye was clearly at home in these tropical
latitudes and ina wildly chaotic airport. He had actually come out
from Norway to work for the Protestant Asia Mission, but with
his knowledge of local languages and customs he had gradually
ended up in the Worldview International Foundation, where he
was now the head office director and in charge of all film work.
When I thanked him for forwarding the photograph he
laughed. He found it highly amusing that this picture had lured
me to this part of the world, since I had never been willing to
come before. He drove me straight to his own bungalow home
in the suburbs of Colombo, while Neil Hollander went off to a
small hotel where he was to meet two other cameramen who
were joining him for the filming in the Maldives.
' In the home of Bjérn and Gretha Bye I got my first lessons
about the Maldives. But first we took a trip downtown, to look
for a map. In an obscure shop in a literal wreck of a building we
found the last navigation map of the Maldives available in
Colombo. Triumphantly we returned with this treasure to
Bjorn’s home, which was already full of other guests. Bjorn Bye
seemed to know an infinity of local people. Roland Silva was
one of them, and he had some important information, Bjorn
explained. This tall and distinguished looking man was the
Director-General of the Archaeological Survey in Sri Lanka and
he had also been out to the Maldives. Silva, who proved to bea
former architect turned archaeologist, was now in charge of
UNESCO’s ambitious programme of excavating and restoring
the colossal Buddhist temples within the three historically most
important sites of Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s so-called cultural
triangle.
I told him about my plan to excavate a stone statue on the
Maldives, and got my first shock.
‘I believe the statue has already been dug up and smashed,’
he said. ‘The people in the Maldives are fanatically Moslem and
won't tolerate anything that is forbidden by the Koran. They
even deny their own history before the day Islam was intro-
duced.’
17
The Maldive Mystery-
Archaeologists from Sri Lanka would have liked to dig in the

Maldives but, being Buddhists, they were unlikely to get per-
mission. They would be suspected of looking for Buddhist
remains. Roland Silva could not praise the Maldivians enough
as a people; but when it came to religion they were obstinate
and uncompromising.
I brought forward the navigation map we had found of the
Maldives. Silva agreed that this archipelago lay in the most
strategic position for any navigator who wanted to round the
southern point of Asia. The 64-kilometre (40-mile) strait be-
tween India and Sri Lanka was full of reefs and too shallow to
permit safe sailing. To get around the Indian subcontinent
sailing vessels had to go so far south that they also rounded Sri
Lanka, and then they would inevitably have to force a passage
through the long chain of the Maldive Islands. This chain
looked like a few innocent pepper grains on an ordinary map,
but the navigation map revealed the true story. Never had I seen
it clearer. The Maldives lay there as a treacherous barrier. No
admiral could have planned a better strategic line if he had
wanted to chain off with mines a sailing route obligatory for any
mariner who wanted to sail east or west past the southern point
of Asia.
From the depths of the Indian Ocean a sharp ridge rises
abruptly, 960 kilometres (600 miles) long from north to south. It
is crowned at surface level by live coral reefs, sand bars, and
small atolls set in a double row, making passage twice as
dangerous. The islands are so low above the waves that, were it
not for the tall coconut palms, they would be invisible until the
ship was caught in the surf. Only near the southern end of this
long coral barricade are there two open channels which permit
safe passage through from one side of India to the other.
The more I looked at the map, the more my urge to visit these
strategically located islands increased. Statue or not, I wanted to
see with my own eyes what these islands might conceal. Roland
Silva therefore lent me an old and very precious publication on
the Maldives. I was permitted to photocopy the pages, as he
knew of no other copy in Sri Lanka. I would probably not find
anyone in the Maldives who had it, he stressed.
The author was a former British Commissioner of the Ceylon
Civil Service, H. C. P. Bell. He had first come to the Maldives
18
through a shipwreck in 1879. It said in the Preface that he later

returned on two occasions, deputed by the Ceylon government,
‘For the purpose of investigating the pre-existence of Buddhism
in the Group’.’ With this objective he had indeed been obliged
to move with the utmost care not to offend the Moslem senti-
ments of the islanders. Mr Bell had dug some rubble mounds
which he claimed to be the devastated remains of former
dagobas or stupas, resembling the Buddhist temples in Ceylon.
There could be no doubt, then, that there was something to
look for in the Maldives. Naturally, in his early days, Bell’s
digging method left much to be desired; his writings were
scarcely known outside the islands; and no professional arch-
aeologist had ever followed up what he started. Yet his notes on
what the islanders bad told him and what he had seen for
himself would be an immense help for anyone, like us, who
hoped to explore the islands.
There was one other interesting book on the Maldives, almost
fresh from the press: People of the Maldive Islands by Clarence
Maloney. It dealt with the present-day islanders, however, and
not with the past; but Dr Maloney was a professional anthro-
pologist from the University of Pennsylvania, and a specialist
on South Asiatic peoples. This enabled him to launch some
stimulating thoughts on the origins of Divehi, the Maldive
language. Some Divehi words showed a relationship to Sanskrit
and to other ancient tongues in northern India, others to
peoples in southern India and Sri Lanka.
But Maloney had not known about the discovery of the long-
eared statue. The great variety of physical types living side by
side on these islands, and the composition of their language,
had nevertheless put him on the alert. He concluded, by merely
observing the present population, that ‘we must be prepared to
accept that the cultural history of the Maldives is more com-
plicated than has been thought’. He suspected, in fact, that
different groups of peoples had reached these remote islands
independently in prehistoric times.
These were plain words. If this much could be deduced
without even scraping in the ground, there should be good
prospects for an archaeological search below the present sur-
face. But here Maloney was less encouraging than Bell: ‘No
archaeology has been conducted to investigate the pre-history
19
The Maldive Mystery
of the islands, which would be difficult in any case because of

the coral sand soil and the high water table.’
Although he was full of praise for the present Maldive people,
he had his reservations: ‘Anthropological field work in the
Maldives involves tedious travel, difficulties in gaining accept-
ance in numerous small islets traditionally inhospitable to
outsiders, and coping with a highly conservative society that
holds rigid Islamic ideals.”
This was even less encouraging than what Roland Silva had
said. But nothing could stop me now. Besides, if the Maldivians
did not want me to come and dig, why had they asked Bjorn Bye
to send me the picture of the long-eared statue?
Three days later the dots on the map became alive as we had our
first glimpse of the Maldives from the air. From the windows of
the plane it was like looking at an exhibition of green jade
necklaces and scattered emerald jewellery placed on blue velvet.
The Indian Ocean under us was as boundlessly blue as only the
sea can be when it reflects a cloudless tropical sky. The sun,
straight overhead, made the islands seem lustrous green with
no shadow on the palm crowns that formed a compact roof over
them. Each little islet was a separate gem set in a ring of golden
beach sand and with another wider ring of glass green water
outside where the coral reef approached the surface, rising like
giant mushrooms from the bottomless blue.
The airliner was filled to the last seat with pale Europeans in
organised tours who crawled over each other to get a glimpse of
this incomparable display of nature’s splendour. As for me, I
was no longer travelling alone. In addition to Neil Hollander
and the two cameramen accompanying him, Bjérn Bye had also
come along and brought with him two of his Sri Lankan film
students, in the hope of finding something they could photo-
graph as a training project.
The first island slid past under us, the next grew bigger,
nearer. Then the narrow airstrip came into view, all by itself in
the water, with the city-covered islet of Male, green with
gardens, next to it at the edge of the same calm lagoon. A slight
jolt, and we had landed in the Republic of Maldives, the ancient
home of a people of unknown origins.
We had come as guests to the home of a very old civilisation,
20
literate with its own special script. Today a developing nation of

some 160,000 souls, all Moslem, the Maldive Republic is
adjusting itself to the jet age through a non-aligned democratic
government headed by a President. It is probably the only
nation composed of so many scattered pieces of land that even
now no one can agree on the exact number of islands. The
English navigation map indicates about 1,100 islands, a recent
government count was 1,196, and a tourist guide gives the total
number as 1,983. In fact nobody knows, for some islets grow out
of submerged reefs and others are eaten away piecemeal by the
ocean and disappear. None of them rises more than about 2
metres (6 feet) above sea level and, if not protected by natural
breakwater reefs, would be washed over by the waves. Only 202
of the islands are inhabited, although others have the ruins of
former habitation.
Never before had I travelled surrounded by so many camera-
men: Neil was accompanied by Harald from Germany and John
from Canada; Bjorn, by Palitha and Saliya from Sri Lanka; and
now one more of his former movie students, Abdul from the
Maldives, had come to the airport to help us through the
customs. Abdul was working for Maldive Television. It could be
seen only in Male, but about a third of the nation’s population
live there. Indeed land is now getting so scarce that space is
being reclaimed from the ocean by the dumping of solid refuse.
A short trip in a motorboat now took the eight of us to Male,
where Neil’s party was lost in the chaos of dhonis that were
struggling to get dock space or to manoeuvre out. Dhonis lay
side by side all along the waterfront, most still with mast and
sails, and all with the famous bow rising towards the sky as if
they were wooden replicas of the elegant pharaonic papyrus
ships.
The tourists had been taken directly to the tourist islands
where they were to stay. In the daytime they could come to Male
island for shopping, but they were not allowed in the capital
after 10 pm. On the plane we had all been given a printed notice
warning us that it was forbidden to bring into the Republic of
Maldives: dogs, alcohol, and pictures of nudes. But on the
tourist islands foreigners were free of all Moslem rules.
Abdul told us that rooms were reserved at Sosunge, the
government's guest-house in Male. We had most of the hotel to
eal
The Maldive Mystery
ourselves, for there were very few rooms. Our luggage was sent
ahead by taxi while Abdul guided Bjorn and me along the
bustling waterfront to visit Abdul’s boss, the man who had
asked Bjorn to send me the photograph of the long-eared statue.
His name was Hassan Maniku, and he was the Director of
Maldive Television and of the Ministry of Information.
When we entered the large antechamber of the Director’s
office upstairs in the Ministry, the atmosphere was distinctly
unpromising. A large number of young Maldive girls were
sitting, noses down, typing or reading detective stories. No-
body welcomed us. We could see the boss behind a glass wall,
but between phone calls and making notes he was so busy that
he had no time for visitors, even though we sent in messages
and signalled through the glass partition. Something was
obviously wrong. I gave up and returned to the hotel. Then the
telephone rang, with a message that the Director wanted to
receive us immediately.
Hassan Maniku was very short by European standards, but
average for the Maldives, yet broadly built with a round face
that unjustly made him look like a gourmand. As his mask of
officialdom melted away he turned out to be an exceedingly
friendly man and, what was more, surprisingly well informed.
Even so, he poured cold water on our hopes when we came to
the point — the statue, the stone image with the long ears.
‘The statue has already been dug up,’ Maniku said bluntly. ‘It
was a complete bust.’
‘Dug up,’ I said. ‘By an archaeologist?’
‘By the local people,’ was the quiet reply. ‘They smashed the
body to bits.’
This was shocking. Roland Silva’s suspicions were confirmed.
‘Religious fanatics,’ admitted Maniku, and shrugged his
shoulders. ‘We have saved the head. You can see it in the
museum in Sultan’s Park.’
‘But I want to go to the island where it was found.’ I was
deeply disappointed. ‘Perhaps there is more to be found by
digging in that same place.’
‘No. There is nothing more to be found there.’
‘It is worth looking. I have come a long way.’
Nothing doing. Maniku put on his official mask again.
Absolutely nothing to see on that island any more. Everything
22
had been dug up and smashed. Even the remains of some sort
of old temple had been razed to the ground and smashed.
Nothing. Maniku was so stubbornly negative even at the mere
idea of us trying to go there by boat that I realised further
discussion would be useless. Either there was absolutely
nothing more to be seen, or for some reason they did not want
us to go there.
At least I could see the head in the museum. Maniku grabbed
the phone and gave some orders to the museum staff.
The Sultan’s Palace had been torn down when the Maldives
had become a republic, but an old villa in the garden had been
turned into the National Museum. A couple of rusty cannons
and an old German torpedo lay beside the steps at the entrance
where a small army, of pensioners was sitting idly at a ticket
table or standing in the doorway. With instructions from
Maniku to let us study and photograph the stone head, four of
the old men came struggling out of the building and down the
steps to the park lawn with a huge, heavy, chalky white head
carried upon a length of sackcloth. It looked like a ghost peeping
out of a hammock. The faces of the men reflected the disgust
they felt for such a heathen sculpture, but they lowered it
carefully on to the lawn.
The beheaded ghost lay in the baking sun staring at us with
wide open eyes and a peaceful smile. Huge, but as realistic as a
death mask. This was the head of a Buddha, a beautiful Buddha,
with body and limbs missing. It had been a large monument,
twice the size of a normal man and masterfully carved from
white limestone, the product of a great artist. The face I recog-
nised from the photograph: expressive, with the lips closed ina
faint smile. Originally the eyes had been painted to give life to
the friendly expression. The hair was adorned by fine curls and
drawn up into a topknot. The ears were damaged where they
had been broken loose from the shoulders, but they were still
unnaturally long. It also seemed as if somebody, long ago, had
attempted to cover the face and the eyes with a thin coat of white
plaster, as though to prevent the lifelike image from seeing any
more. Perhaps this was done by the former worshippers them-
selves when they were obliged to turn their backs on the
venerated Buddha as a new religion was imposed upon them;
eight centuries ago.
23
The Maldive Mystery
The greatest surprise, however, awaited us behind a closed

door inside the little building. In two small rooms downstairs
were exhibited various sultans’ beds, thrones and@ litters.
Further in, and upstairs too, were all sorts of paraphernalia of
the same former rulers, their weapons, musical instruments,
tapestries and fine examples of old Maldive lacquerwork. Here
and there were also such curiosities as elephant tusks, deer
horns, flotsam found on the beach, even a stone with a flag as a
souvenir of Apollo 14’s flight to the moon.
We were already dizzy from strange impressions when we
came down the stairs again and made our real discovery. As the
guards brought in the large Buddha head, they opened the door
to a small closet where a truly weird collection of hideous
demons and bizarre images in stone and wood stared at us out
of the semi-darkness. The Buddha head was put back in among
them, and now looked like a smiling white angel among the
horrifying devils at each side, grimacing like beasts with fangs
exposed and tongue stretched out to strengthen the hateful
expression of their angry eyes. Good and Evil depicted in stone
by different sculptors and stored side by side ona sultan’s stone
bed.
The guardians were quick to get out of the closet, and they
gave us sidelong glances as if to check whether we understood
that these were not their gods, and that they would sooner see
them disposed of. The rest of the closet was filled with a pile of
rusty anchor chains and other metal scrap, two broken Moslem
tombstones awaiting repair, an assortment of old telephones
and a dozen toy-size model cannons.
In this hotchpotch of objects two observations immediately
struck my mind: the demon images next to the smiling Buddha
had been carved by early sculptors who were neither Moslems
nor Buddhists. Yet these sculptures also represented unmistak-
able ‘Long-ears’, wearing huge discs in their extended ear lobes.
Here, in this modest closet, inside the museum walls, lay
definite proof that the Maldives had housed at least three
different cultures throughout the ages. The three were repre-
sented by the Sultan’s bed, the Buddha, and the demon-gods. It
would be four if we counted the one that came last with
telephone and cannons. Also, standing on the bed with the
stone figures, was a fair-sized wooden statue of some elabor-
24
ately dressed Oriental dignitary. Aithough of considerable age,

it did not come into our count because it was clearly a water-
worn piece that had been found by the islanders as drift-wood
on the beach. The stone heads, on the other hand, had been
carved in the Maldives from local limestone, and had served the
worshippers of two different religions. None of them was
Moslem. Accordingly, all of them had to be more than eight
centuries old.
On the bed lay also a second Buddha head, much smaller,
only the size of an apple. This too was broken off at the neck.
The tip of the nose had been knocked off as well, but even so it
remained a beautiful piece of sculpture, the work of a very
skilled artist. It had the same quiet smile, slightly thicker lips
and stronger curls, and again the ears were slit with the lobes
pending like empty loops down to the shoulders. Buddha
personally never wore discs or any other ornaments in his long
ear slots, they hung down empty and plain as they had been
extended in his Hindu childhood. It was the other images, the
diabolic ones with feline teeth and outstretched tongue, that
wore circular discs inserted as ear plugs. The two largest sculp-
tures of this type were not mere stone heads, but proper stele, as
in Mayan art, with grotesque faces on all sides, some even above
each other or on the apex of the stone. In fact, with the feline
corner teeth exposed, the tongue stretched out, and big discs in
the ears, these images looked more like Mayan stele from
Mexico and Guatemala, or pre-Inca statues from South America,
than anything found on other islands in the Indian Ocean.
Remains of red paint were clearly visible on one of the stele. A
strange curvilinear script was carved on the surface of some of
the demon figures. To Bjorn and me it resembled the scrolls of
the Maldivian characters, but neither Abdul nor the museum
guards could read these signs.
Beside the little Buddha head lay also a small stone turtle, very
realistically carved, but with a square chamber on the ventral
side, closed by a perfectly fitted stone lid. It was probably a
sacred container for trifles of a votive nature.
Seated with full bodies, like Lilliputs among the colossal
stone faces, were two tiny bronze figurines. They were within
reach of a hand and small enough to disappear into a pocket
should any visiting pilferer have entered the closet and realised
25
The Maldive Mystery
the mighty antiquity of these objects. ‘Buddu’, the guards called

them. But ‘buddu’ was the collective Maldive word for any
image in human form, whether it represented Buddha, the
Virgin Mary, Popeye, or Churchill.
One of these bronze figurines actually was a Buddha, a typical
Buddha, seated cross-legged in the pose of meditation which
Buddhists call Samadhi Mudra, supposed to depict compassion,
love and kindness. The other figurine was pitted by erosion,
and obviously much older. It was not a Buddha, as could be seen
from the elaborate dress and hairstyle, with wide necklace and
multiple rings around the wrists and ankles as well as flower
ornaments on the upper arms, chest and abdomen. This elegant
personality, seated on a pillow or pedestal with the left leg bent
in and the right hanging down, was a Hindu deity, probably the
benevolent creator and paramount lord, Shiva. Two religious
competitors, Shiva and Buddha, were seated peacefully side by
side on top of a Moslem bed.
There were no labels, and the guards only referred us back to
Hassan Maniku. He seemed to be the only person to know, or
even to care.
Maniku confirmed that all the stone and bronze images had
been found in the Maldives; but none of them were found
together with the large Buddha. The bronze figurines had been
dug up long ago on one of the southern atolls. All the demonic
stone heads had been found here in Male recently. Had I noticed
the three flattish stone masks, two of them with moustaches and
long ears?
Yes, I had indeed. They lay with the others on the stone bed.
One of these, said Maniku slightly amused, had been found
when some workmen were digging the sewers in the street
outside his own house. He had seen it just in time to save it from
destruction.
‘And the two big stele?’ I asked.
They had been found when somebody else was building a
construction wall at the eastern extremity of the island, pre-
cisely where legend claimed that a demon used to come ashore
craving young virgins.
That story was also recorded by Bell. In former times a terrible
jinni, or demon, used to come ashore from the sea every month.
He came to the east cape of Male where there was a budkhana, an
26
idol temple. Each month, when landing there, he demanded the

toll of a virgin. When the islanders came to the temple next day,
they always found the virgin dead. This frightening state of
affairs continued until a pious Berber of Moslem faith arrived
on a voyage from North Africa. He visited the Maldives and
decided to stop the atrocity. He took the place of the virgin. As
he hid in the image temple he recited the Koran throughout the
night and succeeded in exorcising the jinni so thoroughly that
it never came back. According to some old Maldive writings
this was why the Maldivians agreed to accept the Islamic
faith.
I wanted to see the place where the pagan temple was said to
have been and where the two largest stele with diabolic stone
faces had been found. But again Maniku was totally unin-
terested. There was‘nothing to see there now. Only new stone
walls and the warehouses of a modern engine service centre.
But if we cared to, we could see a human skull brought from that
same place, together with the images. When they dug the
foundations for the new service centre they had found the earth
below full of decayed human bones. They had saved only one
complete cranium because it lay on top of the largest of the
many-headed stele, one with five long-eared faces.
As we returned to the museum the guards brought out a shoe
box, from which they lifted a human cranium. It was a smallish
head of the brachio-cephalic, or round-headed, form. It gave us a
creepy feeling at the thought of the old legend, for it was the
skull of a young woman.
Back in the hotel on this first day of my visit to the Maldives I sat
down to reflect on all our new and unexpected observations.
The long-eared statue I had come to excavate had been reduced
to a beheaded Buddha, but instead we had found a closet full of
other long-eared stone heads that belonged to a still older
civilisation which had also voyaged to the Maldives indepen-
dently, of course, of the Buddhists and the Moslems.
With the navigation map spread out over my knees I was
tempted to take a seafarer’s look at this increasingly complex
Maldive riddle. Who could say that nothing more was to be
detected on these islands when already so much had come to
light on the first day of our visit? At the least, I did not want to
27
The Maldive Mystery
leave without searching personally for other traces that might

have been overlooked.
But where to start? The last government count had listed
1,196 separate islands, but there was no regular intercom-
munication between them. The big Buddha head had been
found on Toddu island, just west of Male; the small Buddha
head at Kurandu, far to the north; the two bronze figurines,
however, had come from somewhere in the southern atolls;
while all the stone demons had been dug up on Male itself. Yet,
according to Maniku, there was nothing more to see in any of
these places.
But when Maniku learnt that I would like to look at some of
the other islands, he generously gave me some photostat pages.
This was a copy of the manuscript of a booklet he was planning
to publish,’ a list of all the Maldive islands arranged alphabetic-
ally by name, each name followed by a brief note about any
mosque on the island, as well as any ship wrecked on the local
reef. In a few cases he had added the geographical name of a
mound located on the island. Any mound, as Maniku would be
the first to realise, musthave been built byman. Thecoral colonies
that had built up these limestone atolls had left them all as flat as
tennis courts. Into some of these mounds a pit had been dug,
either by Bell orsome treasure hunter. Most of themstill lay there
as a pile of coral rubble. Probably there was nothing inside them.
But who could tell?
The number of islands seemed overwhelming for anyone
who had to decide where to start looking. The navigation map
was just a confusion of islets, reefs and names. Maniku’s list at
least had the islands sorted into alphabetical order. I looked at
the first page: Aahuraa, Aahuraa, Aahuraa, and Aahuraa. Four
islands with the same name. Three of them had been formed
after a storm in 1955, the fourth had disappeared through
erosion. I looked at the last page. Six islands were called Viligili,
and six more were called Viligili with an additional suffix. Better
to return to the map, after all.
The maps did not simplify the problem. Each atoll had two or
more names, differing totally from map to map. To sort out this
confusion all the atolls had been given yet another name by
present-day officials. These new and shorter names were taken
from the appellations for various signs in the local script. Yet at
28
least the position of the islands could immediately be seen from

a map.
‘This is where we must go to search,’ I said to Bjorn, with a
finger sweeping along the equator where it passed the Maldive
archipelago. The long barrier of reefs and islands barely reached
to below the equator. And precisely at the equator was that
broad open passage marked on the map as the ‘Equatorial
Channel’. This broad channel, as I had noted before, ran straight
through from east to west, without reefs, an extremely inviting
passage for any sailing vessel that wanted to circumnavigate the
southern tip of Asia. There was only one other channel that
could permit a safe passage between the western and eastern
parts of the Indian Ocean, the so-called ‘One-and-Half-Degree
Channel’. But I wanted to go to the Equatorial Channel.
Why all the way down there?, Bjorn wondered.
A double reason. For early mariners who navigated by
watching the sun and the stars, nothing was easier than to locate
and follow the equator. Besides, the earliest navigators were
sun-worshippers. The first religion of all the oldest civilisations
navigating the Indian Ocean was sun-worship. The founders of
the first dynasties in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, and in the Indus
Valley all claimed descent from the sun. Traces of this belief in
the sun as divine ancestor survive also in the Hindu royal
genealogies — even Buddha’s family name linked his ancestry
with the sun. From my own research in the Pacific I knew also
that the Polynesian master mariners linked their ancestor god
Kane with the sun and, being experts in celestial navigation,
they referred to the equator as ‘the golden highway of Kane, the
sun-god’. For that matter, the sun-worshipping Incas had
erected a monument at the equator in Ecuador to mark the road
of their divine ancestor, the sun.
To all these early people the home of the sun-god and the
sacred hero-kings of the past could be reached through a tunnel
where the sun passed when it returned through the underworld
on its daily run from east to west. It was natural to suspect that,
if any navigator had reached the Maldives in the early days of
solar worship, the Equatorial Channel would be of double
importance to them, both as a convenient thoroughfare and as a
place of special religious importance. If a solid speck of land lay
in mid-ocean right on the equator, that would be a place to
29
The Maldive Mystery
tempt the earliest of all navigators to build a temple to the sun.

Bjorn listened patiently to my reflections, then commented
thoughtfully that there happened to be an airport down by the
Equatorial Channel, the only one apart from the one in Male.
The British navy had built an airstrip at Gan island which had
served as a major military base during the Second World War.
The base had been abandoned in 1976, but the Maldivians still
used it for a small airplane which sometimes took tourists on the
round trip from Male.
A coincidence?
Not at all. History repeats itself. With a choice of more than a
thousand islands in this archipelago, the British military strat-
egists had picked an atoll right on the Equatorial Channel because
this was whereall ships had to navigate if they wanteda short-cut
around southern Asia. From here northwards the Maldive reefs
were interlaced in a labyrinth as risky to pass as a minefield.
Neil and his two partners came in to learn about our plans.
They had been filming dhonis in the harbour ever since we
landed in Male that morning.
‘We are leaving tomorrow,’ I told them. ‘For the Equatorial
Channel.’
The faces of the three cameramen lit up. They wanted to join
us if we had no objection. There were supposed to be dhonis with
square Sails looking like ancient Egyptian ships in the southern
area. Up here all had changed to modern triangular sails.
To my surprise there was a flight to Gan next day. A sixteen-
seat airplane was prepared for lift-off even though it looked
more like a winged wagon. Asking for seats for eight was to ask
for half the plane, and we would never have made that flight if
Maniku had not helped us, and by leaving our provisions and
half the camera equipment behind. Our number was even
increased when a representative of the Island Administration,
Mohamed Waheed, was sent with us to ensure our safe conduct.
As I walked alone to the airplane with seven cameramen
filming my steps in anticipation of dramatic discoveries, I felt
like Charles Lindbergh setting out on his historic flight across the
Atlantic. Who could tell, perhaps the sequel might be the
revelation of some lost civilisation on those islands down in the
Equatorial Channel? It all seemed unintentionally funny.
But the adventure was about to begin.
30
CHAPTER UJ
The Great Mound o

Fua Mulaku
Who Were the Redin?
AS OUR PLANE dréned southwards over the archipelago from

Male, sunbeams seemed to glitter everywhere around us, above
and below the wings. This seemed natural now that we were
approaching the golden highway of Kane, the sun-god. But, to
our surprise, a long trail of low cloud lay under us like the
vapour from a giant jet-plane just when we estimated we were
crossing the equator. With a blue sky mirrored in a blue ocean
everywhere else it looked as if the tropic sun had travelled low
and scorched the ocean surface on its way from east to west. The
narrow belt of low cloud could only have been caused by damp
air rising due to the different temperature of the sea. The fast
Equatorial Current should run just about here, changing course
from east to west in company with the seasonal monsoon winds
in the Indian Ocean. Perhaps this great marine river caused
ocean upwellings on striking islands, or perhaps a stream of
colder water was pressed through an opening in the Maldive
barriers by the Equatorial Current.
At this point the pilot confirmed that we were passing over
the Equatorial Channel. The next moment the little plane circled
down over Addu atoll, the southernmost extremity of the
Maldive archipelago. This was land’s end. The atoll below us
was a large ring of coral reefs and shallows on which were set at
intervals low sandy islands thickly covered by coconut palms,
all as if in a happy ring-dance around the calm lagoon. One of
these islands was Gan, where we landed smoothly on the
former British airstrip. The black asphalt gave us a hot welcome
31
The Maldive Mystery
and made us hurry for the little airport shelter. Even the airport
employees stood lumped together under a canopy that gave
protection from the burning vengeance of the one-time solar
deity. Man had left nothing of nature’s shelter here. The forest
was gone, and with it the canopy of foliage fostered by the sun
itself to shelter and nourish all tropical life.
This was the island where Bell, in 1922, had seen a man-made
mound about 9 metres (30 feet) in height, ‘buried in heavy scrub
jungle, interspersed freely with closely growing trees’.‘ But
there was neither jungle nor mound in the flat landscape sur-
rounding the airstrip, so we asked the oldest people under the
canopy for advice. Where could we see the ustubu, the big
mound which Bell had suspected to be the ruins of a Buddhist
stupa? They gestured along the asphalt runway. Some of them
had learnt a little English when the British Forces were stationed
on Addu atoll during the Second World War.
‘The ustubu was down there, near the end of the runway,’ one
of them said with a grin.
When Addu atoll was chosen for a military base, and Gan
picked for the airport, the old mound was an obstacle which had
to be removed. Not a bump was visible in the perfect landing
strip.
This was tragi-comic. The islanders had managed by them-
selves to smash that beautiful Buddha statue, a monument to
their own past. And here British bulldozers had helped them
erase every trace of a colossal structure which a former British
Commissioner had considered a possible prehistoric temple.
The cameramen began to laugh. Had it not been for the
blistering heat of the asphalt they would have asked me to go
out on the runway with them so that they could film while I
pointed down between my shoes at the prehistoric site. Tragi-
comic indeed; but it was also slightly embarrassing, both for me
who had come to look for prehistoric remains, and for those
who had deprived posterity from seeing, and perhaps recon-
structing, a remarkable island monument.
Apart from our disappointed group of eight foreigners, the
passengers on the flight were all Maldivians who disappeared
with family and friends. There was little we could do but accept
the offer of tourist facilities in one of the former air force
barracks. It was now run by the Maldivians as a sort of guest-
Of
a
The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku
house, but today we were the only guests. A lunch of fresh,

strongly curried fish in the former officers’ mess helped us to
regain our spirits; cans of beer were served legally as the place
was reserved for foreigners; and in the shade of the verandah
roof we sat down with our cool glasses to think.
I brought out my photocopy of Bell’s report again to see what
we had missed. It appeared that during his visit a thick jungle
had literally impeded his full exploration of the colossal mound
he saw. He just gave its circumference at base as about 80 metres
(87 yards). The solid structure had once stood in a casing of cut
coral blocks, but it had gradually been denuded. This, he said,
had happened over the many centuries when it had furnished
the Moslem islanders of Addu atoll with a vast supply of coral
slabs, which they could use ready dressed for building their
mosques and chiéf houses. Nothing but a big rough mound
seemed to have been left in Bell’s time as he wrote: ‘Literally, in
the case of this bare relic of a religion long extinct at the
Maldives not one stone is standing on another to mark its
pristine form.’ And: ‘The total antiquarian yield . . . from the
hillock’s two days “labouring’’, was two ancient beads, prob-
ably tossed aside by forebears of the present Muslim Islanders
when they took toll of this ‘“accursed” shrine.’
Bell had not found ancient ruins on any other island in the
Addu atoll except on the northern extremity of Hitadu, an island
pointing like a finger into the strategic Equatorial Channel.
There he had found dilapidated coral walls from an old-time fort
of non-European origin. In spite of this, some older islanders
recommended us to visit Hitadu, for there was more up there
than the old fort Bell had seen.
We took off again, this time crowded into the airport lorry, in
high spirits in the hope of finding something preserved that far
from the airport island. Hitadu was on the opposite extremity of
this extensive atoll. The British had filled in the shallow reefs
linking one island to the next along the west rim of Addu atoll,
and a road took us through little islets with villages and coconut
groves all the way up to Hitadu. Where the road ended we
found a few islanders watching glittering tuna fish being un-
loaded from a dhoni. One of them said he knew of some
important prehistoric remains.
Encouraged by his assurance, we set off into the thick under-
33
The Maldive Mystery
growth with our barefooted pathfinder ahead, and myself, seen

by the others as some sort of Sherlock Holmes, close at his heels.
After all, Ihad come to the Maldives to investigate a riddle, and
the others of their own accord, hoping to film whatever I might
find. Neil’s professional group was heavily loaded for normal
film and sound, Bjorn’s training team with video equipment
and, while some filmed us from behind, others ran up in front or
hid in the bush to film us coming, passing, and going, towards
certain hoped-for discoveries until we stopped abruptly at a
clearing and my guide pointed.
I could see nothing.
‘The Queen’s bath!’ he said with great pride, and two micro-
phones came forth as Abdul translated.
I still could see nothing. The man took two more steps and
pointed straight down in front of his toes. There was a slight
depression in the ground where some brackish water had
formed a shallow pool. Barely enough for a queen to dip her toe
in.
‘It used to be bigger,’ explained our guide when he saw my
modest enthusiasm. ‘But it caved in when people took stones
away from the walls to build houses.’
We had come too late again.
We wondered what else he had to show us. There was more to
see. In another place there was a very ancient stone tower built
by the first ancestors who came here.
The cameras were again aimed at two pairs of legs as they
disappeared into the undergrowth. We would soon be there,
the guide assured us as we began to hear the surf tumbling and
rattling with loose coral fragments on a steep beach. Again he
pointed. Straight down.
Covered by sparse, sun-scorched vegetation lay a short row of
cut coral slabs. The cameras zoomed in at my hand as I bent
down to touch them.
‘But this is not very old,’ I said, bewildered.
‘Not very,’ he agreed. ‘An English officer built his house
here.’
‘But you said you would show us a very old tower built by
your ancestors!’
‘This is it,’ he said, surprised at my impatience, ‘this was once
a very old tower. Look here!’ He pointed at an eroded slab
34
aad
barely visible under the foundation of the former British house.

It was a block quarried ages ago, sure. It could have been part of
an ancient structure, maybe even ‘the base of an old tower,
heaven knows how tall. But the tower was not there. This fact
was unimportant to our guide. How could I dispute his claim
when he had it directly from his own grandpa that right here
was the tower, built by their ancestors?
On our way back we were all silent and the cameras were
turned off. Once I bent down to pick up something terracotta
coloured trodden down into the trail, but I threw it away as ifI
had burnt my fingers when I saw it was a strip of plastic and a
camera was ready to shoot.
Asphalt, plastic, a muddy puddle and a British officer’s home,
that was a meagre outcome for our first day’s exploring outside
the closet in Male Museum. I wondered if my companions were
as disappointed at the day’s results as I was. If so, they hid it
well. Back at the dirt road we bid a hearty farewell to our
friendly guide and laughed as we all crawled back on to the
lorry.
We had found nothing, but one observation could be drawn

from what other people had seen while the remains were still
standing. Two tall stone structures had reportedly existed in
ancient times on Addu atoll. Whether they were pre-Moslem
temples or defence positions, they were placed at points where
they could be seen from far out in the open sea, long before
these low islets could be sighted. One, recalled by the islanders
and probably seen by Bell in ruins, had been on a point
stretching like a finger straight out into the Equatorial Channel.
The other, seen by Bell reduced to a heap of coral rubble still 9
metres (30 feet) tall, had been on the opposite side of the atoll,
facing the open Indian Ocean south of the last extremity of the
Maldives. From these very positions seafaring enemies could be
detected and friends helped to set safe course. The positions
chosen were such as would have been picked for modern
lighthouses intended to serve navigators rounding the southern
tip of Asia. The Hitadu tower would serve those passing through
the Equatorial Channel and the Gan mound those taking the
longer route south of Addu atoll.
That night a young Maldivian serving us dinner in the
35
The Maldive Mystery
officers’ mess told us about ruins still standing on another

island in this same atoll, which could not be reached either by
foot or by car. He promised to help us with a boat next morning.
In the early dawn we woke with new hope and crossed the
entire lagoon in fifty minutes by fast motor dhoni to Midu
island. Midu was as far from Gan to the north-east as was
Hitadu to the north-west, but these two islands were separated
by a long, submerged section of the ring-reef at the open
entrance to the lagoon.
Midu was inhabited. The local people knew about the ruins
and took us straight there. What they showed us were solidly
cemented bunkers and overgrown trenches dug during the
Second World War to face the Equatorial Channel. The camera-
men had not even bothered to unload their equipment. Nor did
they quite catch on even when I got a little excited a moment
later. Nothing spectacular, and yet a new lead. A mole of crude
coral blocks 730 metres (800 yards) long had been built from the
sandy beach of Midu out into the shallow lagoon, far enough for
small dhonis to discharge passengers and cargo at the further
end. I could not help inspecting the shapeless lumps of coral and
crude limestone blocks that had been tossed together to form
this long white pier. In a couple of places I noted a few stones
that were quite unlike the rest: beautifully squared, with clas-
sical flutings carved along one side as if formerly part of some
elaborate structure. This was puzzling. At the shore end of the
mole there were more of these sculpted limestones, recently set
at random to serve as edges for the coral fill, but placed with no
sense of the ups and downs of the fluted decor.
‘Re-used building stones from some temple,’ I explained to
the cameramen who found the blocks to be too elegant to be part
of something made by the islanders. Yet, when I began to
scrutinise the crude white blocks in the high stone walls of the
village gardens, the brimmed Himalaya felt hat donated to me
by Bjorn that day must have made them think of Sherlock
Holmes again. Each time my fingers stopped by one of these
same elegant stones, set upside down or on edge amongst the
shapeless mixture of rubble and lime, they followed with the
cameras. Were these strange stones some kind of fingerprint?
Abdul asked the village people where they had found these
carved stones. They went to fetch the oldest man in their
36
asad
community, believed to be more than 90 years old. He staggered

with us to a place between some huge trees where he said there
had once been two ‘ancient mosques’. The stones had come
from the ruins of these former buildings.
I wanted to see their present mosque. It proved to be a modest
little building of crude stone fragments and mortar. No Moslem
would have torn down two superior mosques built from large
decorated slabs with cornices and friezes, to replace them with
such an inferior structure. Nor would wartime British forces
have found time or funds to build bunkers or barracks with
fluted stone decoration as elegant as a Greek temple. Here was
something that made no sense if we tried to explain it simply as
remains from disused Moslem mosques or British bunkers; for
why would religious Moslem islanders have torn down an
elegant temple and treated it with such disrespect? Here, surely,
we were seeing the first disturbed traces of a truly advanced
civilisation which had been established on this equatorial atoll
before the Moslems became the masters of the Maldive Islands.
The chief of Midu willingly agreed to have one of the fluted
stones removed from the mole and brought to Gan for shipment
to the museum in Male.
There was evidently nothing more we could do in Addu atoll,
but there was every reason to take a closer look at some of the
other islands in the Equatorial Channel that had not experi-
enced the impact of modern civilisation. Most tempting of all
was the lonely island of Fua Mulaku which lay all by itself, with
no ring-reef, in the midst of the wide open Channel.
After many attempts at finding a dhoni to take us there, Bjorn
and Abdul succeeded in negotiating a daily charter fee with the
captain-owner of a locally built vessel of quite impressive size.
To conclude the deal we had to agree that he could take along
any other passengers he could round up for the crossing. The
vessel, named Midu after the island we had just visited, was
skilfully built by local people from hand-split timber of coconut
palms cut on the same atoll. It was big and broad, like a giant
bath tub, painted green and covered with a high deck.
When the Midu came across the lagoon to fetch us from Gan
early next morning it was already crammed full of islanders of
all ages, and looked like my childhood memory of Noah’s Ark.
No dogs, however, nor other animals except live chickens, and
or
The Maldive Mystery
at least four generations of Noah’s own distant descendants.

Living quarters for crew and passengers were shoulder to
shoulder on deck, where a small boy was busy baking flat Arab
bread on a fireplace behind the steering wheel. The eight of us
who had chartered the vessel pressed ourselves on board and
dug a way for our camera equipment and other sparse posses-
sions down on to deck level between various bundles, bags and
piles of green coconuts.
We, and everything else, were separated from the ocean and
secured from rolling overboard by a fragile sort of garden
fencing. A canvas roof covered the entire Ark almost from bow
to stern, which was comforting since last night a deafening
thunder-storm with torrential rain had swept the former air
force camp, and black clouds on all quarters of the horizon still
showed that squalls were about.
Above the crawling multitude on deck were suspended three
wooden hammocks, each like a door hanging from ropes at the
corners. They were reserved by the captain for himself, Bjérn,
and me. Our companions merrily stretched out on deck,
squeezed in between giggling Maldive beauties with or
without babies or husbands.
Bjorn, swinging back and forth as a first-class passenger
above the crowd, dug out the worn photocopy of Bell to read
aloud about the island we were heading for: Fua Mulaku. Bell
showed that it was an atoll consisting of a single island. It was
right in the sweep of the Equatorial Current, in the middle of the
Equatorial Channel, and almost precisely on the equatorial line.
Lying alone in its ‘bliss of solitude’, wrote Bell, it was justly
considered by the Maldivians themselves to be the most beauti-
ful, and most favoured by nature, of all the islands in the
archipelago.
How real is the isolation of Fua Mulaku is borne out by the

strange fact that even in this Twentieth Century, it remains, to
all intents, absolutely unknown to Europeans . . . It is a well-
nigh incredible fact, but, so far as known, remains unchal-
lenged, that the only notices of the Island are but two: the first
a bare reference by the Maghrabin traveller, Ibn Batuta, in the
middle of the Fourteenth Century; the other a fuller account
by the two Frenchmen, brothers, Jean and Raoul Parmentier,
38
who likewise chanced to pay merely a passing visit to Fua

Mulaku, in the first half of the Sixteenth Century.’
We had just passed Midu island and left the lagoon to enter
the open Equatorial Channel. Out here was an incredibly fast
current, listed as up to 5.5 knots. The tub started rolling, the
passengers got sleepy and some women and babies could no
longer keep down what they long since had swallowed. Bjorn,
unaccustomed to the sea, lost interest in Bell and I had to read on
by myself.
The island we were heading for had no harbour, no lagoon,
no safe anchorage. It was the only island in the Maldives that
had no exposed reef to shelter its coast. A steep beach of coral
shingle, into which the feet sink at every step, falls straight
down to a submariné reef. ‘Within a few hundred yards of the
surrounding reef there are virtually no soundings, so sheer is
the drop. To such a shore, approach is necessarily fraught with
danger at all times; at seasons it becomes well nigh impossible,
except under gravest risk.’
We looked at the dark squalls that surrounded us on all sides,
but the captain of the rolling tub was completely undisturbed,
sending the cook-boy tumbling around with hot tea and with
green leaves containing chopped-up betel nuts to be chewed
with lime.
Halfway to our destination we lost sight of the Midu coconut
palms which were the last of Addu atoll we saw behind us, but
just then I sighted a black spot on the horizon ahead. I first took
it fora ship until it proved to be a cluster of trees on some hillock
higher than the crowns of the palms, which gradually also rose
to the horizon. This started to look exciting. We were clearly
heading for a completely different world, rarely visited, and
here perhaps would be a prehistoric mound not yet levelled.
Bell had only come in the morning and left by noon. He wrote
regretfully that fate had not allowed him to unravel the secrets of
what he termed ‘this lovely gem of the Maldive seas, still
practically unknown. Such good fortune may perchance some
day fall to a luckier wanderer: for us “Isle of Beauty, fare thee
well’”’’.
I had to close the pages and put the copy away in a waterproof
bag. The palms were standing as a green wall very near us now.
39
The Maldive Mystery
We were so close to the island that we could hear the thundering

surf and see it rise and tumble white all along the coast. No
landing place. We all felt some excitement. At one point on the
steep coral beach a crowd of people was busy launching a tiny
dhoni into the foaming breakers. It was still bobbing wildly up
and down as it came out to take a rope end from the Midu. With
the dhoni tied to our side brown men from both vessels dived
overboard and disappeared. They came back to the surface but
kept on swimming and diving until one of them located a long
rope somehow fixed to the bottom and permitting a vessel of
modest size like ours to moor until the wind changed direction.
There was supposed to be such a mooring rope in the open sea
on each side of the oblong island, where the wind alternated
from opposite directions according to the monsoon seasons.
In groups of three and four we climbed with our belongings
into the dancing rowing boat and rode on the crest of the surf
into the waiting crowd, who grabbed our hands and pulled us
quickly up on to the steep shore before the boat with its two
oarsmen hurried out in antelope jumps across the tumbling
breakers to fetch the next load.
Adventures began on Fua Mulaku the same day as we landed.
We had barely time to make a first survey of the most promising
site when we had to come back and identify our own pos-
sessions from among the confusion of luggage sent ashore.
Someone showed up with a hand-cart and, escorted by a multi-
tude of friendly islanders while others peered from behind their
stone walls, we walked through an admirably tidy village
almost to the opposite coast. Here we were lodged all by
ourselves in a clean, newly finished bungalow, snow white with
walls of crushed coral and lime. The house had not yet been
lived in except by short-tailed geckos running around on the
walls and ceiling catching moths and mosquitos. Nor was there
any furniture except for a lot of camp-beds brought in for the
occasion.
Fua Mulaku is one of the largest islands in the Maldive
archipelago with a population of about 5,600 people living ina
village scattered between coconut palms and bread-fruit trees.
Large leaves of banana plants and trees full of oranges,
lemons, papaya, mango and other tropical fruits also peeped
over the stone walls surrounding the little houses. Smoke rose
40
from outdoor kitchen shelters. Most of the huts were white-

washed, built from coral fragments and lime, but many were
still made from plaited coconut leaves, tanned brown by the
sun. The land, as on all the Maldive islands, was sandy and flat
as a floor, although here, as we walked across the island, we saw
to our surprise some glittering water and taro swamps.
Nobody had known in advance about our arrival, so we were
amazed at something which later proved to be an everyday sight
in the Maldives: the streets were strewn with fresh white coral
sand from the beach. There were always some women bent
double in the middle of the road, sweeping with short home-
made brushes. They even picked up the droppings from
chickens, to leave a spotless passage for all barefoot pedestrians.
There were no foreigners living on Fua Mulaku, although we
were to learn of at least two others who had lived among them
for some time after Bell’s visit. Bell’s description still held good,
Fua Mulaku was blessed by nature with more fertility and more
variety of fruits and root crops than all the other islands put
together. The people were also exceptionally beautiful and
displayed far more variety in physical type than we had seen in
Male. Quite a few were remarkably tall.
It was a hot afternoon when we were installed in our new
limestone home. Harald and John rid themselves of their
cameras and told us to arrange their sleeping quarters as we
pleased. They were more keen on an ocean bath before the sun
went down. All efforts to persuade them to refrain were of no
avail. They said they knew there was no lagoon. They knew
there was surf and coastal currents. But they were used to that
kind of peril from all the months they had filmed jangada rafts
tackling the wild Atlantic waves, or the shampans in the surf of
Bangladesh. They had dived from and even capsized with all
sorts of primitive craft. They were not, of course, under my
command. They had come with Neil to film sailing dhonis but
had been side-tracked by the possibility of finding traces of a
lost civilisation. So, happy at the thought of a dip, they grabbed
their towels and left for the nearest sea shore, assuring us they
would do nothing foolhardy.
A few minutes later I left the house too, to see where they had
gone. The west coast beach was only a couple of hundred metres
away, but storms had tossed up a high bank of sand and coral
41
The Maldive Mystery
shingle which obstructed any view of the sea from the house.
Once up on the sand bar I had full view of the naked coast.
Where I stood was a tiny boat turned keel up, with two islanders
busy caulking some cracks. Our two friends were already far out
in deep water, waving merrily with their arms. They were in the
dancing waves outside the submerged edge of the shallow reef,
and I found it hard for a moment to separate a feeling of
annoyance at their carelessness from admiration for their
courage and skill. But, strangely, they went on waving after I
had waved back twice with both my arms.
Suddenly I realised they were not waving for fun at all. They
were in danger.
I knew only too well that I could not manage to swim past the
reef and bring anybody ashore through that surf. I would be
chopped to pieces against the sharp coral wall, and so would
they if they tried to get closer to the edge of the reef than they
already were. They were safe only as long as they kept on
treading water outside the breakers at the edge of the reef.
I ran to the two islanders who calmly went on working on
their boat. The continuous thunder of the surf all along the coast
made it impossible for anyone ashore to hear anyone out at sea,
no matter how much they yelled. I grabbed the nearest man by
the arm and turned his face, pointing at the two who were now
clearly waving in despair and battling with the ocean swell. The
man looked, then brusquely shook himself loose from my grip
and bent down to continue his work. He and I had no language
in common, sol pulled him around again and made it very clear
with signs that the two out there were drowning, and that we
had to launch the little boat together and row out to save them.
Now he got visibly angry and, with flashing eyes, he snarled
something at me and nervously started to fumble again with his
own work. So did the other man. Before I could interrupt once
more, our Maldivian interpreter, Abdul, was at my side and
immediately saw the danger. He yelled something to the two
boatmen, who answered back without looking up from their
work.
‘They say they have no oars,’ Abdul translated.
‘Never mind,’ I shouted furiously, ‘tell them we can paddle
this little boat with our hands!’
By this time a small crowd of curious islanders had gathered
42
around us. I expected them all naturally to be master swimmers.

None, however, showed any interest in the two men struggling
to keep afloat outside the reef. Abdul hurriedly translated for
me the dry statement that three of their own women had
drowned last month because they had been stupid enough to
take a bath at this place on the reef. But now we saw, to our great
relief, a small rowing boat with two men fishing in the open sea
beyond our friends. They were rowing very slowly but, it
seemed, on the right course for the two who were now waving
in panic as they apparently had seen the boat. The whole crowd
of us ashore ran back and forth and waved with shirts and palm
leaves, yelling as loudly as we could although we realised that
no one outside the surf could hear us.
Now the men in the_boat had obviously seen the two in the
water. They headed straight for them. We all felt a vast relief. But
too soon. A few oar-strokes away from the sprawling swimmers
the rowing boat stopped. Next we could hardly believe cur
eyes. The oars slowly began to row in the opposite direction.
The distance from the two men in the water increased as the
boat pulled away. Soon it was so far out at sea again that we paid
no more attention to it.
Abdul had by now been told that someone had run for oars at
a nearby house. I suddenly noticed in the crowd a bushy-
bearded face with glasses. It was Neil. He came over to me with
a curious expression and asked calmly what all the commotion
was about. I had hardly pointed and uttered the names of his
two colleagues before he ran desperately down to the water and
dived in before anybody could stop him. He disappeared in one
wave and when he came up in the next he had lost his glasses
and could see nothing. The following wave knocked him over
and sucked him out to the edge of the reef.
When the villagers came running with the oars. Neil and the
other two cameramen were all struggling for their lives, one in
the tumultuous surf on the reef and two outside. The equatorial
sun was fast on its vertical descent into the sea, which would
leave no space for twilight, just as when the theatre lights are
dimmed before a performance.
Things now happened so fast and confusedly that it was
difficult to follow. Before the men with the oars reached the
water, some others had pulled a hidden rowboat out from under
43
The Maldive Mystery
the trees. First wading, and then paddling with their hands,
they reached the two men out in the deep water and pulled one
into their boat. Neil came tumbling in by himself with a huge
wave, either because he was a master swimmer or because he
had Allah on his side. Groping to find his way to land without
glasses, he was grabbed by strong arms and pulled up on the
beach, joined in the big wave by the boatmen with John. John
staggered up the steep shingle slope without help, white as a
moon and with all the signs of shock. A moment later somebody
else came carrying Harald, lifeless as a corpse. He began to move
as Bjorn started resuscitation and pumped water out of him in
rhythmical jets.
As the sun set, Fua Mulaku was lost in tropical darkness,
Harald and John got their voices back and sat up with the rest of
- us around a kerosene lamp to tell their story. Abdul came with
the island chief and told us that the village population was
furious with the two men in the boat who had come right up to
the drowning foreigners and then had left them to their fate.
John and Harald had seen the boat all the time from the moment
a sudden undertow had pulled them off the reef. They said they
had shouted ‘help, help!’ until the boat came and was almost
within reach. Then the two rowers had abruptly turned their
boat and one of them had scornfully repeated ‘help, help’ as
they leaned to the oars and rowed away.
‘Why?’ we asked.
None of the islanders gave any answer. If they knew why,
they kept it to themselves. They certainly did not approve of
such hostile conduct, even to non-Moslem strangers.
A thunder-storm rumbled over the island all night and at5 am
our three friends had suddenly decided to break their Maldive
adventure. They asked if the chartered vessel could take them
back to Gan where they would wait for the first flight to Male.
Bjorn and I agreed so long as they sent the boat back for us. Left
with Bjorn and me was Abdul, our interpreter, and Bjérn’s two
Sri Lankan pupils with their video equipment.
As the sun rose I went back to the place of near disaster to see
if it was possible to take a morning bath in the shallows without
risking getting out near the abrupt edge of the reef. I was not
going to take any chances, but I felt like a coward when I waded
out to my knees and lay down in lukewarm water. Little more
44
than ripples flowed in from the ocean now because the tide
was low. Even so I placed myself by a big ball-shaped coral to
hang on to if an unexpected sea should tumble in.
Life felt wonderful. The eastern sky was purple-red around
the newborn morning sun that barely twinkled behind the
coconut palms. Suddenly the water level rose. As an unexpected
wave came from the beach, I felt a drag on my body and grabbed
the stony coral with both hands, hanging on with all my
strength. The suction increased and tore my feet off the bottom.
If I had let go I would have been swept into the ocean like our
friends the day before.
This was absurd, the terrific flow had not come in from the
sea. Then the rushing current died down, and before anything
worse happened I waded quickly back onto dry land. Now I
understood why evén the utmost care was not enough here. A
big wave had obviously tumbled in against the steep beach
somewhere further up the coast and been forced sideways along
the shore until it found an open channel out across the coral
ledge, just where we had found it deep enough to take a bath.
The owner of the house we had rented, a big husky islander

who usually had a friendly dwarf toddling at his heels, served
us breakfast of fresh, unleavened Arab bread, bananas, tea and
coconut milk brought from another village house, and then we
set off on our search.
The mystery of this island seemed to be concentrated around
one huge man-made hill. Bell had seen it briefly and so far it had
never been visited by any archaeologist. Possibly it was of the
same type that had existed on Gan until the airport was con-
structed.
Bell had first heard of a mound on Fua Mulaku when he met a
native from this island in Male after his shipwreck in 1879. His
records show that, according to the islanders, there were, on
Fua Mulaku, jungle-covered ruins ‘resembling the bell-shaped
Dagobas rising from platforms found in Ceylon, and amid them
aStone Image of the Buddha in the sthana-mudra (erect attitude)’.
Such rumours had made Bell conclude:
Whilst the evidence so far available is both quite insufficient,

and of a nature too vague, to warrant definite conclusion, it is
45
The Maldive Mystery
far from improbable that ... Buddhist Missionaries, in the

spirit of the Asoka Edicts, departing to intermingle among all
unbelievers, teaching better things, carried their doctrine
across the sea even to the despised and little known Maldives.°
When Bell finally came back to the Maldives in 1922, his brief
morning visit to Fua Mulaku permitted him merely to measure
the remains of the ancient structure. It was still a good 7 metres
(25 feet) high, covered by trees and coconut palms. Part of the
walls had been trenched and robbed but enough of the original
casing masonry of hard, dressed coral blocks still remained to
convince him that it was definitely the remains of a former
Buddhist dagoba, or stupa. The Moslem islanders had carried
away the best part of the squared facing slabs, but the big
hillock formed by the inner filling of the structure nobody had
managed to remove. Of the standing Buddha, however, nothing
was remembered and nothing seen. Bell concluded that what he
heard in 1879 ‘may have then been true; but nothing was known
— at any rate not divulged — about any Buddhist images forty
years or so later’.’
It was with great anticipation that we ourselves, another sixty
years later still, set out to see the remains of the hawitta, as the
islanders called it. Now there was wheeled trafficon Fua Mulaku:
a few hand-carts and quite a number of bicycles. The flat island
is about 4 miles long from north to south and roughly 2 miles
wide. On borrowed bicycles we rode through the wide village
streets and along a narrow footpath into the dense evergreen
forest. Near the north-east end of the land the trail passed right
by the foot of a steep, stony hillock that rose above us, thickly
covered by shrubbery and palm-like pandanus trees. Wejumped
off and hid the bicycles in the undergrowth. Crawling up the
hill on all fours we followed a ravine running up one side and
ending in a crater on the summit.
The big mound had been plundered.
Certainly not by Bell during his lightning morning visit. The
wound in the structure was fairly free from vegetation and filled
with crude lumps of coral of all sizes mixed with a few nicely
squared limestone blocks, clearly fallen in from a former outer
wall.
From the top we could see only a green wilderness, and no
46
gee®
houses; the whole area around the hawitta had been left empty
and uncultivated. There was a stony plain with some coconut
palms on the seaward side, and thick jungle on the village side.
Beyond the coastline the blue waters of the Equatorial Channel
stretched to the horizon. An old man confirmed my suspicion
that this hawitta had served him and the other island mariners
as a landmark for navigation, especially when the stone walls of
the hawitta had still been covered by a coat of white lime
plaster.
As we crawled through the dense underbrush around the
mound, we were closely followed by islanders who never for a
moment let us out ef sight. We discovered occasional carved
blocks elegantly shaped to serve as pedestals, plinths, foun-
dations for walls, pillars and other architectural structures, to
our minds better sifted to ancient Greece than on this small
island. This reminded us, nevertheless, of what we had seen
scattered about in the mole and garden walls on Midu.
A little further along the trail we could not miss stumbling on
another irregularity in the ground, a low but wide mound that
again proved to be littered with plinths, lintel segments and
other profiled stones. This was the meagre remains of Kudu
Hawitta, ‘Little Hawitta’, as someone in our steadily growing
escort admitted. This hawitta had been much bigger, but people
had carried away all the stones, another man added. We asked
for permission to clear away the big-leafed plants and creeping
shrubbery that covered the mound, and a number of adults and
children joyfully gave us a hand.
Optimistically we asked if there were still other hawittas on
the island. No, they all agreed. There were only these two.
At that moment we heard a shout from Mohamed Waheed,
the usually silent officer of the Island Administration. He was
standing on some elevation, hidden inside a thick wall of
foliage, and called out that there was another hawitta there.
Everybody seemed greatly surprised, and slightly embarrassed,
insisting that this was a new discovery. To make this clear in the
face of our obvious doubt, they decided to name this third ruin
Waheed Hawitta, in honour of its proud discoverer.
Most of the area was made impenetrable by the tight growth
of leathery, long-leafed pandanus palms of all heights, their
edges densely set with thorns, sharp as needles. Other ruins, no
47
The Maldive Mystery
doubt razed to the ground, were probably hidden in this

wilderness. In the thickest part we stumbled into a deep
depression. Only later did we discover that it was the remains of
a ceremonial bath, possibly of the type that the queen had used
on Hitadu. We noted several signs of former occupation,
including very old potsherds.
In the almost barren shingle on the seaward side of the big
hawitta, Bjorn yelled that he had stumbled upon an alignment
of beautifully cut and fitted stones set in a perfect circle. The
diameter was big enough for a man to stretch out inside, and
each stone had been cut slightly wedge-shaped, as if intended
to be the first tier for a vault built like an igloo.
With Abdul as interpreter I had made friends with a gentle
elderly man named Ibrahim Said, who watched me intently as I
admired the remains of the exquisite stonework. The big
hawitta had been beautiful before, he suddenly volunteered.
He had seen it before it was destroyed. He recalled steps that
had led up the seaward wall. Also high up on that wall there had
been a long line of ‘letters’ in signs no one understood. The line
of writing had been about 2.5 metres (8 feet) long, the signs less
than 30 centimetres (1 foot) in height. And then he loosened up
further. I had just found a well-preserved segment of a round
stone pillar about 45 centimetres (18 inches) in diameter, and
asked what this could have been. It had been part of a column, I
learnt, reaching to the height of a man’s chest.
‘For what purpose?’ I asked.
‘To hold betel nut and betel leaves mixed with lime.’
‘But did people have to. come to the hawitta to chew betel,
could they not do it at home?’
‘Not people. This was for the stone buddu.’
Buddu was, of course, the Maldive term for any kind of statue,
and I wanted to know what this buddu was like.
He had never seen it. His mother had told him that the buddu
was about 1.6 metres (51 feet) tall. It stood on the ground close
to another statue which was about 1 metre (3 feet) tall. The
buddu had one hand held in front. His mother had seen it
standing, before some young boys destroyed it; but she had
never seen the offerings of betel, he hastened to add. He himself
had never seen anything of this sort, only a small stone elephant
somebody had found near the small hawitta. It was about 20-25
48
centimetres (8-10 inches) long and was carved from hard lime-
stone, with a long nose and tusks. It was brought to the village
but lost. I asked him to make a drawing from memory. He drew
something that looked more like a match with four legs and
hanging head and tail. But when others came to listen he had no
more to say.
The midday sun was scorching, we all had empty stomachs,
and a long line of bicycles and pedestrians soon headed back to
the village.
It had been made amply clear to us that these people did not like
to talk about things they considered to be heathen when others
were present. However, with the aid of our two friends from
Male, Abdul and Waheed, and the island chief, we located an
elderly man who had accompanied Bell to the hawitta, and we
invited him along to our house that evening. Magi Eduruge
Ibrahim Diddi gave his age as 74. He did not remember much
about Bell’s visit except that Bell took many measurements,
collected old objects and was unable to read the foreign script
above the steps in the hawitta. This was surprising he said, for
Bell could read both European and Singalese letters as his father
was British and his mother Singalese from Sri Lanka.
Bell had not seen the image, he added.
‘Which image?’
‘The stone image of Mahafoti Kalege.’
‘Who was he?’
‘That was the image of the man with the fish. Mahafoti Kalege
means “Owner of the Fish’’. That was the name the old islanders
had given to this image. But they invented this name themselves,
because the stone figure held a piece of fish hanging on a rope.’
We had never heard of Buddha holding a piece of fish on a
rope. Nor did our visitor believe that the ‘Owner of the Fish’
depicted Buddha.
Our visitor could remember that, after Bell’s visit, somebody
else had come from Male and it was that person who had dug
the huge trench in the hawitta. They had found four stone boxes
and a stone incense burner. Each of the four stone boxes had
two chambers, one full of charcoal and ashes, and the other with
‘things’ like gold strips. At that time many of the parts of broken
stone images, such as hands, were lying about the hawitta.
49
The Maldive Mystery
Our next visitor was Ahmed Ali Diddi. He was about the
same age and recalled the hawitta with a conical summit with
large slabs on top. He had no comments on the writing, but had
heard about the stone statue. It was called Mahafoti Kalege and
represented a man with a piece of fish hanging ona rope. Maha
meant ‘fish’, foti meant ‘slice’ and Kalege was not just ‘man’, but
‘gentleman’. Allah was called Maikalege in their language which
meant ‘Big Gentleman’.
This was beginning to get complicated. As these people were
Moslem, they would never carve a statue of any man. The
hawitta was identified by Bell as a Buddhist structure, but
Buddhists would never offer betel nuts to a man witha fish ona
rope.
Instead of inviting the old people to visit us, which would
involve long walks for a generation who did not know how to
use a bicycle, we went in the evening to the widely scattered
huts of the elders, and sat with them in their wooden hammocks
to hear their stories. We realised perfectly well that whatever
they told us would not be as dependable as archaeological
remains which we could see with our own eyes. There would be
many reasons to be sceptical about details in their stories,
whether intentional or not. On these islands, to touch upon
other religions than Islam was a most delicate affair. Besides,
human memories were not always reliable. Our objective was to
extract from their statements any fragment of information which
might imply that other people, besides their own ancestors, had
been present on this island in former times.
Ali Mussa Diddi was 75. He had been present when the big
hawitta was plundered. He had seen the human bones they
found. Just under the present ground level they had dug up a
slab and under it was no box but a skeleton with a skull. They
had taken the bones and buried them near the mosque. He had
also seen the double-chambered stone boxes which he said
were thrown back with the rubble into the hawitta while the
contents were taken to Male. He had seen Mahafoti Kalege
standing near the small hawitta. It was still there in Bell’s time,
but he did not touch it. It was the statue of anaked man without
beard or hair, with the penis broken, and witha piece of fish on
a cord. He had also seen the elephant. It was definitely an
elephant, about one foot tall.
50
adi
The stories of Mahafoti Kalege were reconfirmed as we went

from house to house. Abdulla Mufeed had heard a tale explain-
ing how this statue came into being. His grandfather had told
him that, long ago, people coming from the Arabian side lost
their way at sea and arrived on this island. Later one person
named Ambolakeu went to fish and his wife was standing
onshore. Just as he was to give fish to his wife, ajinni passed by
and threw coral sand at them, so that both were turned to stone.
One man and one woman. Abdulla had seen them himself, but
after they had been broken. Both had very big heads with long
faces. The legs and arms were shorter than on ordinary people.
They had big ears, small eyes and no hair or beard. They looked
like Japanese. The woman had a smaller forehead than the man,
but a very long face too. The man had one hand coming forth
with outstretched fingers holding a very short rope witha round
slice of fish. The woman was nude with small nipples and a
groove forsex. The man was also nude but with his sexual organs
broken. They had been standing on stone pillars near the small
hawitta before they were destroyed. The woman had no name,
but the man’s name was ‘Owner of the Fish’. Abdulla had seen
the elephant too, big as a rabbit with four legs, teeth and trunk.
It seemed obvious that the legend of the jinni throwing sand,
and turning the fisherman and his wife into stone, was invented
by a people who had found the statues already standing on the
spot. Not knowing their origin or function they created their
own explanation.
Our interview with old Abdul Rajmal, 90 years of age, was
less successful. The old man spoke a local dialect which our
interpreter from Male did not understand, and he had to resort
to assistance from younger relatives. Soon the old man’s house
and garden were full of people and our host, who had previously
spoken freely, suddenly could not remember anything. Nobody
recalled anything. To make an effect I uttered a magic name:
‘Mahafoti Kalege!’
They all reacted. A young boy at my side repeated the name
and pointed with a broad smile towards the north-east cape as
he mentioned the word: hawitta. Many in the crowd laughed
shyly, but a man above middle age suddenly came rushing out
of the door waving a stick. He drew a circle in the ground in
front of my feet.
51
The Maldive Mystery
‘This is what Mahafoti Kalege looked like, around stone witha

hole in it! It was nothing other than the kind of anchor stone
they used here in former times.’
I ventured to ask why they had called a round stone ‘Mr Piece
of Fish’, and the man had a quick answer that settled the
discussion:
‘A piece of fish can have any shape.’
We thanked our hosts for their good company and interesting
information and rode off into the village darkness. The streets
were wide, straight and long, and the houses set far apart, so at
night we saw only the glare from occasional paraffin lamps.
Otherwise there was nothing but the silhouettes of the huge
banana leaves groping for the sky, with the still taller, crooked
bread-fruit trees that seemed to spread their lobate foliage
among the stars.
In another part of the village we had better luck. Muhammed
Maniku, 70 years old, was not afraid to talk. In former times, he
said, Singalese fishermen from Sri Lanka sometimes stopped
here ‘to give thanks’. They were very religious. His father had
seen Singalese fishermen who stayed over on this island to offer
fish to the statue. Raw fish. They had had ‘good contact’ with the
statue. He himself had taken part in the digging of the big
hawitta, but had little new information to add except that the
man who had come from Male had seen the writing on the wall,
which he said resembled Tamil signs. They resembled Singalese
signs, according to what Abdulla Mufeed had told us before. He
had heard this from old people who had sailed to Sri Lanka and
who had also told him that the hawitta looked like a Singalese
temple, and that Singalese sometimes came and lived nearby.
Back in our own house we had a late visit from our fine host,
Kennari Ibrahim Diddi, a strongly built middle-aged man, a
former sea captain, and one-time official representative of Fua
Mulaku in Male. Kennari was a calm and authoritative person,
with experience of the world. When asked if he had heard of any
statue on the island he said he knew the man who had buried
one.
‘Wasn’t it two?’ Bjorn asked.
‘Oh, you mean the woman figure?’ our host blurted out. He
then added that there must once have been many figures. When
they dug the large hawitta they had found arms and fragments
oe
of other statues. But the digging had been a search for treasure
only, so all this had been thrown back into the first trench and
buried there. If we wanted to know more he could take us to an
old relative who had been the foreman during the digging.
Hussain Kalefan, who was 73 and the relative to whom
Kennari was referring, told us that a certain Adam Naseer
Manik had come long after Bell’s visit. He said he had been sent
from Male to dig the hawitta. Hussain had therefore helped him
to find workmen and, as they dug into the hawitta, they found
some stone boxes with lids on. There was gold inside which the
visitor had taken to Male. Deeper down there had been another
stone box containing a small image. This image was not taken to
Male, nor was it destroyed. It was not the same image as
Mahafoti Kalege withthe fish, it was only about 30 centimetres (1
foot) tall. Nor was it like Buddha, but naked, and standing with
hands and long fingers straight down the sides. It had eyes,
nose and mouth made to look more like a man than a devil, and
it had no ears and no teeth exposed. The ‘leader’ from Male had
not cared for it. In any case, it was forbidden to show a human
figure in Male. People could be put in jail for less, even if they
only drew a human figure in the sand.
This was important information. The statue was said to be
still there, in the same stone box, left under the coral rubble they
had thrown back into the wound in the hawitta. It could be
easily recovered without damaging the old structure. All we had
to do was to dig where it had been dug before, and extract the
stone box.
We chose Kennari as foreman for a team to reopen the trench,
but first we wanted our companion Waheed from the Atoll
Administration to obtain authorisation from Male. Each atoll
had an atoll chief who had daily radio contact with Male.
Waheed spent hours with the little radio in the chief's office
trying to get our message through. Finally we got word back.
They had appointed a National Moslem Committee to decide
whether the hawitta could be reopened. We must not touch the
mound until we had heard from Male again.
In the meantime, we lost no time in obtaining more infor-
mation from the village people. Another old islander, Ibrahim
Didi Kalo Sehigé, had looked into the stone boxes as they were
extracted from the hawitta. Each of them had two chambers and
se
The Maldive Mystery
a vaulted lid jutting from the walls like the roof of a house. In
one he had seen gold ina brass tin, in another a fire burner with
charcoal and ashes. He confirmed that a small standing statue
had been left buried in its own stone box.
An old woman, Kadija Ibrahim Kalifan, was pointed out as
the widow of the chief at the time that the gold was taken from
the hawitta. It was taken by a person she referred to as a ‘leader’
from Male. Everything he had found in the hawitta he had kept
in her home until he left the island. He had only shown her two
bowls full of amber and small gold objects, and some charms
that had to do with witchcraft. But she knew they had also found
a skull and other human bones. These had not been buried near
the mosque, but beside the hawitta.
Bjorn Bye and his two Singalese students were tape-recording
songs and rhymes, when a middle-aged man, Ahmed Mussa,
contributed a very rhythmical poem that proved to be known
even to the young people on the island. This was the first time
we heard about the Redin.
Probably nobody would have thought of, or even volunteered
to mention the Redin, had it not come to us in a local poem. It
was a rhyme praising their own island, with one particular
verse dedicated to the great hawitta:
Redin taneke hedi ihao

Hawittai dagebo singhala maumore ko.
Eta buddé hutte do
balang dama huri eto.
Abdul translated with help from those versed in the local

dialect:
It was here the Redin once created
the hawitta, very old, built by Singalese.
There was a Statue there you see,
shall we go and have a look
whether itis there...
The reference to a possibly hidden statue seemed clear enough,

but the reference to two distinct originators of the hawitta at
first seemed to make no sense. Bell had identified the Fua
Mulaku hawitta as a former Buddhist stupa of the very ancient
Singalese type he had seen in Sri Lanka. So it was reasonable to
54
accept the poet’s claim that it had been built by Singalese. But
who was Redin? And if the Singalese had built the hawitta, how
could it first have been created by Redin?
It was only along time afterwards that the implications began
to dawn upon me. During those first days and nights in a
strange community of mixed secrecy and confidence, there was
too much to digest to draw meaningful conclusions. We also
received a visit by a young islander from the northern atolls,
sent here as a school teacher, who wanted me to know that, on
this island, there was more knowledge of early history and more
non-Moslem beliefs than the people dared to admit to outsiders.
He was probably right, yet new fragments pertaining to the
island’s past continued to fill my notebooks. I was particularly
keen to obtain information on the mysterious Redin. Then, in
rechecking Bell’s report, I found a casual reference to Redin ina
note concerning a mound Bell had visited on an island in
Haddummati atoll: ‘No tradition exists regarding this mound,
beyond the attribution of its construction to so-called “Redin”,
as the reputed ancient builders of all such colossal work.’
So Redin was not a person, but a people. Later Bell says about
another such structure up in the northern atolls, at Miladu
island: ‘From superstition, the Islanders are afraid to dig into
the mound, which they call “Redinge Funi’’.”*
Redinge Funi means ‘Redin’s Hill’. The two atolls where Bell
had heard about Redin were at opposite ends of the long chain
of the Maldive Islands. And now we learned that Redin was also
remembered as the initiator of the large mound on Fua Mulaku.
In our efforts to learn more about the days of the legendary
Redin people we found, to our surprise, that it was a general
conviction among the population that, when the Redin created
the hawitta, Fua Mulaku had been an atoll with a lagoon inside.
In very ancient times, they all said, ships could sail right into the
middle of the island and anchor or dock where now there was
cultivated land. They had heard from their ancestors how, very
long ago, a terrific storm had tossed up coral blocks and sand
that blocked the entrance to the lagoon and gradually trans-
formed it into fertile fields with a freshwater lake in the centre.
They were so firm in this belief that they took us to the place on
the south coast, now an uninterrupted steep boulder beach,
where the entrance was said to have been.
55
The Maldive Mystery
They also took us inland to a beautiful freshwater lake, some

274 metres (300 yards) across, from which ditches ran through
boggy marshland in all directions to flood the taro fields. Bandara
Kuli was the name of the lake, the first and only I had ever seen,
or even heard of, on a coral island. The surface, smooth as a
mirror, reflected an unbroken picture of green tropical foliage,
banana leaves, and coconut palms. In here the Redin were
supposed to have sailed before sharks and lobsters were
locked out and the coral rock garden at the bottom was replaced
by dark and fertile humus. This explained why it was well
known throughout the archipelago that no other island in the
group was blessed with such a variety of tropical fruits, flowers
and vegetables as Fua Mulaku.
Somewhere in the midst of this verdant paradise were sup-
posed to be the remains of an ancient buried wharf which we
never managed to see.
It was hard to rid oneself of the vision of this inland lake when
Muhammad Ali Diddi spoke about the former Fua Mulaku
lagoon. His grandfather had told him that very, very long ago
Fua Mulaku had lost its lagoon and changed to become only land.
‘This change took place before we became Moslems,’ he said.
‘When we embraced Islam there were already people living in
the centre of the island.’
At that time there was a fisherman called Ambola Keu, or
Ambola Keola. He came sailing into the inside of the island and
there he passed from one side of the lagoon to the hawitta side
where he met two old men with very long beards, down to their
chests. They were not Moslem. They were clad in white garments
made from leaves. Abdul first translated these as banana leaves,
but corrected it. The material was pandanus leaves. The custom
of this earlier population was to soak the narrow strips of
pandanus leaves in water, then peel them and hammer the
strips together with a wooden club to make a kind of cloth,
smooth as silk. The clothing of these two men covered only their
sexual parts. They both used walking sticks and had the appear-
ance of religious people. Ambola Keu had been fishing, and the
two old men commanded: ‘Give fish!’ They did not beg or ask
gently. Ambola gave them pieces of fish strung on a rope. They
hung the fish on their walking sticks over their shoulders and
walked away.
56
When the grandfather of our informant had heard this story,

he asked:
‘Who were these people that Ambola Keu met?’
‘They were the people of the hawitta.’
The place where Ambola had anchored was at Iduga Koletere,
now dry land inside the island.
The connection between the episode describing Ambola’s
meeting with the people of the hawitta and the lost statue of the
‘Owner of the Fish’ was unclear. But the ancient fisherman,
Ambola Keu, had the same name as the fisherman in the legend
who was bewitched by a devil into the stone statue Mahafoti
Kalege. ”
The same informant was vague in his memory of that statue.
‘It is destroyed,’ was all he recollected. ‘All the statues were
destroyed.’ ad,
‘Who made the statues?’
‘The Redin. The Redin made both the hawitta and the statues.’
‘Who were the Redin?’
The old man shrugged his shoulders. They might have been
Singalese, at least they spoke a language different from the
Divehi of the Maldivians. The Redin were on these islands first
and the Maldivians came later. The Redin were white people.
The colour of their hair was brown. Our informant touched
Bjorn’s chestnut-coloured hair to emphasise what he meant.
They had big hooked noses and blue eyes. A tall people, with
long faces. They made statues and worshipped them.
He confirmed that a different statue had been found inside
the big hawitta, but he thought that one had been destroyed.
‘The Owner of the Fish’ and the female statue had stood next to
the small hawitta. He knew nothing more about the Redin.
We returned to Hussain Kalefan, the foreman of the old dig,
and asked him if he had heard about the Redin. We were seated
with his family inside his house, and everybody around the
table looked at each other in silence as if they did not under-
stand the question. But as the adults hesitated, a bright little boy
stepped forward from behind me and exclaimed:
‘Redin, sure, he lived here.’
The parents seemed embarrassed. The father ignored this
strange remark. He tried to side-track the discussion by sug-
gesting that Redin was just the name of a mythical people. I
oF
The Maldive Mystery
wanted to know what the Redin looked like, but nobody knew.
Perhaps they had only been some Hindu, our host suggested.
As the boy kept on insisting that he had seen Redin in this
house I asked his parents if they had had a Hindu visitor. They
both laughed shyly and said no, but a foreigner like us had come
to the island and had stayed in their house. His real name was
Michael. They had only nicknamed him ‘Redin’ because he had
brown hair and looked like a Redin.
We were grateful to the little boy for this unintended piece of
information from his father. So, the image these people had of
the Redin was that they had brown hair and looked like us!
Legendary references to seafaring people with fair skin and
brown hair are well known from pre-Columbian Mexico and
Peru, and even on Easter Island. Certainly these early seafaring
stone-masons in the legends had not come from Europe. But
people fitting this description had also existed outside Europe.
There were brown-haired people with fair skin in the Middle
East and western Asia. The only thing we could deduce with
certainty from what these people told us, was that the present
population on Fua Mulaku did not believe that the big mounds
had been left by their own ancestors, but by an earlier people
who looked to them like foreigners. So a strange old legend,
common in other parts of the world, was also present on these
lonely islands in the Indian Ocean.
We were soon to learn that probably every adult on Fua
Mulaku, and most people throughout the Maldives, had heard
about the Redin; but few admitted openly that they believed in
these ancient stories. To the modern Maldive youth the word
Redin meant no more than did jinni and other terms for spirits
and fairies. Soon it will be too late to save even the last remnants
of pre-Moslem legends in the Maldives.
While we waited for permission from Male to reopen the
trench where the islanders said the small buddu had been
reburied in its box, the village people began to disagree on
whether or not it was wise to search for that pagan figure again.
Some of them were suddenly eager to assure us that it would be
a waste of time. One old man came to testify that it was not true
that a buddu had been found in any of the stone boxes. On
checking his reliability we learned from the foreman of the dig
at that time that this ‘eyewitness’ had not been anywhere near
58
the hawitta when it was dug. The foreman himself confirmed

that he had seen the buddu. We therefore returned to the old
man. He now admitted he had only told us what he had heard
from a trustworthy person who had actually been at the site and
assured him that he had seen no buddu. When Bjérn and Abdul
went to locate that eyewitness, they found to their surprise that
he was a blind man.
There was no reason to upset the superstitious among the
local people, nor had any permission come from Male to reopen
the trench. We decided therefore to forget the hawitta for the
time being. The Midu had returned from delivering the three
cameramen to Gan, and we wanted to proceed now to the
islands along the northern edge of the Equatorial Channel.
Departure proved impossible, however. The Midu had rested
safely at anchor in the lee of the island since its return, but wher
we wanted to leave Fua Mulaku we found that someone had
fiddled with the engine and the propeller would no longer turn.
The captain reported laconicaliy that the Midu would remain
here forever unless someone lent him a compressor. There was
no such thing on Fua Mulaku, and unless we wanted to settle
there indefinitely, we would have to get one from Gan. Sixteen
men in an open dhoni rowed all the way across the Equatorial
Channel to Gan and came back two days later with a compressor.
In the meantime, we explored the island in search of other
traces of the Redin. Whoever they were, they must have left
something behind other than the colossal hawitta.
ee
CHAPTER III
The First Fingerprint

Voyages through Space and Time
A FEW HUNDRED yards from the big hawitta, a tiny old mosque
lay abandoned all by itself at the side of the forest trail. By any
scale it was small and modest, but even more so in comparison
with what was still left of its titanic neighbour. The Redin who
had built the pyramidal colossus would surely have frowned
at the modest house of worship that took its place when
Mohamed’s faith reached Fua Mulaku.
The contrast in dimensions between these two old religious
shrines seemed to testify to the victory of faith over purely
physical might. Whoever the Redin were, they had put an
enormous amount of wealth, skill and physical labour into their
mountainous structure. The mosque, in contrast, had been built
with minimal effort by some mason who had quite simply
fetched the ready-shaped stones from the fine walls of the giant
Redin structure.
This was confirmed to us by the village elders. The little
mosque was the oldest Moslem structure on the island. The fine
polished limestone slabs in its walls had been shaped by the
Redin to form the fitted walls that had once covered the loose fill
which was now all there was left of the former temple. When
Islam was embraced by the local people, they had stripped the
blocks from the hawitta and carried them to this place to build
the first mosque to Allah. In front of this mosque was the
tombstone of Yusuf Naib Kalegefan, who had converted the
people of this island to Islam. Yusuf was the son of Yahya Naib
Kalegefan who had come sailing from some distant land soon
after Male had been converted.
The walls of Yusuf’s mosque had attracted my attention from
the very first day. Never had I seen more beautifully carved and
60
polished limestone slabs, fitted together as if cut from cheese

rather than from the solid island bedrock. Yet some of the slabs,
jutting out at the corners, revealed that they had not been
designed for use here, and one wall was simply patched to-
gether by small bits of limestone cemented with burnt lime, as
was customary in the village houses.
A closer examination revealed that Yusuf had raised his
mosque on the foundation platform of an older, classical struc-
ture. The stones in the base were elegantly fluted, and were still
assembled as when first set in the ground.
Eager not to miss any track of the old Redin, we followed the
paved path that norntally runs from the door of a mosque to a
sacred well in front of it: At Yusuf’s mosque, this path was so
elaborately fitted from carved blocks that it seemed to be part of
the pre-Moslem works. It actually by-passed the little well and
disappeared among some shrubbery. We followed it and found
a big rectangular basin among the bushes, glittering full of
water. ;
The basin proved to be an elegant structure, almost buried
under soil and turf. It was built like a small swimming pool,
with polished slabs closely fitted together. The base of the
mosque, the path and the pool clearly belonged together and
were from the same period. The local people confirmed that
worshippers in former times had submerged here for ritual
baths. Today, it was never used except occasionally for profane
washings.
One conclusion could already be drawn from the superior
masonry that we ascribed to the pre-Moslem period. Evidently
the masons of the hawitta period were not a mere handfui of
savages who had landed here by chance at some remote time in
antiquity. The remains along this forest trail were the work of
skilled architects and professional masons who had settled this
island on a voyage from some area where their ancestors had
already developed a degree of culture. Here, in the Equatorial
Channel, we were beginning to find the first tracks of civilised
prehistoric navigators.
Yusuf’s mosque was not the only one on the island. In the
village area there were bigger mosques, but they were more
recent and therefore built like the village houses from crude bits
of broken coral and lime. We remained profoundly impressed
61
The Maldive Mystery
by the fitted masonry in the walls of Yusuf’s mosque until we

stumbled upon a large semi-buried structure in front of the
village mosque of Kedeere.
The Kedeere mosque itself was just a small shack surrounded
by a modest Moslem graveyard. We again noted magnificently
fluted temple stones reused at random as border stones between
tombs and pathways. By following a slab-paved path from the
doorsteps we were surprised to come to a large sunken enclo-
sure. A broad and majestic flight of stairs built from huge carved
blocks brought us down to a roofless room part-filled with
gravel. In the centre of this gravel floor was a small stone-lined
Moslem well, filled with water. The original floor of the room
could not be seen, as the walls disappeared down into the
gravel. The high walls around us were fitted together so tightly
from large polished blocks of masonry as if to make a watertight
enclosure.
The Moslem well in the centre was obviously a secondary
feature dug down into what must be a half-buried ceremonial
bath. The bath itself was square with all walls 5.3 metres (17 feet
4 inches) wide and oriented exactly north-south, east-west.
Standing in the partly buried basin, we could not see over the
walls.
The megalithic stairway descended the east wall, and was
broad enough for a man to stretch out across. The stones used
were truly large, even though they were cut as straight and
smooth as a panel of glass. We measured one that was 2.45
metres (just over 8 feet) long, 63 cm (just over 2 feet) wide, and
polished to an even thickness of 10 centimetres (4 inches). For
hard limestone from the island bedrock to be cut with such pre-
cision made us marvel. Although fitted so closely that a knife-
blade could not enter between them, these blocks were all of
different sizes and not always rectangular. Many had one or
more corners stepped in as shoulders and yet matching their
neighbours as closely as the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle.
This sunken structure was indeed an important piece of that
jigsaw puzzle which had brought me to these islands. It was
more than a piece in a puzzle, it was a fingerprint. The slabs in
Yusuf’s mosque had been looted from the old hawitta but had
not been reset with the original precision. These walls had
never been taken apart, however. They were original. The
62
people who had designed them had used an exceedingly dif-

ficult technique by following an important aesthetic or magico-
religious tradition known only to a few restricted pre-European
civilisations. It was unknown anywhere in Europe. Unknown
indeed to the best masons in most of the world. In a very
conspicuous manner, this peculiar masonry tradition followed
the distribution of the people who had once built reed boats.
These walls carried my thoughts back to distant places I had

visited in my efforts to trace early human migration routes by
sea. They had been typical for people with notedly maritime
cultures, in fact for ocean navigators. The first time I saw such
walls was on the world’s loneliest speck of land, Easter Island.
Next time, it was in the former Inca territory of South America.
Then on the Atlantic coast of North Africa, in Asia Minor, and
lastly on the island of Bahrain in the Persian Gulf. Each time I
saw them, these walls were associated with reed ships, and each
time they came closer to the Indian Ocean. Here I had finally seen
them on an island far out in the Indian Ocean. Thus they were
spread around half the world’s circumference, with Easter Island
and the Maldives representing antipodes. Contact would seem
impossible. But no. When I came to think of it I had covered all
these same ocean gaps myself in prehistoric types of vessels.
In the whole Pacific Ocean they existed nowhere else except
on Easter Island. The lost civilisation that had left the long-eared
statues there had erected them on megalithic walls fitted to-
gether with this very special technique.’
Nothing like it was found anywhere in the Pacific hemi-
sphere except on the nearest mainland of South America. The
long-eared statue sculptors who had preceded the Incas in Peru
had built megalithic walls in this very manner, and they were
navigating their open coasts in reed boats and balsa rafts. Their
reed boats, too, were the same both in shape and material as
those on Easter Island. The similarities were so striking that
numerous scholars tried to explain them either as a strange
coincidence or as due to prehistoric contact between Peru and
Easter Island. That such contact could have taken place, I proved
in 1947 when we sailed on an Inca type balsa raft, the Kon-Tiki,
from Peru to the Tuamotu archipelago, twice as far as to Easter
Island.
63
se Ee ee Se
The Maldive Mystery A
technique was
My next encounter with this peculiar masonry
in Moroc co to meet
quite unexpected. I had come to Lixus
before I built a reed ship of my
builders of the local reed boats
ic. Nowhe re else on the Atlant ic coast
own for tests in the Atlant
boat buildi ng surviv e except in this former
of Africa did reed
port of Lixus. I had come to study reed boats, not to
Phoenician
ntory where the
look for stone walls, but on top of a high promo
al stone walls of
navigable Lixus river enters the Atlantic, coloss
d to find
megalithic masonry rose against the sky. I was amaze
fittin g as in Peru and on Easter
here the same peculiar stone-
this same African
Island. A year later, in 1970, we sailed from
of papyrus
coast to Barbados in the Mexican Gulf with a ship
reeds, the Ra II.
Who had left behind the prehistoric ruins of Lixus?
were
Nobody knows. But archaeologists agree that they
Phoeni cians or by some unkno wn
either built by the early
. Whoev er they were, there is genera l
Phoenician predecessors
the founde rs of Lixus had come sailing from the
agreement that
oriented
distant Middle East to build their astronomically
later the Romans
megalithic temple to their sun-god. Ages
reached this port and built a temple on top of the old ruins to
their own ocean god, Neptun e.
Since nobody disputed that it had been possible to sail from
o, as the
the inner Mediterranean to the Atlantic coast of Morocc
me
Lixus people had done, it would have been superfluous for
must have sailed in
to repeat this voyage. The mariners of Lixus
n throug h the Straits of
fleets of prehistoric craft from Lebano
Gibraltar to settle just where the powerf ul Atlanti c current starts
its flow straight to tropical America.
Since the architects and masons who built the Lixus sun-
the
temple had their roots among the great civilisations of
were masters in
Middle East, it was not surprising that they
handling colossal stones. Megalithic temple walls of giant blocks
brought from distant quarries were common in the Middle East.
They were typical for most of the civilisations that suddenly
began to sail the inner Mediterranean in the millennia just
before European history began.
But what about the type of stone-fitting, the ‘fingerprint
I had followed backwards from Easter Island to
masonry’,
Lixus?
64
Once again reed boats put me on the trail backwards through

history. While searching for reed boat illustrations in the tombs
and temples of the Pharaohs, such stone-fitting came to my
notice exactly at the spot where we built the Ra I. There, just
behind the great pyramids, some of the megalithic walls in the
mastabas and sun-temples were built in this way. But in Egypt
this kind of masonry was not common.
Having tested the Egyptian type reed ships Ra I and Ra I] in
the Atlantic, i next went to Asia Minor, this time to study local
reed ship designs before I tested a Sumerian type in the Indian
Ocean. In Asia Minor, among the Hittite ruins, I felt Ihad come
to the source of the-masonry I had been tracing backwards. It
would not be surprising if this specialised stone-fitting art had
started with the Hittites in view of their great age and cultural
importance. ‘
But who were the Hittites, and where did they live?
Until archaeologists discovered their ruins in modern times,
nobody knew. And yet the Hittites were a people who merit
recognition by all civilised nations, since the arts and crafts that
have made cultural progress possible from early antiquity have
reached the modern world through them. The Hittites were the
predecessors of the Phoenicians and lived where Lebanon and
Syria are today. Their home centred around the narrow stretch
of land in Asia Minor that separates the Mesopotamian rivers
from the Mediterranean Sea. They were the middlemen who
brought the art of writing from its inventors in Sumer to the
Phoenicians on the Mediterranean shore.
The Hittites were not the inventors of the basic traits in their
own civilisation. They had adopted ideas that came up the
navigable twin rivers, the Euphrates and the Tigris, directly
from Sumerian ports on the Persian Gulf. The Sumerians had
taught them to build temples to the sun, to carve large stone
statues with inlaid eyes, to write with both hieroglyphic and
cuneiform script, and to build large ships that could sail the sea.
A cylinder seal incised with reed ship designs, precisely like the
reed ships on Sumerian cylinder seals, has been found by
archaeologists in Hittite territory on the upper reaches of the
river Euphrates.
The Hittites prospered by commanding the trade between
the eastern and western worlds of navigation in early antiquity.
65
The Maldive Mystery =
Only 200 kilometres (125 miles) separated the navigable upper

reaches of the Euphrates from the Mediterranean. The
Sumerians themselves had prospered from maritime trade by
reed ships sailing in the Persian Gulf and up the twin rivers
straight into Hittite territory. The Hittites carried the merchan-
dise on the short distance overland to their own Mediterranean
ports, and from there to Egypt, Cyprus, and elsewhere; but the
Hittites were extinct and forgotten long before the ancient
Greeks began recording history.
From the Greek historians we learn that the Phoenicians were
the first to build sailing vessels and navigate the open sea.
Today, we know, thanks to archaeology, that this was only what
the Greeks believed. Ships had sailed the seas off the shores
of Lebanon and Egypt long before Phoenician times. Pre-
pharaonic petroglyphs and pottery decoration from Egypt
illustrate large reed ships with double cabins, sail and rigging.
And when the first splendid Hittite sun-temples were re-
covered from under the sand in Asia Minor, tall ships with sails
were found carved in relief on the stone walls. They had been
carved centuries before Phoenician times and yet they had sails
and rigging as complex as those used millennia later on the
caravels of Christopher Columbus.
There, in Hittite territory, ended the visible traces of the
fingerprint masonry. There was no such type of masonry in
the Sumerian territory down by the mouth of the Tigris and
Euphrates, even though most of the Hittite skills had been
inherited from the Sumerians.
I had been so sure that Hittite territory was the source for this
fingerprint masonry that I assumed the Hittites to have been
the original inventors. It seemed reasonable that this art should
have evolved in the rocky hill country of the Hittites in upper
Mesopotamia. In lower Mesopotamia, where the Sumerians
dwelt near the Persian Gulf, there was a total absence of rock.
The Sumerian territory was an enormous plain of sand and
mud. Therefore the Sumerians had to build their colossal
stepped pyramids from sun-baked mud bricks and their statues
were carved from imported stone.
In 1977, I had the reed ship Tigris built on the river of that
same name, in the midst of former Sumerian territory in order to
sail to Dilmun, the legendary Sumerian fatherland. Nearly 5,000
66
years ago the Sumerians had written on their clay tablets that
their forefathers had landed in Dilmun after the Great Deluge.
From Dilmun they had come by sea in ma-gur, their largest kind
of reed ship, to form the first Sumerian dynasty at Ur in lower
Mesopotamia. According to the writings on numerous tablets,
Sumerian merchant mariners constantly returned to the sacred
fatherland of Dilmun for the purpose of trade.
Dilmun remained but a legendary name until it was recently
identified by archaeologists as the island of Bahrain in the
Persian Gulf. About 100,000 large and small burial mounds from
the Sumerian period inspired the Danish archaeologists, P. V.
Glob and G. Bibby; to bring a major team of excavators to
Bahrain. They discovered, completely buried in sand, a pre-
historic harbour city and a temple of beautifully cut stones, built
as a smaller version of the ziggurats or stepped pyramids in
Mesopotamia.”
As we landed in Bahrain with Tigris, Geoffrey Bibby flew
down to see the kind of reed ship that had frequented Bahrain
from Mesopotamia in the Dilmun period. He took us down into
the streets of his buried city.
The city was laid out in orderly blocks with streets running
north-south and east—west, in the manner that is characteristic
of sun-worshippers. The main gateway opened from the city
square straight on to the port, which is also characteristic of a
maritime population.
Bibby pointed out the shallow coral bottom of the harbour,
where no keeled ship could have entered. He therefore noted
with interest that the double bundle body of our reed ship, with
its very shallow draught, could easily have come in here at high
tide and rested firmly on the bottom, ready to load or unload as
the tide went out.
The Dilmun people, too, had clearly been reed ship builders.
Bibby showed me that the last old-timers on this island still
went sea-fishing from reed boats like those of Easter Island,
Peru, Lixus, Egypt and Mesopotamia. I was therefore not
altogether surprised when the fingerprint masonry also turned
up in Bibby’s excavations.
It was on this island of Bahrain that I was to pick up the tracks
I had lost by moving down river from Hittite territory into the
mud flats of Sumer. Some of the oldest stone walls in the port
67
The Maldive Mystery
city Bibby showed us, deep below the present ground level,
were fitted together in precisely this way. If the Sumerians had
come from this island, they would have known this distinctive
stone-shaping art while they still had access to quarriable rock.
The mere fact that the Sumerians frequented Bahrain for trade,
which they carried up river to Hittite territory, shows that there
was no geographical barrier between the Dilmun people and
the Hittites.
Since the Sumerians had ancestral links with Bahrain, and
since the Hittite culture was younger than the Sumerian, I felt
sure that Bibby was showing us something closer to the source
than anything I had seen before; but I was not a little puzzled
that we seemed to go further back in time with each step we
took towards the east. Bahrain was halfway between Sumer and
the Hormuz Strait, the gateway to the Indian Ocean. And yet
Bahrain was certainly not the place of origin of this eccentric
masonry form. There was not even any stone on Bahrain of the
type that had been used for fitting these peculiar walls together.
Bibby told us that this fine limestone could be found nowhere
on the island. Hundreds of thousands of tons of quarried blocks
must therefore have been brought by sea from some locality not
yet identified.
With permission from the government of Bahrain to visit the
prison island ofJidda, a few miles offshore, however, we found
the missing quarries. Large areas of the limestone hills on Jidda
had been carried away by experts in both stone work and
navigation. The seafarers who had built the port city and the
mini-ziggurat on Bahrain were no primitive drift voyagers.
They must have come from some part of the world where the
people were already expert in selecting the best kind of rock, in
the art of carving it to shape, and in transporting it by sea to the
building site. Some of the blocks brought from Jidda to build
the structures on Bahrain were truly colossal and perfectly
shaped. But none of the masonry impressed us more than what
we saw when Bibby took us down the steps to a large ceremonial
bath he had excavated at the foot of the mini-ziggurat. I wrote at
that time:
Bibby looked rather surprised when I kneeled down to

examine the perfectly plane and smooth surfaces of his
68
aaa
Dilmun blocks and the way they were fitted together . . . all
were made to fit adjacent blocks with such precision that no
crack or hole was left between them. My friends from Tigris
looked at me like some kind of Sherlock Holmes trying to find
fingerprints or tool-marks that might lead us on the track of
those who did it. The beautifully dressed stones were shaped
and joined together in a special manner I began to know all
too well by now. I had to tell my puzzled companions why
these stone walls had any bearing upon our voyage and upon
the voyage to this same island by the people who had once
made them.”
From Bahrain with its pre-Sumerian port, mini-ziggurat and

bath, we had then sailed on with the Tigris out through the
Hormuz Strait and into the Indian Ocean. First we visited
Oman, where we were shown a recently discovered mini-
ziggurat in the midst of the Sumerian mining area, and reed
boats of Sumerian type still used by the fishermen on the
nearest coast.” But we saw no fingerprint masonry there.
From Oman we sailed for Pakistan and the Indus Valley,
where we went to visit the partly excavated ruins of Mohenjo-
Daro. The long forgotten Indus Valley civilisation, with
Mohenjo-Daro as its capital, began to bloom just after the first
pharaonic dynasty in Egypt and the first Sumerian kingdom in
Sumer had been founded, approximately 5,000 years ago. My
interest in Mohenjo-Daro lay in the fact that, in the period from
about 2500 Bc to about 1500 Bc when the Indus Valley civil-
isation suddenly disappeared, a close maritime contact had
been maintained with Bahrain and Mesopotamia. A large
number of seals with the still undeciphered Indus Valley script
had been found on the islands in the Persian Gulf and in
Mesopotamia, all the way from Ur down near the sea and up
into Hittite territory in modern Syria. A Mohenjo-Daro seal
depicted a reed ship with cabin, bipod mast and twin rudder
oars, just like those in ancient Sumer and Egypt, and just like
our Tigris. Sailing their reed ships between Mesopotamia,
Bahrain and the Indus Valley, the merchant mariners of old
could have carried tons of cargo and provisions while avoiding
the hardships and risks of overland transport through deserts,
mountain ranges and territories with hostile tribes.
69
The Maldive Mystery
The reed ship had thus been present in Mohenjo-Daro, and

the ceremonial bath too, but without the fingerprint masonry.
As in Sumer, the river plains of Mohenjo-Daro were without
quarriable rock. Like the sun-worshipping city builders of
Mesopotamia and Bahrain, the founders of Mohenjo-Daro had
also laid out their blocks, squares and streets according to the
north-south, east-west plan. Among its main structures was a
centrally placed terraced temple mound with a big ceremonial
bath at its foot. The bath was deep, approached by broad
stairways down one wall, and with benches all around the base
of the walls it immediately recalled the bath we had recently
seen on Bahrain. But the Indus Valley bath was built from burnt
brick made watertight by asphalt and in this respect differed
from the bath on Bahrain.
When I saw the old ceremonial bath on Fua Mulaku, I was
reminded not of the Mohenjo-Daro bath but of the more distant
one on Bahrain. The voyages through space and time that had
brought me step by step backwards to this corner of the world
flashed through my mind as I patted the smooth fingerprint
walls and followed the patterns of the tight fissures with my
finger nails. It was impossible not to remain fascinated by the
close resemblance between this Fua Mulaku structure and the
one in Bahrain.
Was there any relationship? Could the early navigators, who
used Bahrain as a midway station for trade between Meso-
potamia and the Indus Valley, also have found their way down
to the Maldives?
The distance from Lothal, the main Indus Valley port, to the
Maldive archipelago was no longer than from that same port to
Mesopotamia. Nor was it any longer than the last leg of our own
voyage with the reed ship Tigris, when we sailed non-stop from
the Indus Valley to Djibouti in Africa. It is well known that the
Indus Valley civilisation spread its influence down the west
coast of India. One would think that, intrepid sailors as they
were, they would have explored their own coast eastwards
just as successfully as they navigated westwards to distant
Sumer.
If so, they would inevitably have hit upon the Maldive
barriers, and found there this passage through the Equatorial
Channel. As passionate sun-worshippers and keen astron-
70
omers studying the path of the sun, they had a double reason for
finding this Equatorial Channel interesting.
A fantastic possibility then dawned upon me down in this old
bath. I had almost forgotten that I had also seen a prehistoric
swimming pool in Peru, the largest of them all, and also witha
broad flight of stairs down one wall. It had been built from sun-
baked bricks by the pre-Inca sun-worshippers of Chan Chan on
the Pacific plains of Peru. The architects of that bath had also
built large and small step pyramids of the ziggurat type. Further-
more, they lived in the main centre of pre-Inca reed boat
navigation. A common motif in their pottery decoration was
ancestral heroes who travelled by sea on large reed ships. And
their moulded ceramic jars always represented their own royal
ancestors as men with-huge discs in greatly extended ear lobes.
Could there be a connection?
The idea seemed at first too fantastic to consider seriously. I
had long suspected that Middle East culture had reached tropical
America by sea centuries before Columbus, but direct from
Africa, not from distant Asia. There were also those scholars
who had speculated on prehistoric voyages from India, by way
of the Pacific, to America. I myself, like almost everybody else,
had rejected such conjectures as geographically without sense.
By the time the prehistoric voyagers from India had reached the
Asiatic shores of the Pacific, they would still have half the cir-
cumference of this planet left to cross before reaching America.
The Pacific coast of south-east Asia and the Pacific coast of
South America are antipodes. Furthermore, upon entering the
Pacific any prehistoric type of sailing craft would be pushed
back by the prevailing winds and currents. In this part of the
world they head full force from tropical America to tropical
Asia, set in permanent flow by the rotation of the earth itself.
Nobody seemed to realise that America lay much closer to
India westwards by way of the Atlantic Ocean; nor that this
course would, furthermore, be favoured by the elements.
Now, as we had discovered that prehistoric seafarers had
established a foothold on the Maldive Islands, we could see that
they had been ina good position to sail on even to America. The
winter monsoon from the north-east would give Maldive sailors
a fair wind for the southern Cape of Africa and there the Atlantic
Ocean begins. At any time of the year the South Atlantic
71
The Maldive Mystery
Current and the south-east trade winds would carry them

straight on to the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of Mexico actually
lies there like a magnet, attracting flotsam from all parts of the
African coast. With the reed ship Ra II we had come from North
Africa with the North Equatorial Current and the north-east
trade winds. We could have come as easily from South Africa by
the South Equatorial Current and the south-east trade winds.
These two mighty Atlantic Ocean rivers converge off the coast
of Brazil and flow together into the Gulf of Mexico.
With the Maldive archipelago as point of departure and a
course that followed the elements, the geographical picture
became drastically changed. Navigation became possible. I
could no longer maintain my former view that voyagers from
southern Asia could not have had access to tropical America.
But what really made me scratch my head and wonder what
might have happened were the long-eared images that had
lured me to the Maldives in the first place. We had now linked
them with the builders of the fingerprint masonry. Together
with the fingerprint masonry and reed boats we had traced the
custom of ear extension back from Easter Island to Peru and
Mexico, but so far no further. The custom of elongating the ear
lobes until they hung to the shoulders was still in use on Easter
Island when Captain Cook arrived, although not practised by
any other island people in the Pacific. The Inca nobility also
extended their ear lobes with the same kind of discs until the
Spaniards arrived, and claimed that they had been told to do so
by their legendary sun-king, Con-Tici-Viracocha. According to
Inca history he ruled a long-eared people who lived in Peru
until he sailed away into the open Pacific.
Although ear extension was not used in Mexico when the
Spaniards came, the Mayan stele and the Olmec and Aztec
statues and reliefs abound in images of men with long beards
and huge discs in their ear lobes. The mural paintings in a Maya
temple at Chichen-Itza depict a people with white skin and
yellow hair landing by boat among hostile people of dark skin,
and all of them have long, pendant ear lobes. Obviously, as
shown in images on pottery and stone from Mexico and Peru,
ear extension had a long tradition and wide distribution within
aboriginal America. Yet it only occurred within the limited area
where aboriginal civilisations had suddenly begun to worship
Te
the sun and to build pyramids of ziggurat type, living in

organised communities with city streets laid out in squares
with houses built of baked brick, precisely as in the early
Middle East.
I had been looking in vain for the custom of ear extension
among the pyramid builders in Mesopotamia and Egypt,
among the early mariners who had settled Cyprus, Crete and
Malta, among the remains of the Phoenician seafarers, and the
founders of Lixus. None of them seemed to have practised it. I
had a list of well over one hundred culture traits peculiar to pre-
Columbian Mexico and Peru, and so special that they were
unknown elsewhere’in America. Yet all of them reappeared
within the restricted territories of the earliest Middle East
civilisations. The only. item missing from that list was ear
extension. Although it was shared by the earliest civilisations in
Mexico and Peru, I could not locate it among seafaring civil-
isations on the other side of the Atlantic.
Then, a year after the Tigris expedition I returned to the Indus
Valley, this time to see the recently discovered brick-walled
harbour of Lothal, the main port of Mohenjo-Daro and the Indus
Valley civilisation. Lothal, on the Indian side of the Pakistan
border, is the oldest known man-made port in the world,
flourishing from about 2500 Bc to about 1500 Bc. Scien-
tists at the University of Baroda were sorting out the material
they had excavated from its docks and warehouses. There was a
drawer full of round discs with grooved rims, like colossal
vertebrae made from ceramic. They looked precisely like the
ceramic ear plugs of prehistoric Mexico and Peru. In Inca times
they were made from pure gold. We had excavated them our-
selves on Easter Island, carved from thick shell. I was in not a
moment’s doubt as to what these archaeologists had dug up at
the Lothal port, but asked them just the same.
‘Ear plugs,’ was the answer. ‘You see, these ancient mariners
pierced their ears and expanded their ear lobes to insert these
large plugs.’
So the Indus Valley mariners were ‘Long-ears’!
The Hindu nobility had later copied the custom from them,
and afterwards Buddha and his followers had spread it far and
wide in Asia. From the time the Indus Valley people began
sailing the Indian Ocean this peculiar custom had thus been
73
The Maldive Mystery
practised on the coast, and even by sailors roaming the ocean.

No wonder then that long-eared images had been left by
ancient sculptors in the Maldives.
Not until later did I learn that ear extension had survived on
the Maldive Islands until recent times. Maloney, who studied
the local customs, quotes in his book an early visitor who stated
that Maldive women had their ears pierced, and he adds: ‘Some
people remember even now that their grandmothers’ ear lobes
extended nearly to their shoulders.’ With ‘Long-ears’ inhabit-
ing the Maldives the road was open too for another strange
custom which followed the stone masons who had voyaged in
reed ships on the open seas in prehistoric times.
As I walked, therefore, up the ceremonial stairways of the Fua
Mulaku bath and faced the glittering blue sea of the Equatorial
Channel, I felt as if the air was loaded with excitement and
possibilities. Since we, as novices in reed boat navigation could
have crossed these oceans, why could not the experienced
‘Long-ears’ from Lothal have done the same? Who could ever tell
what traffic had passed through this Channel in the course of
the millennia; what kind of watercraft had first been beached on
this lonely shore, and what kind of people had built the great
hawitta and bathed together in this splendid pool?
We mounted our bicycles and pedalled along a footpath into
an uninhabited wasteland south of the village area. Here we left
the bicycles in an open field full of evidence of former habita-
tion. The stony terrain was arid and treeless but low dryland
shrubs covered the traces of walls and tombs.
In the midst of the area lay a large circular basin sunk deep
into the solid ground and lined with carved slabs plastered with
lime. We measured the diameter to be 20.6 metres (6712 feet)
and the circle was so even and smooth that the islanders
believed some prehistoric masons had carved it all from one
giant piece of rock.
Well over a metre down from the rim a ledge ran all around
the wall like a bench, and below this the wall continued down
another full metre to the bottom. There was fresh clean water
below the bench, although the bottom itself was covered by a
thick coat of mud. The east wall was intersected by a stairway
running down into the pool.
What could this old structure have been?
74
The islanders seemed to be as ignorant of the former function

as we were. They just knew it as Vasha veo, which Abdul
translated as ‘the round bath’. They suggested that some former
people had used it for sacred rituals, and pointed out what
seemed to be the remains of a totally shattered temple just a few
steps east of the stairway.
Even this type of large and circular bath I could recall having
seen before. It was another feature characteristic of the seafaring
people who had lived on Bahrain in prehistoric times, the same
people who had built the square ceremonial bath with the
fingerprint masonry. Why the early Dilmun people built them-
selves two such completely different forms of ceremonial bath
was a puzzle in itself, but here, on Fua Mulaku, the same two
types reappeared together once again.
It was too early to draw conclusions, but high time to be alert
and search for other traces on these islands which had so far
been overlooked by historians. It was certainly too early to
conclude that the Dilmun seafarers, or ‘Long-ears’ from Lothal,
had come to Fua Mulaku. But I had seen enough to be convinced
that the Maldives was another of the many maritime way-
stations for some of the great seafaring civilisations that had
roamed the high seas centuries before European maritime
history began.
When our captain reported that the propeller of the Midu was
working once again, we embarked and temporarily left Fua
Mulaku. We headed for the islands lining the northern edge of
the Equatorial Channel, full of anticipation at what we might
run into there. We left at night, so that we could reach the
islands on the other side at sunrise.
Against a tropic sky where the Southern Cross twinkled amid
a host of constellations, the low atoll of Fua Mulaku showed up
merely as a rugged silhouette of feathery palm crowns that
barely rose from the sea. The individual crowns slowly joined to
form a long black wall that diminished in size and sank behind
our stern.
Five hours later, just before the sunrise, we sailed slowly into
the calm lagoon of Gaaf atoll, formerly known as Huvadu.
75
CHAPTER IV
Pyramid in theJungle
A Sun-temple on Gaaf-Gan
AS THE Midu entered the narrow passage between two islands in

the Gaaf atoll, the sun rose from a calm lagoon and we sailed
close inshore along the sandy beach of a long and low island,
densely covered by jungle interspersed with palm trees. Not a
house to be seen. For no obvious reason this fertile island was
uninhabited.
The name was Gan, the same as the airport island we had first
visited in Addu atoll, on the opposite side of this channel. We
decided to call it Gaaf-Gan since it was on the ring-reef of the
extensive Gaaf atoll. There was a third major island in the
Maldives, also called Gan. That third Gan was in the nearest
atoll to the north. All three islands, according to Hassan Maniku,
had important prehistoric mounds. The largest, he believed,
was on the island we were now passing. It had not been seen by
him, nor by Bell, but, he wrote, it was known to the natives of
the neighbouring island as ‘Gamu hawiththa’, or ‘Gan’s mound’,
and was said to be just under 60 feet high."
I had asked Maniku in Male how three important islands in
the Maldives came to have the same name, and what did Gan
mean? I was given the surprising answer that, in the local
language, Gan and Gamu were but different grammatical inflec-
tions of the same name. The proper name of these three islands
would be Gamu, and gamu was an old Sanskrit word for ‘settle-
ment’. Divehi, the Maldive language, contains many Sanskrit
roots, and Sanskrit was the old Indo-Aryan language that had
spread from the Indus Valley region about 1500 Bc, at just about
the time when that civilisation collapsed. But as the island was
completely uninhabited, it seemed strange to name it Gan if
that meant ‘village’ or ‘settlement’.
76
Pyramid in the Jungle
A narrow channel, where surf entered the lagoon from the

open Equatorial Channel, separated Gan from the much smaller
island of Gadu, which was thickly populated. There 1,600
islanders were lumped together in a village that covered all the
land, whereas they rowed over to the uninhabited Gan only to
fetch food.
We anchored in the lagoon off Gadu and were set ashore in a
local dhoni. Friendly people housed us in their community
house, where camp-beds with home-made reed mats were set
up on the earthen floor which was strewn with a thick coat of
clean white coral shingle.
My first question’was why the large island of Gan had no
population. The amazing answer was that Gan had been popu-
lated very long ago, but one day an invasion of huge cats had
come ashore from thé ocean. These huge cats had been ferocious
and the people of the island had either been killed or had
escaped in their boats. Nobody had come back to live on the
island since. Even today people from Gadu island only go there
in daytime.
Cats were the only domestic mammal in the Maldives, in fact,
the only terrestrial mammal known to these people in former
times. But the cats that had come from the sea were hardly
normal household cats, but some sort of man-size demons in
feline form.
The people of Gadu told us also that the forest of Gan was full
of ruins. Nobody had ever dug them. It was true that there was a
big mound, but it was not called Gamu Hawitta, or ‘Gan’s
mound’ for there were several mounds on Gan. They distin-
guished the biggest one as Bodu Hawitta, which simply meant
‘large mound’. The real name was Vadamaga Hawitta, and it had
been built long ago by a people called Redin. All sorts of things
were supposed to be hidden inside it.
The chief of Gadu came to us together with an unusually tall
man, clearly of some status in the community. His name was
Hassan Maniku, the same as our learned friend in Male, so to
distinguish between them Abdul referred to him as the ‘owner’
of Gan. Nobody actually owned an island, he explained, but this
Hassan held Gan on lease from the Maldive government in order
to harvest the coconuts. The people of Gadu picked the coconuts
for him and gave one-eighth of the harvest to him as the ‘owner’.
Ves
The Maldive Mystery
We lost no time in expressing our desire to visit the island,

and the ‘owner’ seemed more than pleased to take us there. Ina
small dhoni we rowed across with him and two of his men.
Dancing over the smooth swells rolling in from the Equatorial
Channel through the open entrance to the outer sea, we struck
bottom in the shelter of a sandy bar jutting into the lagoon, and
waded ashore in lukewarm water. Peaceful ripples from the
large lagoon washed against a white beach of fine coral sand.
Like all the other Maldive islands, Gaaf-Gan was a low and flat
platform of coral bedrock that rose no more than 2 metres (6 feet)
above the level of the Indian Ocean. It would have been con-
stantly awash from the big waves of the Equatorial Channel had
it not been sheltered by a wide and barely submerged coastal
reef. Arrested by this shallow limestone shelf, the ocean waves
would rise as surf and tumble in defeat, reduced to feeble rows
of ripples before they reached the dry land.
About an hour of pleasant walking brought us, first, through
an open grassy plain scattered with tall coconut palms, then
along a good footpath walled in by thick jungle on either side.
The wilderness off the trail was so impenetrable that it could
conceal any man-made structure an arm’s length away. Between
the branches, foliage and thorns there was no opening for any
beasts bigger than slim lizards. But high above the dense jungle
roof, brown bats as large as rabbits hung upside down in the
trees and palm crowns. Scared by our voices, some of them
fluttered away over the forest like witches unfolding their
cloaks. Clearly these flying foxes were the only warm-blooded
creatures to live on this island since the big cats had driven the
humans away.
The fable of the big cats from the sea puzzled me. No seals or
other marine creatures could have scared away a people who
fought even the largest sharks without fear, yet it was too easy
for an outsider to laugh off the story of the large cats as a tale
invented to explain why Gan had been depopulated in the
distant past. For by talking to the ‘owner’ of the island, and the
others who believed in this tradition, we quickly understood
that we were not dealing with infantile or primitive people, but
with the heirs to a civilisation which was as old — possibly older
— than our own.
The people of the nearest large land, Sri Lanka, called them-
78
selves Singalese, the ‘Lion people’. There never had been lions
on Sri Lanka, but the local Singalese claimed descent from
ancient sea voyagers who came to Sri Lanka from India and
celebrated a legendary lion as their royal ancestor. For this
reason the Singalese carved lion statues and used lion symbols
such as ferocious masks with feline teeth to distinguish them-
selves in war and peace.
Lions would indeed be ‘very big cats’ to Maldive islanders
who had never seen any of the larger feline species. And there
was every reason to believe that the Lion people had come to the
Maldives. Bell recognised the big hawitta on Fua Mulaku as a
ruined Singalese stupa. The broken Buddha heads and the
Buddha bronze figurine we had seen in Male were proof enough
that Buddhists had come here before the Moslem period. And
yet these Buddhists Had found people of a still older religion.
The Lion people of Sri Lanka were devout Buddhists. No other
Buddhists lived closer to the Maldives. Singalese raiders masked
as lions might have been the large cats from the sea who were
sufficiently ferocious to scare an entire population into flight.
I was close on the heels of the ‘owner’ when he stopped and
pointed into the jungle. Abdul translated what he said. Down
there, near the other coast, were the ruins of a ‘Buddhist castle’.
Very little was left to be seen.
I asked if the Redin had been Buddhists. But no, the Redin
were those who had built the hawittas. Somebody else had built
the ‘Buddhist castle’. When we got back to Gadu in the evening
he would get some of the really old men together who might tell
us what they knew.
We reached a small opening in the forest where again we gota
glimpse of the sea. Turtles had dug big craters in the sand. In the
short grass at the centre of this glade was a deep stone-lined well
where our companions were drawing clear drinking water with
the half of a coconut tied to a long rod. An overgrown trail
turned off towards the inland. Here the ‘owner’ asked his two
companions to go ahead in front of him. From here on they had
to cut a fresh passage with their long machete knives.
This slowed us down markedly. Proceeding step by step we
had time to admire the huge trunks of jungle trees that sur-
passed in dimensions all we had seen so far. Lianas hung like
ropes from the jungle roof, and the thick branches that stretched
79
out from the trunks were embellished, like moss-covered

shelves in a flower shop, with orchids and parasitic ferns. It was
hot. Hot and damp. Not a breath of air found its way in here.
Nothing moved the foliage.
Glistening with perspiration we were fighting mosquitos
when the men ahead stopped and made room for me as they
pointed with their long knives. At first I could see nothing but
the green jungle in front of my nose. Then I noticed something
unusual, almost black, hidden among the foliage. It looked like
chunks of black coke heaped up into a pile and abandoned for
ages, shrouded in greenery and cloaked in moss.
The pile was much wider than it had seemed at first. One
more step ahead and I could see black stones covered with green
moss wherever Icould catch a glimpse through the foliage, right
and left. We could not see how tall it was, as it completely
disappeared upwards in a cover of green.
This had to be Gan’s large hawitta. Bjorn and I made no effort
to restrain our enthusiasm when we saw how the pile continued
upwards so high that we had to bend our heads back to try to
detect its full height. We were standing at the base and yet could
gain no more than glimpses of dark stones above us as we began
to crawl up the slope on all fours, wriggling between the
branches and ferns.
When I got my feet up as high as the heads of the people on
the ground I began to crawl over thick roots that twisted
between the stones. A huge jungle tree grew here, right out of
the side of the mound even though it seemed to be a solid pile of
stone. Crude lumps of limestone and broken branches of coral
had been piled up to form the hill. Once as white as snow, the
coral and limestone had all turned greyish-black from age
wherever it was bare of moss.
The stones were loose, so we crawled up on our hands and
knees, grabbing hold of big ferns, stems and roots, careful that
no boulders should roll down on those following us. Our vision
was hindered by all the stalks, with huge leaves resembling
rhubarb, that grew in profusion up the slope, and made it as
hard to see what was below us as what was above. My im-
pression, however, was that I had reached the height of a three-
storey building when I began to see over the jungle roof.
As I rose to my feet at the summit I was most surprised to find
80
myself standing between the sprawling roots of a colossai

jungle tree as large as any giant we had seen down on the
ground. It took four of us to join hands around the trunk, which
rose into the blue sky above us like a majestic spire. It seemed to
have been added by nature to heighten the impressiveness of
this ruined temple mound.
If the summit tree had been an oak I would have guessed its
age to be 500 years or more. Jungle trees often grow very fast, but
this tree was growing on top of a compact rock pile high above
the jungle soil. A few extra centuries would seem to be neces-
sary for ajungle tree even to take root and establish itself on the
top of such a lofty man-made structure.
Not a single carved stone, nothing of interest but the huge
tree, was found on the summit, so we carefully scrambled down
the steep talus slope the way we had come up. The slope seemed
to be at the maximum angle that permitted sliding boulders to
come to rest. This could very well have been what it always
looked like, a crude pile of stones thrown together with an
enormous amount of labour, a monument like the royal burial
mounds of the Vikings. But it could also represent the shapeless
remains of a pyramid after the retaining terrace walls had
crumbled or been removed.
Down again at the foot of the mound, the ‘owner’ and his
two friends sat down well satisfied with the day’s excursion.
They had fulfilled their promise to take us to the Vadamaga
Hawitta, and there was nothing more now to show us. But they
had heard that there were many valuable things buried inside
this hawitta. We, on the other hand, were itching to see more of
this place.
One of the men had brought some green coconuts which he
now scalped with his long knife as if they were ostrich eggs.
Bjorn and I drank ours to the last drop, then we eagerly crawled
in opposite directions into the thickets surrounding the foot of
the mound. Here the ground was so packed with fallen stones
that trees were sparse and there was room for us to wriggle in
between branches and big ferns.
Our first discovery was a 4-metre (13-foot) wide ramp that ran
part of the way up the south side of the mound. Clearly this had
been some sort of ceremonial approach to the upper part of the
structure which soared high above the landscape. The question
81
The Maldive Mystery
posed itself again: had it always been a rough mound, or was

this some sort of walled pyramid?
On the northern slope I detected sparse remains of a retaining
wall. A dozen moss-grown blocks, all cut square, still lay un-
disturbed on top of each other in a straight row, blocking the
rubble behind from sliding down. I was surprised to find that
this remaining wall section formed a straight line. The hawitta
on Fua Mulaku had a circular base, as one would expect from a
Buddhist stupa, but this straight section suggested that this
pyramidal structure could have been square. For me it began
to resemble the stepped pyramids with ceremonial ramp
approach of Mesopotamia, Bahrain, Oman and pre-Columbian
America.
I excitedly called Bjorn who struggled around from the
opposite side.
‘Yes,’ he said, as 1 pointed. ‘Yes.’
He sounded rather distracted. He was not looking at my wall
at all, instead he began to point at something else:
‘But what is this?’
I looked to the left, higher up, where he was pointing. There
was a huge open eye staring back at us from under a root. My
first thought was that this was part of an old stone image, for
image eyes were often carved like this among ancient sun-
worshippers, with circles of increasing sizes enclosing each
other as in a shooting target. This wide open eye under the tree
seemed as bizarre and alive out here among the ferns and leaves
as if we had found a one-eyed goblin peeping out of the mound.
The circles showed up in relief right through a thin coating of
green moss which clung to the surface of the stone like its skin
fits the flesh of a beast.
‘But what is it?’ BjGrn repeated impatiently when he realised
his discovery had left me speechless.
‘A sun-symbol,’ I exclaimed. ‘We came down here to look for
traces of sun-worshippers at the equator, and here they are.
Concentric circles around a central disc. That’s the symbol of the
sacred sun throughout ancient Asia, Africa and America.’
‘So, what more could you ask for?’ Bjérn laughed and slapped
me on the shoulder in triumph.
Our island friends came to share our joy, cutting right and left
with their machetes. They stared for a moment in silence at the
82
strange stone, every bit as surprised as we were. Then they

began to pull ferns and cut branches all around the base so that
we could check all the stones that had fallen from the hawitta.
We soon restricted our search to the blocks that had been
dressed to shape, for the others were only part of the fill and
were too crudely cut ever to have been decorated. Every stone
we turned over was rolled back into its original position.
Soon we heard a yell from one of the men with a machete.
Under a fallen fern lay another square block with the very same
sun-symbol. Near it lay yet another. The next one I found was of
a different type. On each side of the solar rings three ‘fingers’
were pointing outwards, as if the sun was meant to have wings.
The winged sun-disc was a common symbol for the supreme
god, the sun-god, amang the stone sculptors of ancient Meso-
potamia and Egypt:
More sun-ornamented stones appeared, of both types. There
was even one cornerstone with solar symbols on each of the two
adjoining sides, which clearly showed that the structure, so far
from being round, had straight walls and square corners. All the
other sun-stones had a neck at the rear of the squared block that
could be set into the wall in such a way that the carving
projected with the sun-symbol on the slightly convex front side.
This was a technique well known among the temple builders in
both the Old World and ancient America.
We had still not exhausted these discoveries at the foot of the
mound when, exploring the ground a little further away, I
stumbled upon a faint rise in the flat terrain. Worked stones
were lying partly buried and partly exposed. Another slight
elevation was found on the opposite side of the big hawitta. The
one due east, the other due west of the main temple mound. The
worked slabs indicated the former presence of some related
buildings, perhaps subsidiary temples.
In the pile to the west of the big mound were several long and
flat stones beautifully decorated by master stone sculptors.
There was not a single sun-disc here, but flowers. Sunflowers!
Elegant little sunflowers raised in high relief, set in a row along
the edge of stones which were fluted like lintel or ridge pieces.
Between each flower and the next was a peculiar symbol,
varying slightly but always consisting of vertical bars flanked
by dots, mostly resembling the numerals in Mayan hiero-
83
The Maldive Mystery
glyphics. They could indeed have been Mayan numerals if not

for the fact that there were bars on each side of the dots. The
flower relief, too, symbolic as well as ornamental, I had seen on
ancient Mayan temples and, more often still, in Hindu religious
art.
‘Look at the turtle ornament,’ I exclaimed, and showed Bjorn
the broader bands of tongue-shaped reliefs that ran parallel
with the rows of flower and staff-and-dot symbols. We recalled
the little turtle image, dug up together with the demonic stone
heads at the sacrificial place in Male. We both imagined we saw
the row of crested sea-turtle shells with hind flippers set side by
side along the very edge of the stone, but the head and front of
the turtles were not carved. Slowly it dawned on me, however,
that we were mistaken. These were not sea-turtles at all, but the
continental lotus flower decoration typical of the great ancient
civilisations of the Old World. Here we had another exciting
fingerprint in front of us in the jungle. There were plenty of sea-
turtles in the Maldives, even on this island, but lotus did not
grow here. The lotus flower was a decorative symbol shared by
the ancient Egyptian, Phoenician, Mesopotamian and Hindu
civilisations. Long before it spread to Europe to decorate the
capitals of Greek columns, it had been widespread in the
Middle East and south-west Asia as one of the most persistently
used ornamental symbols of religious architecture. To these
ancient people the lotus stood for the rising sun.
Sun-discs, sunflowers and now lotus flowers! What more
could we ask for?
It was becoming ever clearer that neither motifs nor archi-
tectonic technique had been born on this little island, or else-
where on these atolls, but had been imported in developed form
by navigators from distant lands.
The island ‘owner’ was disturbed at the thought of what
would happen to these sculpted stones now that they had been
found. Anything considered to be heathen remains was always
destroyed, he said. We recalled the beautiful Buddha which had
been quickly beheaded, and the images of Fua Mulaku that had
disappeared without trace, and knew he was right. It seemed
best to place these carvings therefore in the security of the Male
Museum. None of them had been found in their original place
in the wall anyway. Between all of us we managed to carry
84
thirteen stones back to the boat, leaving one to be fetched the

next day.
The fading light told us that the sun was sinking towards the
western horizon, although not a single ray penetrated the thick
jungle roof. On our way back to the landing place we took a side
trail to visit an old and abandoned Moslem cemetery. Some of
the slabs marking the tomb edges had clearly been taken from
some earlier non-Moslem temple. The cemetery had not been
maintained, for the beautifully carved Moslem tombstones and
their old Arab inscriptions were either half buried or broken.
When the ‘owner’ casually pointed out a highly ornamented
stone that commemorated the person who had introduced Islam
to this atoll, I was struck by the complete lack of either fear or
veneration the islanders showed towards these relics, even
though they pertained to their own creed.
Immediately afterwards we stepped over the almost buried
remains of a stone border. The whole area showed signs of
former habitation, but everything was thickly overgrown by
turf and forest.
‘The Buddhist castle,’ said the island ‘owner’ and nodded to
left and right.
Whatever this might have been, it had been carefully de-
molished, for nothing more than bumps could be seen in the
ground.
We reached the little boat and rowed over to the village on
Gaaf-Gadu. The only warm-blooded creatures left on Gaaf-Gan
were the huge bats. As the sun went down, they lifted their
heads and began to fly around over the tree tops.
The kerosene lamps were lit in our room in the community

house by the time our friend the ‘owner’ fulfilled his promise
and brought two old men to see us. They were indeed old. One
of them had difficulty in both walking and talking, but once
they were comfortably seated in two wooden armchairs their
brains seemed to work well, albeit slowly.
Ibrahim Futa said he was about 104 years old, whereas Don
Futa gave his own age as 102. When asked what they knew
about Gan they had both heard that the people there had died or
fled when the big cats came from the sea. The big cats were
feretas,a monster, part cat and part human, that sometimes used
85
The Maldive Mystery
to come ashore from the sea in former times. Nobody living

today had seen feretas.
The Redin had built the big hawitta. But the Redin were
people and not feretas and it was not the Redin who had been
chased away by the feretas either. Some other people had lived
there after the Redin and before the feretas came. These people
had aruler, a queen called Khanzi. She built smaller hawittas but
also used the big one built by the Redin. She was a very dark
lady, tall and large. She had a son called Khanzi Bodu Takuru, and
he had a great voice when he spoke to people on Gadu.
Bjérn, who had lived for some years among the people of
South India, whispered to me that Takur is an old benevolent
god among the Santal tribes, and that it is also an Indian word
for ‘priest’. We already knew that bodu meant ‘big’. Khanzi then
remained as the common name for the queen and her son,
which suggests it might have been a royal title or a family name.
The two old men made it clear that Khanzi had ruled her own
people. They were big in stature, like she was. They had lived
on Gan before the Singalese came. The Singalese had come to
Gan later and driven the Khanzi people away, who then fled to
Wadzu island in the same atoll. For some time now the Singalese
had occupied Gan. These Singalese from Gan even went to
Wadu and killed the Khanzi people there.
Although nobody identified the Singalese with the big cats in
plain words, it was specifically said that the ‘kingdom of the
cats’ had started when the Singalese drove the earlier Khanzi
people away from Gan. The ‘kingdom of the cats’ would then be
the kingdom of the Singalese, the ‘Lion people’.
This was beginning to assume the character of a detective
puzzle, and it was tempting to suspect that the dark and tall
Khanzi people were Hindu from India since they had named
their own prince Takur after an Indian god. It made sense that
Hindu settlers had been driven away by Buddhist Singalese
from Sri Lanka, since we had already seen archaeological proof
of both having left their images in the Maldives.
But if the Khanzi people had come from India and the feretas
were ‘Lion people’ from Sri Lanka, who then were the Redin
who had come to these islands first of all and built the big
mounds?
The legends of the Khanzi and the cat people referred to
86
people who had fought each other in the Maldives before the
Moslem faith was embraced in ap 1153. As this took place so
long ago, it was tempting to dismiss the stories as fairy tales,
except for the fact that the Buddhist and the Hindu images had
actually been found. I checked my notebook and found that the
two small bronze images stored with the big stone heads in the
Male Museum closet had both come from Gaaf-Gadu, from this
very island. One of them was Hindu, the other was Buddhist.
The Hindu one was the older and more eroded. That supported
the hypothesis that the Hindu, in agreement with the Khanzi
tradition, had come here first, and the Buddhists, alias the cat
people, later.
The introduction of Islam over eight centuries ago marked the
beginning of the present era also to these people. They still
a :
recalled the name of the first person who converted their ances-
tors from Buddhism to Islam. His name was Al Fagir Hafis
Hassan Fali Takur, and it was his tombstone they had pointed
out for us next to the ‘Buddhist castle’ on Gan. The location of
his burial adjacent to the Buddhist sanctuary could indicate that
he was not himself an immigrant Arab, but a local islander
converted from Buddhism to Islam. The ‘Takur’ added to his
Moslem name might even suggest some royal Khanzi relatives
among his ancestry.
From the days of the Moslem missionary, Al Fagir, images of
any sort were forbidden, the old men reminded us. They knew
that their own ancestors ‘in the Singalese time’ had images of
Buddha sitting with crossed legs. The Khanzi people, they said,
worshipped other kinds of images. Even today the people from
Gadu, when digging in the yam fields on Gan, still found such
old images.
I was surprised to find these people speaking about a Singal-
ese, or pre-Moslem, period in their atoll as if it was common
knowledge. Although the sultans in Male had, through the
centuries, done their best to erase any memories of periods
ante-dating their own genealogy, their success had clearly
decreased with the distance from the capital island.
Both the Redin and the Khanzi people had worshipped fire as
well as images, said one of the old men.
No, only the Redin worshipped fire, corrected the other.
According to him the Khanzi worshipped only images.
87
The Maldive Mystery
For a moment the two old men could not agree. There was
even a vague suggestion from one of them that the Khanzi were
here before the Redin. But in the end they agreed that the Redin
had been the first. And the Redin had worshipped both fire and
images.
The last point our two old informants repeated before they
staggered away was that there were supposed to be many
valuable objects hidden inside the Vadamaga Hawitta. They
agreed that this big building had been much higher before,
with stairways running way up on one side. Don Futa had
heard from old people that this hawitta had in former times
been square, and flat on top where there had been a ‘room’. This
room had caved in because it had been ‘hollow’. In all likelihood
it had been a small shrine or temple on the summit, but they
remembered nothing further.
When the old men left we were fetched by the village chief for
a late but sturdy meal of turtle eggs and curried fish served by
the women of the house. Then we returned to our beds on the
white shingle floor. The last things I saw, before I blew out my
lamp, were the two glassless windows crammed full of curious
faces of both sexes and all ages. They had probably never seena
foreigner go to bed before. Their human faces gradually faded
into those of the cat people and the Redin, as I drifted smoothly
into a dream world from which not even a cloudburst of mos-
quitos could wake me.
Shortly before the sun rose I was called back to life by a
delightful smell of tea and freshly baked Arab bread. I sat up
and found our spectators already back at the windows. Or had
they been there all night? I managed to wriggle on my trousers
and made it clear that I needed to visit a certain place. They
showed me through a narrow door into a tiny garden plot with
exceptionally big tomatoes, and with walls so tall that nobody
could peep over. There I was handed a heavy iron crowbar that
stood waiting for visitors. I caught on, and ran a hole into the
ground: one deep and narrow toilet per person per visit. No
wonder the size of those tomatoes!
It was still early morning when we climbed into a nutshell of a
rowing boat to return from overcrowded Gadu to uninhabited
Gan. Our friends of yesterday came with us again. Today they
by-passed the first sand-bar where we had landed the day
88
before as they found the tide high enough for us to pole and row
on along the very shallow lagoon side of Gan. This would save
us a good deal of walking.
The shallow water by the shore in the lagoon was so calm and
clear that the corals which almost scraped the bottom of our boat
seemed to be out of the water. Broken bits of coral tossed up on
the beach lay there like dead bones and as white as the sand
they had helped to form. But in the water they revealed wonder-
ful colours as we slid along a spectacular rock garden which we
could touch with our hands. There were no limits to the forms
and the colours. Corals, corals and more corals; a petrified
nature with no sign of waving seaweeds or soft sea anenomes.
Some lay there, as round as eggs or mushrooms of all sizes;
others were as flat as trays, curved like fans or shaped like jars,
while most of them branched out like fantastic, crooked shrub-
bery or even elegant candelabra. Seen as a whole, the bottom
shone at us in all the colours of a giant painter’s pallet. Yet, while
warm and spicy perfumes were wafted to us from the jungle
ashore, the beautiful corals had a nasty fishy smell if we lifted
them out of the water. These fancy-shaped apartment houses,
with their myriad minute coral polyps waving from the win-
dows, were designed for the marine world where tiny multi-
coloured fish fluttered about sniffing at them like peaceful
butterflies. Larger, predatory fish shot away from our keel as if
caught with guilty consciences, while the little fish seemed
perfectly at ease, or at the worst hid within the branches of the
sharp corals. I was surprised at the complete absence of sea-
urchins and starfish, which are otherwise so common in such
marine gardens.
We hung nose down over the gunwales until the boat hit solid
limestone and we had to jump out and wade ashore. We were
early, and yet the ‘owner’ showed us traces in the sand of boys
who had already walked around the shoreline collecting turtle
eggs. Today was the great weekly day of harvest. Soon all the
people from Gadu would be coming over to cut yam and give
our friend his one-eighth share. He would also get one-eighth
of the turtle eggs. He expected they would gather today about
400 turtle eggs from three turtles. Every month about thirty-four
turtles came ashore at Gan to lay eggs. They came back and laid
eggs every thirteen days, and some 30,000 eggs were collected
89
The Maldive Mystery
on Gan every year. But turtles were rapidly disappearing from

the Maldives now. The thirty-four left on Gan were marked and
the ‘owner’ considered them almost like his own chickens.
Indeed, all the Maldive islanders were seriously concerned now
by the fact that, what had been one of the most important
sources of food for their ancestors, would soon be gone.
‘Why?’ we asked. And | later posed the question to the
Minister of Fisheries in Male.
Previously the people of the Maldives never caught the turtles,
they only ate the eggs. Then, a decade ago when tourism spread
to the Male area, turtle shells became popular items as souvenirs.
Besides, the Maldivians had also broken the old rules, and
begun to eat turtle meat. Sales of complete turtle shells were
now prohibited by law, but objects made from turtle shell could
still be sold legally in Male. But who could control turtle hunting
on a thousand uninhabited islands?
We crawled over some deep turtle nests dug just above the
beach where the jungle started, and for a while a hardly discern-
ible forest trail helped us to proceed inland. Then two men had
to chop a trail through, step by step.
Finally we stood next to Koli Yavali, the second largest hawitta
of Gan. Another huge rubble heap, where there was hardly a
worked stone left to see. The mound still stood 5 metres (16 feet)
high although it had totally lost its original shape when the
dressed facing stones had been removed. But on the south side
the elevated remains of a former ramp could be seen, and the
base seemed to have been square. Low down on the east side
was a depression as from a caved-in niche full of beach sand.
The mosquitos soon drove us back to the shore where the
blue lagoon invited us for a refreshing bath. No sand here. The
rugged coral bottom cut our feet like broken porcelain. Yet we
had to wade far out in sun-warmed water hotter than we were to
get wet halfway up our legs. As we lay down among the corals,
at least the mosquitos left us. While we lay in the water the
‘owner’ sent his two trail-breakers further along the coast
and inland to fetch the one carved stone we had left behind
yesterday.
We lay there with our heads roasting and bodies boiling for
an hour, until the two islanders came trotting back along the
shore with the stone. But it was the wrong stone. It was not the
90
one with the concentric solar rings we had left behind yester-
day, but one on which the sun also had wings.
They had simply found another sculpture.
No sooner did they realise their mistake than they were off
again to look for the right stone. Almost an hour later they came
back again, this time with one sun-stone each. There was
evidently no shortage of these stones around the remains of the
sun-temple.
That second evening on Gadu we were to hear about cannibals.

We had already heard cannibal stories in Fua Mulaku. Some-
body on that island had found masses of human bones while
digging the foundations for a house, and the people of Fua
Mulaku believed it was the remains of what they termed a
‘bone-house’. This was a place where the bones were left from
people who had been eaten.
It is strictly against both Moslem and Buddhist beliefs to eat
human flesh, but the story constantly recurred. Old Abdulla
Mufeed insisted that there had been cannibals even in Moslem
times. He told us an incredible story about a woman whose
husband had served her bits of flesh cut from his own body,
saying it was chicken meat. When she saw the wound and
understood that he had fooled her, she killed him, and ate him.
Later she lured children to her door with some goodies, then
caught them and ate them as well. She ate people for about three
years, then committed suicide.
Whatever the origin of this tale, it seemed to reflect some
memory of horrible events that might have been witnessed by
the forefathers of these islanders, prior to their conversion to
Isiam. We heard, word for word, the same strange story from old
Mohamed Diddi, but according to him that woman was not
alone in her tastes. Together with a midwife and other women
friends, the whole group had started eating human flesh. To
catch their prey they used their beds as traps, and placed sharp
sticks in holes in the ground underneath.
This was expressly said to have happened after the introduc-
tion of Islam, whereas the ‘bone-houses’ were associated with
recollections from pre-Moslem times.
The cannibal stories we now heard on Gadu did not refer to
local events. Old Don Futa recalled a long story about ten men
91
The Maldive Mystery
from Addu atoll, on the south side of the Equatorial Channel,

who got lost at sea. After a very long time they came to the land
of Azékara, where there were cannibals. Some people brought
them to a big house where they were given plenty of food to get
fat. Then over a period of time, they were taken away from that
house, one by one, until only two were left. These two followed
secretly behind their last friend when he was taken away; they
saw that he was brought to the chief’s house, and found out he
was eaten.
Later that night they went to the window of the chief’s house
and found the chief sleeping. A fire was burning in the middle
ot the floor with two hot iron bars. They discussed what to do
and then killed the chief with the hot iron rods. Through the
window they escaped from the guard and ran to the ocean
beach. There they lost each other but one of them, Kiruduni
Alibeia, hid in a refuse heap by the shore, where he slept for
some days until he was able to continue his flight, and then
came to some very good people. From them he sailed witha ship
to Karachi. At that time people from Karachi used to come to the
Maldives with their boats, and Kiruduni at long last returned
home by way of Sri Lanka and Male.
We were breathtaken at the ground covered by this story, but
not altogether surprised, for we had heard numerous tales of
Maldive sailing ships going to all corners of the Indian Ocean,
right until very recent times. All the people present confirmed
that Azékara was a well-known Maldivian name for a very
distant land known to their ancient ancestors. One of them was
convinced that Azékara was somewhere in Indonesia, or even
perhaps the old name for Indonesia itself. It made no difference
when we pointed out that a voyage home from Indonesia would
not go by way of Karachi, which was in Pakistan and on the far
side of the Maldives. Our argument made no impression. They
knew very well the direction of both Indonesia and Pakistan,
and although he came back by way of Pakistan his cannibal
adventures had been in Azékara.
In former times there were merchant ships that sailed regularly
back and forth between Indonesia and the Indus Valley ports.
Our informants assumed that Kiruduni Alibeia might have
worked as a sailor on such a vessel before he returned to his own
group.
92
We asked many people where Azékara was. Most of them

believed, as did our first informant, that Azékara was in Indo-
nesia. At first Azékara made us think of the land of the Aztecs.
The Aztecs of Mexico practised human sacrifice and religious
cannibalism on their sun-pyramids until long after the Moslem
population had replaced the former cultures in the Maldives,
but Mexico was too far away to permit a return voyage. The
distant Azékara had to border the Indian Ocean, either in
Indonesia as these people believed, or somewhere in East
Africa.
Azékara was in fact well known in ancestral traditions
throughout the Maldives. That there had formerly been over-
seas voyages between the Maldives and Indonesia could not be
doubted. Prehistoric yeyagers from Indonesia had even tra-
versed the entire Indian Ocean and settled on Madagascar, off
the East African coast. The Malagasy people and culture were
not of African, but of Indonesian origin, and the Maldive
archipelago lies exactly halfway between them.
‘Of late years,’ Bell had written of boats built by the Maldi-
vians, ‘more than one vessel, albeit unintentionally, has sailed
as far as the East Coast of Africa, when driven out of their
course, in adventurous voyaging, by the treacherous winds and
currents which render navigation of the ‘Equatorial’ and
“One-and-Half-Degree’’ Channels always hazardous for the
seaworthy, but small, Maldivian barques.’*
In a footnote Bell adds the last example which happened
during his visit. Three boats from Midu island in Addu atoll had
then sailed into the Equatorial Channel bound for Male. They
were trapped by foul winds and currents and driven westwards
across the Indian Ocean, but they finally made the East African
Coast in safety. The crews of the three vessels were reshipped to
Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and came back to Male in 1922, the year of
Bell’s last visit.
All Maldive voyages to distant lands were certainly not the
result of mere hazard. Some of the descendants of old boat
builders and seafarers impressed us with their knowledge of
ports around the ocean that surrounded their own microworld.
Ports in India, Yemen and Somalia, hardly known to us, were
known to several of these heirs of an old mid-ocean civilisation.
And it was by no means due to modern influence.
93
The Maldive Mystery
In his early writings, Bell was equally impressed. He quotes

the first Europeans known to have described their encounter
with the Maldive population: the French brothers Parmentier
who rounded the south cape of Africa in 1529 in the two ships
Pensée and Sacré, and hit upon Fua Mulaku in the Equatorial
Channel. They were given an honourable reception by a devout
and amiable person assumed to be the chief or archpriest of the
island. In their narrative they wrote that ‘The chief Priest, who
was a man of much discretion and knowledge . . . showed the
Captain in what quarters lay the countries of Adam, Persia,
Ormus, Calicut, Muluque and Sumatra; and proved himself to be
both learned and well travelled’.
All this was known on an islet in the Equatorial Channel even
in the early days of Columbus’s generation. Calicut was an
important port on the west coast of India and was only reached
by Vasco da Gama on his historic voyage thirty years before the
French Parmentier brothers came to Fua Mulaku; whereas the
Arabs had established an oversea trading centre in Calicut since
the seventh century. Ormus, or Hormuz, is the important strait
from the Arabian Sea into the Persian Gulf, the maritime gate-
way to Mesopotamia. The country of Adam is a clear reference to
Mesopotamia, where both the Christian visitors and their
Moslem informants placed the Garden of Eden at the confluence
of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. By referring to Sumatra and
the Moluccas the old sage on Fua Mulaku showed that he was
familiar with Indonesian territories as remote from the Mal-
dives in one direction as were Persia, the Hormuz Strait and the
land of Adam in the other.
We now began to see more and more clearly that the Euro-
peans were the latecomers in this ocean. When they claimed to
have ‘discovered’ the Maldive Islands, they were only very late
visitors to an old maritime sultanate.
When we left our new friends in Gadu to embark and return
once more to Fua Mulaku, it was late in the evening. A heavily
loaded dhoni took us out to the tall and broad vessel anchored in
the lagoon, as always full of patient islanders. A squall came and
it was difficult rowing with the little boat so deeply laden with
people and stones. The sea was so rough even inside the big
lagoon that we were tossed mercilessly up and down against the
tall wooden hull of the anchored vessel, as we pushed with
94
poles to avoid being crushed. We had to struggle to keep our

balance as we handed our heavy potato sacks up to our helpers
who were lying prone on the deck.
The captain from Addu atoll had complete faith in his wooden
vessel, however, and neither darkness nor the rough weather
deterred him from weighing anchor, so we left the protected
lagoon for the treacherous Equatorial Channel. We saw only
shadows of land on either side and heard the rushing sound
from the reef as we sped into open water outside the lagoon. It
was 3 am when we left the ring-reef of Gaaf atoll, and 10 am
when we were back at our familiar anchorage in the open sea
behind Fua Mulaku.
There was no reply yet from Male. Until the Moslem Com-
mittee answered our request we could not look for the image
said to have been r€buried in the Redin mound. We spent the
day waiting in the village, and I made use of the opportunity to
ask people if Fua Mulaku had always been inhabited. This time
the blind man was the first one to speak. Fua Mulaku had been
abandoned twice. The first occasion was before Moslem times.
Some creatures called feretas, which come from the sea and kill
people and eat them, had driven the entire population away.
Only one woman had remained and seen them at close range.
She had hurt one fereta with boiling hot aros, a sweet she was
stirring with a stick. The ferata had run away from her house
and never come back. When the island population returned she
told the others that the fereta walked on two legs and had the
face of aman.
The next time Fua Mulaku was abandoned was in Moslem
times. The village used then to be near Vasha veo, the big
circular bath we had seen. A fever came to the island with some
voyagers, and people started to die. Some left for the island of
Midu in Addu atoll. A people called Rannin lived there then.
There was still the remains of a pool made by the Rannins in
Midu. Fua Mulaku was left with no people for eight years this
time. The Sultan’s government in Male learnt about it, and a
religious man came and brought the people back to Fua Mulaku
from Midu. The island was then resettled by families organised
in four groups. The first one led by Musculi Kalege, which means
Old Man; the second by Matti Atti Kalege, a man of high
standard; the third by Ali Adalfi Kalege, who always chewed
a5
—
The Maldive Mystery
betel nuts; and the fourth by Bul Hadakene, who took care of
people’s heads, hair and headwear. The island was divided into
four parts, each with its own mosque.
That evening we received a reply on the radio-telephone from

Male. The Moslem Committee had decided that we should not
Page 1: With this photograph the Maldive mystery was born. It

was sent to the author with a challenge from a stranger: Come to
_an island far out in the Indian Ocean and solve a riddle. Who
made this statue found buried on an island where Islamic law,
for more than eight centuries, has rigidly forbidden all art
showing the human form?
Page 2, above: Together with Bjorn Bye (left) who sent the
challenge, the author rushed to the remote Maldive archipelago
only to find the stone statue already dug up and broken by
religious fanatics. Only the head was left, and found to represent
a beautiful Buddha carved in local limestone.
Below: Two bronze figurines had been dug up by the islanders.
They revealed that Asiatic seafarers had navigated the open
ocean while Europe was still in the mediaeval ages. The Buddha
to the right, together with the broken stone head, showed that
Buddhism had a foothold on these remote islands before the
Arabs arrived with Islam in 1153. The eroded Hindu god to the
left testifies to even earlier visits from mariners before the
Buddhist period.
Page 3: A rounded (above) and a squared (below) limestone stele
were carved on all sides with multiple masks of demons with
feline teeth and outstretched tongues. They all had large discs
inserted in their elongated earlobes. Between the masks the
surface of the stone was covered with the unintelligible signs of a
forgotten script.
Page 4: Evidence of prehistoric civilisation.
a: Our first discovery was sun symbols cut into limestone blocks
scattered about the foot of a round temple mound in the jungle.
b: Among the fallen blocks were also many carved like stylised
death masks.
c: Some stone walls showed traces of metal clamps that had
formerly held the blocks together, proving that the prehistoric
architects had an advanced level of civilisation.
d: This was also evidenced by the discovery of a stone plaque
with rows of symbols resembling hieroglyphic script.
96
y
AS
SS
\S
~
Milby
RRRRTNI
RAR
ARRAN
ENE
+
>
w
*
iF.7YRRWAURERRRERR
ER
$e
©
Ss
*
look for the buried statue. We should not touch the old pagan
hill. It was better to let this sleeping dog lie.
Our eight-day charter of the good ship Midu from Addu atoll
had expired, and the next day we crossed the other half of the
Equatorial Channel on our way back to the airport island of
Addu-Gan. We selected the five finest specimens among the
stones from the sun-temple of Gaaf-Gan, which we brought
with us in the airplane to Male. The captain of the Midu prom-
ised to bring all the others next time he sailed north for the
capital.
We had found what we had come to look for in the Equatorial
Channel. After slightly more than a week’s absence we returned
to Male with proof to the effect that early sun-worshippers, long
Page5: Alarge abandorfed bamboo raft drifted ashore on Viringili

during our visit. The type of craft, together with the writing ona
label we found in the cabin, revealed that the raft had drifted
from the coast of Burma, 4,000 km from the Maldives. We took it
as a possible pointer, because Burma had been the most import-
ant area for the early spread of Buddhism when it descended to
the coast from Nepal via the Ganges valley.
Page 6, above: Two of the twenty-three complete or broken
phalloid sculptures found in a test trench on Nilandu island. To
the left Professor Skjdlsvold studies a composite specimen — are
they phallus images or phalloid models of stupa temples? To the
right Johansen has dug up a large fragment which perfectly fits
another discovered on the surface in the underbrush.
Below: Two of our Maldive assistants with samples of the many
miniature stupa towers we discovered through excavations.
Page 7: Walls of quarried blocks appeared below ground as we
dug around an artificial mound in the forest. They proved to be
the foundations of a pyramidal structure, once with an interior
full of beach sand, faced with sun-oriented walls which had been
torn down when Islam reached the islands. From the left, the
author, Loutfi, Johansen and Skjolsvold.
Page 8: Who were their ancestors? The Maldive Islands were a
kingdom of unknown origin until aD 1153 when the Arabs came
with Islam and established a sultanate which closed the nation to
foreigners until the Maldives became a republic open for tourism
in the 1970s. The marked variation in physical types therefore
reflects the complex origins and oversea contacts with many
nations around the Indian Ocean in prehistoric times.
97
The Maldive Mystery
before the Arabs arrived, had built temples to honour the sun
on the equatorial line. Another old civilisation with a different
religion had preceded Islam. The Maldive origins were compli-
cated indeed. The people on these islands had been converted
time and again, until they ended as Moslems.
What we least of all suspected was that more surprises awaited
us behind the door of the little closet in the museum. When we
pushed open the door to help the guards store our sun-
ornamented temple stones on the floor in company with the
non-Moslem images, we noticed that the door hit a pile of
broken stones. The pile was tucked away in the corner behind
the door and could not be seen when the door was open. I had
noted these stones on our previous visit but taken them for
broken bits from the wall which the museum custodian had
swept out of sight after some repair. But this time, having seen
the nature of broken limestone rubble from the ruins of slab-
covered temple mounds, Bjorn grabbed one of the biggest
fragments from behind the door and turned it over.
‘How strange — Ai-ai, what is this?’ I heard him mutter.
In front of our feet lay a corner fragment of a stone plaque with
one side polished flat and smooth as a marble floor, and covered
by engraved symbols.
‘Hieroglyphics!’ I exclaimed. ‘This is obviously hiero-
glyphics. But they are different from the Egyptian. What
they resemble most are the hieroglyphics from the Indus
Valley.’
Above the line of strange hieroglyphic signs was an orna-
mental row of swastika symbols, a symbol typical of the early
Indus Valley civilisation and which only later spread to Nazi
Germany. Originally it was an Indus Valley symbol for the
sacred sun. Below the hieroglyphic line, emerging from the
broken edge, were the remains of a large wheel with numerous
spokes: the well-known sun-wheel of that same early civil-
isation. And around the outer edge was a broad frame with the
characteristic lotus decoration, again another ancient symbol
for the divine sun, the rising sun. Sun-symbols in three varieties
dominated the stone tablet.
Yet it was the central line of hieroglyphics that more than
anything else struck the eye. First, the marine symbols: a fish-
hook, a conch, and two fishes, each carved standing upright.
98
The fish was indeed one of the most common signs in the
undeciphered Indus Valley script. There were also two barbed
sticks resembling rods for hooking fish. Then there was some-
thing else also common among the Indus valley signs, which
resembled a beaker but was believed by scholars to represent a
sacred drum. Centrally placed in the line was a complex sign in
the form of a jar with a neck, from which emerged three arrows
with triangular heads. The arrow was an important sign in the
Indus Valley script.
The row of hieroglyphic signs continued to the broken part of
the tablet, which was missing. Some other strange nondescript
symbols were incised beside the broken sun-wheel.
Important pieces were missing. They were not among the
stones behind the door.
When we showed the stone to the museum custodians they
merely shrugged their shoulders. This was nothing particular,
just something old found somewhere in the Maldives. That was
all they knew.
_ Where was the rest of the broken plaque? Missing?
Nobody knew. But the fractures were clearly recent, so it
seemed probable to us that the rest of the plaque was still where
these pieces had been found. Somewhere on one of these many
atolls lay the fragments that would make this hieroglyphic
plaque complete.
‘We must launch an expedition,’ I heard myself exclaim as we
rose from squatting beside this precious fragment.
‘No way out!’ Bjorn laughed.
We were still overwhelmed with all we had seen during the
week, and had not yet digested our discovery behind the
museum door, when word of it all came to the ears of the
President.
And this was how the stones we had brought to the museum
in soiled potato sacks from Gaaf atoll came to be first opened on
the red carpet in the President's palace.
This was also why the President, every bit as excited at what
we had found as we were, asked me to start excavations.
‘An archaeological excavation here is not an easy project,’ I said

to Bjorn when my first enthusiasm at the discovery of the
broken plaque had subsided. The President’s request for me to
99
The Maldive Mystery
start excavations had been as much a surprise as had the

Moslem Committee’s refusal of our request to reopen the trench
in the Fua Mulaku hawitta. To look for that reburied image
would have been an easy matter. But proper archaeological
excavations had to be done with stratigraphic precision, with
special tools and professional supervision, to ensure that
nothing was damaged and all was minutely measured, mapped
and put on record.
Did these people want to know their own buried prehistory,
or did they not?
It did not yet dawn upon me that we had stirred up a hornet’s
nest. Nor did I quite grasp that Maldive society, civilised for so
long and finally moulded into a rigid Moslem fraternity by eight
centuries of conservative Sultans, had begun to be overrun by
jet-age foreigners little more than a decade ago. The locks had
been opened, almost overnight, to the outside world, and the
young Republic was ina melting pot of old and new. There were
those who shared the former Sultan’s philosophy that it was
best to let sleeping dogs lie; but there was also the progressive
group of younger leaders who wanted to find their own roots,
establish their own cultural identity, and know the truth of their
mysterious unwritten history. From what we had learnt, they all
felt strong ties and a sense of debt to the Arab world for the faith
and cultural revolution that the magic year of ap 1153 had
brought them; but they knew as well that they were not all of
Arab descent. Their ancestors had been converted, but not
replaced, by the Arab seafarers.
The following morning we were due to leave the Maldives,
and our flight reservations had been confirmed. But the Presi-
dent asked us to delay our departure for a day, so that I could
give a public lecture in Male about our discoveries. The national
television station was closed for the occasion to ensure a full
auditorium in Male. The questions from the audience reflected
the growing desire of the young Republic to know what had
happened in their own archipelago prior to the sultanic period,
about which they were well informed.
The hawittas, the image carvers, the Redin, these were all
concepts which they had known about but which had never
been touched upon in public. I had been invited to come and
see a statue before it was smashed to pieces. Now, once again, I
100
had been invited to come back and search for the local truth.
This was a challenge I had to accept.
So I did accept.
Next day Bjorn and I left the Maldives. It was late November
1982. I wanted to be back there again by the end ofJanuary, and
bring a team of archaeologists to begin excavations before the
rains started. The rains in the Maldives start in the spring, at the
time when the monsoon reverses its course from north-east to
south-west.
The sun and the monsoon winds had sent the early voyagers
on the first expeditions into these open parts of the Indian
Ocean. The sun still-suggested the best place to search, and the
monsoon the best time to come, for a modern archaeological
expedition. —_
de
101
GEA
P TERY
Archaeologists Come to
the Maldmves
Should Sleeping Dogs Be Disturbed?
A STRING OF atolls in the Indian Ocean, a thousand islands

nobody could count accurately. They were emerging again from
beyond endless blue horizons, just as I saw them appear when |
came on my first visit three months before. A mini-world of its
own. A pond of water-lily leaves adrift in the mid-ocean.
Yet this time I saw the islands with the telescope of mind and
memory. Down there I had seen unexplored hawittas, hidden
images, tablets with strange signs. Flying foxes hanging upside
down in the jungle trees. Mosques and ceremonial baths. Entire
villages with traditions about the Redin and feretas that had
never been recorded. I could hardly wait to get off the plane, and
down to the Equatorial Channel.
Bjorn Bye had joined me in Sri Lanka once again with his two
Singalese videotape assistants. Martin Mehren, an old friend
from Norway, the first since Fridtjof Nansen to have crossed
Greenland on skis, had also joined our party and volunteered to
help keep track of the expedition accounts. I always finance my
expeditions with books and films. This time Swedish state
television were covering the costs in advance against TV world
rights and permission to send along two cameramen. They were
due to arrive the next day.
The two Norwegian archaeologists who were to take charge
of the excavations were not due until three days later. I felt I
might need this extra time to prepare for the expedition’s
departure from Male. Telephone messages and telegrams never
seemed to reach the person for whom they were intended.
102
wee
Archaeologists Come to the Maldives
Other than the President’s oral invitation and my own accept-

ance before I left, it had been an entirely one-sided flow of
messages, stating who was coming, when and how.
On the stop-over in Sri Lanka before flying on to the Maldives
Thad already begun to sense problems in the making. Bjérn met
me with the news that our Maldive contact, Hassan Maniku,
had just arrived in Sri Lanka, and that he would be away from
the Maldives for exactly the period when we would be there. It
was to him that all our messages and correspondence had been
directed.
‘Hassan Maniku, why are you here when we are coming to
look for old remains-in your country?’ I asked him when we
located him in a private villa in Colombo.
We were offered tea and exchanged the customary Arab
courtesies before he Seemed sufficiently at ease to answer.
He was tired of politics. He had held his responsible position
too long. Probably he would resign as Director of Maldive
Ministry of Information and Television. At any rate, now he had
come for a vacation in Sri Lanka with his family. He very much
regretted that he could not be with us on our survey of his
beloved islands, but he knew we would be taken good care of.
This had been ordered by the President.
At the airport in Male we were met by a tiny girl from one of
the government offices. Sweet and helpful though she was, she
knew nothing except that she had been told to take us by motor
dhoni to Male island; but she was afraid it might be difficult to
find vacant rooms in any hotel.
On the pier in Male we happened to run straight into,
apparently by chance, the President’s personal adviser and
right-hand man, Abbas Ibrahim. Short and broadly built, with
his modest and winning smile, he was a real gentleman and one
of the most likeable persons I had met. I knew him not only from
the President's office but also as a fellow board member and the
Maldive representative of Worldview International Foundation.
As Director of WIF Bjorn knew him well too, and regarded him as
one of the most capable and influential men in the Maldives.
Mr Abbas had been present in the Palace when we unpacked
the sun-stones, and he was well aware of the President’s invita-
tion. It was just bad luck for us that the President had left for
Egypt.
103
The Maldive Mystery
There was not time to look fora hotel. We left the girl in charge
of our luggage while Abbas took us to meet the important man
who now occupied Hassan Maniku’s office.
Behind the familiar glass walls in the Ministry of Information
we were now received by the Minister of State for Presidential
Affairs, His Excellency Abdulla Jameel. After cordial greetings
he explained that the provisional Moslem Committee, which
had been unwilling to let us look for the stone image in Fua
Malaku, had now been officially replaced by a group of fifteen
persons who formed the new National Council for Linguistic
and Historical Research. Mr Jameel regretted that this National
Council was ignorant about what we wanted to do, for no real
archaeologists had visited the Republic so far, and in the absence
of the President, nobody had the authority to make decisions.
The glass walls around us must have vibrated at the conflicts
in my own mind. The official representative of the Maldive
government on the other side of the desk was an extremely
pleasant and polite person, now speaking on behalf of a com-
mittee that had the right to act against a foreigner coming to dig
up an image forbidden by Allah and yet found on their own soil.
On the other hand, the same foreigner would never have come
to start excavations if he had not been expressly requested to do
so by the head of that government.
The two Maldivians were friendly and sympathetic, and
understood that this problem had somehow to be solved to our
mutual satisfaction. They immediately ordered rooms to be
booked for us at the Hotel Alia, and it was agreed that we should
all meet there for further talks in the cool of the evening.
In the hotel we were never left alone for a moment. Maldive
visitors called to make certain that we did not feel abandoned
and reassure us that everything would work out with time and
patience. There was Abdul, our lively young interpreter from
last time, and the more serious, middle-aged Mohamed Waheed
who had been sent with us then by the Atoll Administration.
Most impressive was a new acquaintance, Mohamed Loutfi, a
high official from the Ministry of Education and one of the
fifteen members of the new National Council for Linguistic and
Historical Research. Mr Loutfi was a tall, broadly built man,
above middle-age, with a friendly face and with a stature and
dark skin that reflected what he later told us. His ancestors had
104
ad
been brought as slaves from Hadaramot in South Yemen twelve

generations ago, to serve as a select bodyguard for the Sultan in
Male. They later revolted, became free men and married into
Maldive families. Mohamed Loutfi could claim therefore, with
characteristic good humour, royal sultan blood through both of
his parents. He surprised us by his impressive knowledge of
Maldive history and of the whereabouts of all sorts of local
prehistoric remains. He surprised us even more when he con-
fided that he had been chosen to be our guide when we began
our archaeological survey of the islands. Obviously then, in
spite of the President's absence, there was still some hope.
Dark clouds collected over the Hotel Alia again in the even-
ing, however. When our helpful friend Abbas arrived with
Jameel, the latter informed us that neither of them had authority
to let us dig anywhere. In the absence of the head of state it was
up to the board of fifteen to decide. He would call them for a
meeting as soon as they could all get together in Male.
At that moment I visualised the whole expedition ending on
the rocks before we had even got started. I said calmly, but in
very plain words, that I was not willing to sit down for a
discussion with fifteen men who would never agree on any-
thing anyhow. Time was precious, I had to put faith in the
words of the President, with Mr Abbas as witness. In three
days’ time the archaeologists would be landing in Male on
short-term leave from universities and museums in Norway,
and any day lost by delay in Male would have to be deducted
from the available days of field work.
Abbas hurriedly assured me that everybody wanted to carry
out the President’s wishes. The last thing he had said to Abbas
before he left was that everything possible should be done to
ensure all the help we needed. They had even booked the
government hospital ship to take us around for a full month,
and Mr Loutfi would show us anything we cared to see. The
problem was only that we were not allowed to dig.
I expressed appreciation for this marvellous opportunity for
my party to be taken around on a cruise, which we would all
certainly enjoy immensely. But I added that the archaeologists
were bound to feel embarrassed if they came on a tight leave-
schedule from distant Norway, without permission to dig. Such
a situation, I said, would inevitably result in a scandal for all
105
The Maldive Mystery
concerned. There was still time to send a telegram to stop them.

Abbas was desperate and Jameel seemed most uncomfortable.
More cool soft drinks were ordered and Abbas asked me to be
sympathetic, for, never having had any archaeologists working
here, they did not know what it would involve. The National
Council did not understand exactly what we wanted to do.
I realised this was an unusual situation. With Maniku obvi-
ously out of office, the formal paperwork sent by us had gone
astray, or at least had resulted in nothing like a written dialogue,
although our island hosts never denied for a moment that they
had expected us and that they wanted us to come.
It was getting late. Since Abbas and Jameel said it would be
against the wish of the President if Istopped the archaeologists
coming, I could see only one way out. During the night I would
write a contract in longhand, specifying everything the archae-
ologists would want to do, what we expected from the local
government, and all the rights and duties that affected both
parties. This proposal was accepted.
Before office hours next morning my draft was ready. It was
fetched by Abbas for typing and subsequent study by the
National Council.
Shortly afterwards an airplane landed with one of the two
cameramen who was to join the expedition. The other was left
behind at the airport in Sri Lanka because somebody had stolen
his passport. On the same plane came also the first journalists
who had heard rumours that an expedition was planned.
Bjorn and I sneaked out by the back door. Although time was
more precious than ever, there was nothing we could set in
motion before we got the green light from the responsible
Moslem group. So for once we had time just to look around. We
knew what we wanted to see. We walked right through the
town of Male, which filled the coral island from coast to coast
since it was only one mile long by half a mile wide. The city
streets, all without pavements or road cover, to let the rain water
sink through and into all the wells, formed such a labyrinth that
we were forced to take bearings from the sun. We wanted to go
to the extreme east cape where in pre-Moslem times the demon
from the sea came ashore at full moon craving Maldive virgins.
Today’s Maldive virgins were peacefully pedalling their bi-
cycles between puddles for fear of soiling their clean school
106
ced
uniforms, the only risk being that of bumping into one of the
occasional Male taxis which swerved from side to side to avoid
the same puddles. The men seemed as peaceful and inoffensive
as the women. No shouting, no quarrels, no arrogant behavi-
our. ‘Peace be.on you’ was the wish brought from all the little
mosques into the Moslem community, and it seemed to work.
And yet Male was no longer the quiet place it must have been
only ten years earlier when this country was opened to the
outside world. The long wharf on the lagoon side and the central
shopping area were as busy as if they had been in existence fora
hundred years, although the waterfront was still dominated by
home-built dhonis, and the streets by imported bicycles. But
motorised transport was rapidly coming in.
So far most of the houses in Male had a single floor, in the
shopping streets many had two, and in the centre cranes were
busy lifting iron bars for the first three- or four-storey govern-
ment buildings. Among them was a new and truly colossal
mosque donated by other Arab nations and designed with a
golden dome that would shine in the tropical sun far out over
the surrounding ocean.
In this busy part of the town small tourist shops selling turtle-
shell carvings, black coral necklaces, shells, shark jaws and
model dhonis had begun to sprout like mushrooms, and in be-
tween them were shops which, country-store fashion, tempted
Maldivian visitors from other islands with everything under
one roof from oil drums, corrugated iron and nylon ropes to soft
drinks, chewing gum, tinned goods and plastic bottles. In a
machine shop they sold fresh tomatoes from the Canary Islands
and cucumbers from Holland. In another place we saw a whole
shelf full of cans of air freshener!
In the daytime the very few foreigners visiting from the
tourist islets could easily be spotted by their red, perspiring
faces, as they hunted for souvenirs or looked in vain for a bar or
sheltered place to sit down.
Most of the city area still consisted of modest village roads
flanked by low huts of crushed coral and mortar. Many, how-
ever, were painted in pale colours — light blue, light green, pink
and yellow. A few homes still had walls and roof made of the
plaited leaves of coconut palms, but today these were more
usually kitchen annexes. In the baking sunlight windows
107
The Maldive Mystery
were rare or absent, but through open doors we could see people
sitting on beds or in wooden hammocks, often with a couple of
bicycles by their beds. Perhaps because it happened to be a
Friday, the Moslem holiday, transistor radios were blaring
music or voices at full blast from almost every home.
Each house was usually linked to its neighbour along the road
by a high coral wall which enclosed a luxuriant tropical garden.
Tall coconut palms, huge banana leaves, crooked branches of
evergreen bread-fruit trees and magnolia towered everywhere
high above these modest buildings, and left the impression of a
large park or botanical garden. The damp sound of an empty
bucket dropping into a well was followed by splashes as the
bucket was lifted higher than the garden wall to pour cool fresh
water over someone enjoying a shower.
These were clean people. Again we noticed the long-robed
women bending double to sweep the dirt road from side to side
with their short wisp brooms. When they rose and walked away
they moved as if they were gliding along on roller skates, their
bodies straight and motionless — characteristic of women accus-
tomed from childhood to carry trays and water jars on their
heads.
Somehow the whole atmosphere reminded me of Polynesia —
Polynesia at the time of Gauguin, where barefoot women with
brown skins, long black hair and Victorian dresses reaching to
their ankles radiated feminine charm that bewitched the sea-
faring visitors. The setting of palms and banana plants un-
doubtedly reinforced this impression. But in spite of their
choice of dress — like the Polynesian vahines, in the brightest
and most alluring colours rather than black — the Maldivian
women were renowned for their chastity, at least if approached
by anon-Moslem.
In most of Male the men too were dressed in Polynesian
fashion, with a loin cloth wrapped around the waist. Rather
colourless compared to what the women wore, this loin cloth
usually also reached to the ankles, more rarely to the knees. One
young man made us jump, however, as he zoomed by on a
motor bike, unconscious of the noise he was making because he
was enjoying his own taped music on headphones. Young men
here did not look very different from young men in the outside
world; and their parents would certainly like to see them go
108
pane
straight out of school uniform to white-collar jobs in govern-

ment offices.
Nobody greeted us as we passed, but Maldivians do not greet
each other. Their language has no word for a salute, although
the Arab salutation is beginning to win ground.
We were approaching the eastern extremity of the island.
Beyond the crossroads we could glimpse the blue sea. Down
there was the liveliest part of the Maldive capital. The bustle and
clamour along the harbour started daily before sunrise with the
din and clatter of boat engines and motor bikes, mixed with the
rumbling of drums and chains on decks and pier, loud radio
music, and shouts from all the people ashore and on board who
were attempting to make themselves heard above the hulla-
baloo of a thousand ofher male and female voices.
In the blue water outside the harbour wall dhonis of all sizes
came and left, fast and slow, a few still under sail, most with
rumbling engines. At full tilt speed boats jumped savagely over
the waves as if life were at stake, as if they were scared by the old
demon of the sea. The air was trembling with noise from all
these fast, faster and fastest vessels which followed the recipe of
the outside world, for our generation seems to feel the need to
frolic in the global supply of combustibles while there are still
some to burn.
We reached the waterfront at the point where the harbour and
all its turmoil ended, and the open ocean lay before us.
Here, on the eastern cape, the road followed the sea with a
naked reef on one side and a very high wall on the landward
side. Here too were pages of Maldive history. Partly embedded
in the coral reef, and partly awash, lay one old cannon next to the
other, tossed away with no concern for the value of scrap metal.
There seemed to be more than a dozen. But quite apart from
scrap, each of these cannons could be a collector’s item of
immense value, welcomed anywhere else in historical museums
or by collectors of arms and antiquities. They were Portuguese
cannons and marked the beginning of European history in
these waters. They had been thrown down on to the reef over
400 years ago or, more exactly, in 1573, when the Portuguese
intruders were driven away by the Maldivians after fifteen
years of occupation. This was the only period in Maldive history
when the archipelago was under foreign rule.
109
The Maldive Mystery
The tall wall on the other side of the road was new, yet it
enclosed fragments of a much older era of local history, though
passers-by would normally only notice the big sign on the gate:
‘Maldives Engine Service Centre’. The wall, taller than our-
selves, was built from the usual crude chunks broken from the
coral reef and bound together by mortar. But a few of the stones,
haphazardly set in among the rest, had an appearance very
familiar to us by now. They had been worked square with traces
of decorative mouldings. Reused temple stones. Displaced frag-
ments of Maldivian prehistory.
We were not in doubt about the origins of these building
blocks. This was as far east as it was possible to go on this island.
This was where the virgins had been brought in pre-Moslem
times. Out there in the endless expanses of ocean had appeared
the many lights under the full moon which marked the monthly
appearance of the evil jinni from the sea.
The big gate was left half open. Nobody there. Some boats
and engine parts lay scattered around. A small boat was propped
up by some stones. One of them was an old temple stone, while
another one lay tossed on to a pile of rubble and refuse.
A young man came out of a shed.
No engine trouble? Why then had we come? He was sur-
prised. If this was the place of the images and virgins?
The young Maldivian gave us a suspicious look as he wiped
an oily hand on his blue jeans and with polite but fumbling
gestures brought us back to the gate, which he slowly bolted
behind us.
We had found the place. We had seen stones from the jinni’s
temple and the pagan footmarks set in the wall. But Allah’s
youngest generation had exchanged modern engines for former
idols.
We walked back by following the ocean shore all around the
island, and soon came to the fill-in area. Vast coral shallows,
barely awash, extended offshore with short reeds growing on
parts already reclaimed from the sea by large quantities of
refuse. A hand-cart was just being rolled out and dumped. Two
men were burning what would otherwise have floated away,
and raked the ashes into the shallows. Most of the area seemed
to consist of rubble from torn-down houses mixed with common
waste.
110
The new beach was a world of plastic, tins, glass, rags,

rubbish. It stank. Like rotten eggs. Spray bottles, Coca-Cola,
broken pots, rubber tyres, sandals, plastic, plastic, plastic.
A nice-looking woman was squatting washing her arms.
Others were coming from the houses to rub and clean their pots.
They searched for the cleanest areas, for in some spots the
lagoon water was as black as the bottoms of their cooking pots.
For sure, man with all his modern means could not compete
with Allah in creating an attractive coral island.
But what should these poor people do? As in the rest of the
modern world, the people in this country try to move from out-
of-the-way places tothe capital. The capital in the Maldives
happens to be a small island. In Male there is no farm land or hill
country to expand into, only what can be recovered from the
Indian Ocean. ;
Far out in the sea we could make out the contours of some
other palm covered islands. They were the tourist islets, ensur-
ing cash economy for the modern Maldives. Inland we saw a
huge yellow truck-crane passing like a prehistoric dinosaur
behind the houses.
Back in the hotel we noticed a strange smell from the water as
we took a much needed shower. It smelt just like rotten eggs. We
asked the owner. He assured us politely that with time the bad
odour would disappear, but his well was still new and the hotel
was built on land recently recovered from the sea.
We waited in vain all the rest of the day, expecting to receive

our contract back signed by the Moslem Committee. Nothing
happened.
Nothing happened the next day either, when the archaeolo-
gists would be departing from Norway. I called the friendly Mr
Abbas and told him that I wanted to telephone the President,
wherever he was. But nobody had his number in Egypt. And
besides, it was not necessary to call since the President had told
them to give us all assistance. The ship we were to use was
waiting in the harbour, ready to go as soon as we had the
digging permit. Unfortunately, Abbas added, more and more
voices on the Council were against any digging by the archae-
ologists. To show me the extent of their goodwill, Abbas took
me to the wharf and showed me a beautiful ship at anchor
111
The Maldive Mystery
outside the harbour wall, all nicely painted white, and green
below the water-line. Across the broad stern was painted ‘Golden
Ray, Male’.
This was the government’s hospital ship, donated to the
Maldives by the British forces when they left Addu-Gan at the
end of the Second World War. Abbas explained that the Golden
Ray was almost 24 metres (78 feet) long and manned by eleven
Maldive officers and crew. She was just waiting to take us ona
tour anywhere we desired.
This did not make the situation any easier for me. I went to
bed that evening knowing the archaeologists were due to arrive
in Male the next afternoon at 1 pm.
Next day was Sunday, but the shops were open. In despair I
appointed Bjorn quarter-master general, and with lists all ready
we began shopping for an expedition of at least twenty-two
men who would be cut off from further supplies for thirty days.
After an hour and a half a messenger from the Ministry of
Information came and told me that I was needed immediately
for a meeting with his boss.
I rushed to the Ministry of Information, only to learn that the
meeting had already been convened somewhere else in Male. I
rushed to the address they gave me, only to learn that the
meeting had been cancelled, as it was not necessary.
Back at the Ministry I now found a handwritten note that ‘Dr
Hydral’ was to come to the Amini Building at 12.30. This was
exactly when I was due to be at the airport island to meet the
archaeologists.
Bjorn was therefore delegated to fetch the archaeologists by
boat while I headed for the Amini Building. As I had refused to
sit down and discuss with a fifteen-man committee what I had
come to do on request from their President, Abbas had asked if I
were at least willing to talk to two members of that group, and |
had agreed. For balance I now went to the meeting in company
with Arne Fjortoft, the Norwegian President of Worldview
International Foundation, who had come from Sri Lanka with
the journalists to see us off. His personal friendship with
Mr Abbas had made him an important helper in the strange
wrestling match that now seemed to be going on.
In the Amini Building we were met by two exceptionally
pleasant and friendly government officials, both representing
112
ad
the newly formed National Council for Linguistic and Historical

Research, formerly referred to as the Moslem Committee. One
was Mohamed Loutfi, the well-informed, swarthy giant who
had said he would be coming with us; the other was Mohamed
Waheed, a solid and strongly built man with kind eyes anda big
black bushy beard.
I was about to sit down at the long conference table when I
was stopped by the two others. A little office girl was running
in and out of the room and moving chairs about. The two
Maldivians were to sit on one side, and my friend and I on the
other. But the two pairs of chairs facing each other across the
table did not seem to-satisfy her, and she kept on putting an
extra chair at the top of the table as well, which she then
removed, until she finally came back and put two chairs side by
side at the narrow top’of the table.
I now realised that the two who had received us were not
those who really counted, as they suddenly straightened up
at respectful attention when two other men arrived. The
new arrivals entered solemnly, as in a two-man procession.
Obviously they wanted to show that they held high office in the
community. In fact equally high, which is why the little girl had
been told in the end that they should both be seated side by side
at the head of the table.
One was introduced to us as the Honourable Mr Moosa
Fathhi, Chief Justice of the Maldives High Court, and thus a
Moslem with supreme authority since Maldive law is entirely
based on the words of the Koran.
The other was introduced as the Honourable Mr Mohamed
Jameel, and although he acted as if we had never met, I knew
him as the President of the National Council who was to decide
what we could do when we weighed anchor with the Golden
Ray.
These two, representing the top religious authorities in
the country, held a power that perhaps equalled that of the
democratically elected President.
As the meeting began the two at the head of the table
remained stern and silent and left the introductory speech to
Mohamed Waheed. He went out of his way to be polite and
positive on behalf of his superiors who did not seem to under-
stand English. He apologised for the island mentality, as they
113
The Maldive Mystery
were very afraid, he said. Many people were of the opinion that
the hawittas had been left in peace for hundreds of years, so
why take risks, why not let this continue?
We were not there to plunder the hawittas, I explained. If they
did not want us to, we would not even touch them. We would be
just as interested in looking for other remains, for instance early
habitation sites, any refuse from former times that could tell
us something about their own ancestors. This was what the
President had wanted us to do.
A big cloud seemed to drift away. We could dig anywhere we
wanted within the Republic, as long as we let the hawittas
alone. To my surprise, after some discussions between them in
Divehi, unintelligible to us, the friendly speaker turned back to
us and said in English that we could even excavate hawittas. But
if we wanted to dig more than three of them, we hadtosendina
new request.
Various amendments were now made all through the contract
I had proposed, but nothing of any importance. I left the
meeting greatly relieved, and rushed to the hotel to meet the
archaeologists who had come with Bjorn from the airport. At
4 pm the National Council was to send the amended contract
back to me, retyped and signed by the responsible authorities.
I waited the rest of the day, but no contract came back. In fact,
it never came back. I never saw it again, nor any other paper
signed by the National Council or any other government office.
But Mr Loutfi came with a broad smile and assured us that now
we could sleep soundly, there were no more problems. They
had left it to him to decide where we could dig, and I could trust
him, so I needed nothing in writing.
That evening, after dark, I was permitted to inspect the Golden
Ray which was to be ready for departure by 7 am the next
morning. It was a fine ship with a large room down below
ideally suited for the storage of digging equipment and pro-
visions. Appropriately, this former hospital room was also full
of field-beds. There were even three small single-berth cabins
on deck in addition to a berth behind the steering wheel,
reserved for the Maldive captain.
But on inspecting the single small wooden lifeboat, I found a
hole in the bottom big enough to put my head through. It had
clearly been in contact with a reef! I refused to go to sea without
114
sd
any kind of landing craft. It was already late at night, and I was
told not to worry because there was a walkie-talkie radio on
board so we could always talk to the atoll chief when we reached
any island, and he could send out a dhoni to take us ashore.
But I refused point blank. We could not depend on some chief
ashore each time we wanted to land, particularly since the
majority of Maldive islands were uninhabited. Besides, there
was hardly any more dangerous navigation area in the world,
with its labyrinth of tidal currents, submerged reefs and sand
bars. The one argument that finally resolved this issue was that,
with my experience of the sea, I was able to insist that it was an
offence in international law to navigate the ocean with twenty-
two men on board a ship that did not even possess a life raft.
Telephones rang and messengers criss-crossed Male by bike
all night. As the sun rose a big, flat-bottomed metal launch,
ideally suited for our purposes, was towed out and tied by a
strong rope to the stern of the Golden Ray.
It was hard to get out of bed for all the sacks, crates and baskets
mixed with shovels, jerry-cans, cooking pots, jungle knives,
coils of rope and kerosene lamps; all our new acquisitions had
been delivered yesterday and were piled up high around our
beds. Here were all the larger tools the archaeologists had
not brought from Norway, field equipment, provisions and
medicine. As the expedition members and our Maldivian
friends started to carry it all on to big hand-carts waiting
outside, I checked with red marks all the items already cancelled
by a blue stroke on the various lists in my notebooks. Nothing
was missing that we could not do without. In high spirits we
helped the owners of the carts to manoeuvre the towering loads
through the town and down to the docks.
It took time to row it all on board, and it was 8.30 am instead of
7 am as agreed when the anchor chains of Golden Ray began to
rattle and Mr Loutfi looked anxiously at his watch.
‘We are an hour and a half late,’ he said. ‘We will not get as far
as I hoped before the sun sets. And the captain wants us to
anchor in some lagoon before night. It is too risky to move
between all these reefs in the dark.’
The captain of the Golden Ray was a little wiry Maldivian
above middle age by the name of Mohamed Maniku, who liked
115
The Maldive Mystery
to be called Pakar, since the Maldives were full of Mohameds

and Manikus. Pakar was a mariner of few words, hardly any of
which were English. But Mr Loutfi himself turned out to be an
experienced navigator. He had his captain’s certificate and, as
some sort of comptroller of the Maldive schools, he knew the
whole archipelago better, we were to learn, than anybody else
in the Maldives. Loutfirepresented the government, and Captain
Pakar had to take orders on the itinerary from him.
In addition to Loutfi, Mr Kela Ali Ibrahim Maniku had climbed
on board with us, an Ethiopian-looking gentleman with a well-
trimmed black beard and glasses, who introduced himself as
Project Officer of the Atoll Administration. His ministry had
selected him as our English-speaking liaison officer in dealings
with the chiefs on all the islands.
Now, and only now, as the ship began to move, did we get a
chance to relax and tell ourselves that we were really off on our
‘dig’. As the long row of dhoni masts behind the mole began to
slide away, together with the houses along the water front in
Male, I had my first real chance to welcome the two archaeolo-
gists. We lined up along the railing to watch the scattered flotilla
of little palm-clad isles anchored at the Male ring-reef while we
alone moved away and out of the calm lagoon.
Behind us lay a ring of purely tourist islands around the
Maldive capital. They seemed like satellites occupied by visitors
from outer space, for here, and only here, were the only non-
Moslem beings in the archipelago.
We felt immense relief as the Golden Ray entered the smoothly
rolling swells of the open ocean. Yet there was land and reefs
on both sides behind the horizon. We were steering south-
westwards, obliquely across the waters that separate the two
submerged ridges of Maldive atolls and shallows which run
side by side from north to south for almost 900 kilometres.
Deck-chairs were brought up, and with Pakar at the wheel
and all his crew at their jobs, the rest of us settled down in the
open space on the aft deck to discuss our plans. Loutfi agreed
that our best choice would be to set course for the Equatorial
Channel where we knew there was so much to be found. He
estimated that with our speed reduced to 5.5 knots by the
launch in tow, and by the captain refusing to move at night, we
would need three days to get there.
116
teed
Young Abdul, who again came along as interpreter, and his

two fellow students from Sri Lanka, Saliya and Palitha, did not
hide their joy at the chance of returning to Fua Mulaku. Their
memories of the tasty fruits and the beautiful girls on that island
were soon shared with the crew from the bridge to the engine
room.
Most of the palefaces in our party lay stripped to the Moslem
legal minimum on deck, trying to recover what they had lost
during a dark Nordic winter. The one who had lost the least was
clearly my old friend Martin Mehren, a passionate skier and
golfer who spent more time in the open than in his office. He
had joined the expedition purely for fun.
The real core of this enterprise were the two archaeologists.
My long-time friend Professor Dr Arne Skjélsvold was to lead
the excavations. He Had joined me for the first time on the
Galapagos expedition in 1952, and later for a full year on Easter
Island and other parts of Polynesia. With his long beard, and
glasses on the tip of his nose, it was easier to see that he was an
absent-minded university professor and head of the archaeolo-
gical faculty at Oslo University, than it was to guess that he
was also the hardiest expedition companion and greatest
merrymaker in any party. He had just returned from further
excavations on Easter Island, but the university generously
allowed him another clear month off for the Maldives.
He had personally picked his assistant, whom I did not know,
asecond-generation archaeologist named Oystein Johansen. To
anyone who did not know that this smiling young man was
already a noted field archaeologist and director of a provincial
museum in Norway, he might have passed for a super-blond
Nordic actor, the way he posed for the cameras in the bow. But it
was the two cameramen who had picked him out to point as
they filmed the tumbling dolphins that swam in fan-formation
in front of our bow, like huskies before a sledge.
With these two cameramen fresh out from the deepest forests
of central Sweden, our mixed party of travellers was complete.
Bengt Jonson was a former lumberjack, and Ake Karlson a
former waiter in a neighbourhood country inn. They had first
met when Ake had asked Bengt to come and cut down a tree in
front of his house. The tree is still there, for the two started
discussing films, and ever since they had roamed the world
1
The Maldive Mystery
together shooting and producing their own documentaries.

Bengt was still the big jovial lumberjack, holding a microphone
in his large hands as if it were an axe, and Ake still the elegant
waiter who could manipulate his cameras past every obstacle as
though he were carrying a tray through a crowded restaurant.
Both visibly enjoyed every minute of life. It was easy to see by
looking around that, with this crowd, we were not going to have
a dull moment on board or ashore.
With the salt air and the soft rolling of the ship our appetites
rose to a zenith with the sun. The skinny Maldive cook looked as
if he hated eating, but our noses were now telling us that his
taste for good food was far superior to his own appetite. The tall
Maldive mess-boy was a comedian. He looked like a slim
Italian, and had worked for Italians on a Male tourist island and
learnt one Italian word, mangiare, ‘eat’. With a pot and a big
spoon he came marching in like a soldier with a drum, beating
and announcing: ‘mangiare, mangiare, mangiare’, to which he
added the only three English words he knew: ‘Food is ready!’
Before I knew it Martin and the two Swedes fell in behind him,
and soon we were all marching towards the mess room clapping
in time and repeating the magic words with great appetite. Our
ages ranged from Martin’s well over 70 to Abdul’s 22, but clearly
nobody was going to worry about the difference on this journey.
Well satisfied with the tasty Maldivian lunch of fish, rice and
curry, we passed the afternoon dozing in the sun, watching the
glittering flying fish and tumbling dolphins, and looking in
vain for sharks or whales.
In the early afternoon a long string of low palm islands
appeared ahead of us on the starboard side. This was the Ari
atoll. The sun was still high as we passed close to the beautiful
but uninhabited Digura island. Then we entered into the Ari
lagoon through a reef with broken coral blocks rising out of the
water like swimming animals. Following the ring-reef on the
inside we passed other incredibly spectacular palm islands,
none of which showed any sign of life, until Loutfi and Captain
Pakar agreed that we had to anchor while we were still in the
shelter of the lagoon. With our late start this morning we would
not manage to cross the open channel and reach another safe
anchorage before sunset.
The anchor rattled out and Loutfi told us there was still time to
118
wot
go ashore. Two islands were within easy reach. We couid

choose between Maamigili island, which was inhabited and
where we would have to pay for fresh coconuts to drink, or
Ariyaddu island which was uninhabited and where we could
climb for the nuts ourselves. Martin immediately suggested the
uninhabited island where we couid have a swim in the clean
lagoon. When Loutfi added that the uninhabited island of
Ariyaddu had once been the home of the Redin there was no
longer any doubt.
I was surprised at Loutfi mentioning the Redin. What did he
know about the Redin on this island? Nothing, except that,
according to Maldive traditions, they had once lived there.
Others had lived there after the Redin, but even that was long
ago. The government had records, which began more than two
centuries ago, of all the inhabited islands, and Ariyaddu was
depopulated before then.
As we approached land we noticed a big dhoni coming out
from behind a sand-bar and packed so full of people that they
were standing with no room to sit down. We next noticed a few
soldiers in uniform who had remained behind on the beach. As
our launch hit the sandy bottom and we all waded ashore, Loutfi
asked the soldiers, in his own language, what was going on; he
was told that this island belonged to the Minister of Defence.
He had ordered the undergrowth to be cleared as he wanted
to start test plantations and an experiment with poultry and
goats.
The clearing was well under way and we were permitted to
walk where we pleased. Big trunks of pandanus palms and piles
of cut firewood lay everywhere, otherwise there were extensive
fields of burning in the surprisingly stone-strewn ground. Only
the coconut palms were left standing. This gave us an excellent
opportunity to see far and wide between the trunks of the palm
trees, and we had hardly left the sandy beach before we found
the first remains of former habitation. The further we went
inland the bigger were the shapeless piles of limestone blocks
and broken coral. Clearly, former buildings of impressive size
had been torn down and the building materials scattered over
the ground.
In one place were the foundations of a small mosque, carefully
laid out to point in the direction of Mecca, but the building
119
The Maldive Mystery
stones must have been taken from some earlier and larger
structure.
For the first time in the Maldives I noticed square blocks with
shallow depressions from dovetailed mortices at each end — the
traces of former metal clamps intended to hold the stones tightly
together. Not only had the clamps been removed or had fallen
out, but when the stones were reused in the mosque they were
placed together in such a way that the mortices in one stone no
longer matched those in another.
Nearby was a huge, flattened rubble mound which Loutfi
confirmed was the scattered remains of a long since devastated
hawitta. Next to it was a deep depression in the ground where
the soldiers had thrown all sorts of branches and leaves they
wanted to burn. Much to our excitement we discovered that this
was a large, circular ceremonial bath. One fair-sized section of
the wall was still exposed as soon as we removed some leaves
and branches, whereas the main part of the bath was totally
buried. The walls in the bath had been built from perfectly
shaped rectangular blocks with the empty mortising sockets
still to be seen in their original positions, like butterfly designs
at all joints between the building blocks.
At only one place in the world could I remember having seen
this particular kind of stone jointing, and that was the prehis-
toric Phoenician port of Byblos in Lebanon. The blocks from the
former harbour construction, slightly submerged outside the
present port, had been joined together precisely in this way,
and there the ‘butterfly’ joints of bronze were still in their
original sockets. Whoever the Redin had been, they had been
sufficiently civilised to be familiar with copper or bronze. And
they must have had contact with the mainland since no form of
metal could ever be locally available within an archipelago
formed entirely out of coral. The Phoenicians were not known to
have sailed beyond the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean,
except when the joint Egyptian—Phoenician fleet of Pharaoh
Necho circumnavigated Africa in about 600 Bc. Yet this highly
characteristic ‘butterfly’ type of prehistoric stone jointing was
so specialised that the Maldive Redin must have learnt it abroad
from people who, directly or indirectly, had contact with the
Phoenicians.
Loutfi had heard that a stone phallus of the type which the
120
ated
Hindu called a lingam had been found on this island. It had been
measured before it was destroyed and was said to have been
‘one foot and three inches long, and one foot in cross-section at
the base’. He asked the soldiers if they had heard about this
sculpture and one of them volunteered to show us where it had
been found. We walked right across the island to a place where
there still was a large and tall hawitta which had been plun-
dered in the past, for a big crater had been left in the centre. At
the side lay a finely carved, stepped pedestal block with a square
‘depression on the top. The soldier told us that this had been the
base of the stone ae Loutfi had heard about. The base of the
lingam stone.
Before we left the Redin island we witnessed a spectacular
sunset behind the palms. Next morning, as the sun rose, we
were on our way out of the lagoon.
121
CHAPTER VI
Excavations Beg
The Buried ‘Phallus Temple’ on
Nilandu
AT BREAKFAST we were all laughing over our luck. We would

never have stopped at the island of Ariyaddu if we had not been
delayed in our departure from Male. And had Loutfi not hap-
pened to mention the Redin, maybe we would have chosen to
visit the other, inhabited, island.
‘Who do you think the Redin were?’ I asked Loutfi who was
beaming with satisfaction when he saw how pleased we were
with the discoveries.
‘I do not know,’ he answered with a broad smile.
‘But do you think they were real people?’
‘Yes, I do. Our ancestors said they were real people.’
As we left the table the two archaeologists, Loutfi and
I went up to Captain Pakar in the wheel-house. The navi-
gation chart lay open in front of us, and so did the blue ocean.
We were out on the ocean side of the western row of the
Maldives.
‘Where do you want to stop next?’ asked Loutfi as he let his
dividers straddle down the chart towards the equator.
‘Will we pass any other island where the Redin are said to
have been?’ I enquired.
‘Sure,’ said Loutfi, and took a close look at the map before he
pointed. ‘There,’ he said, ‘at Nilandu.’
I looked at the archaeologists. They read my mind.
‘Why not,’ said Arne Skjdlsvold. ‘Let’s stop at Nilandu.’
I went to fetch Hassan Maniku’s list of all the islands. ‘Niland-
hoo,’ I read, ‘in Faaf atoll. Inhabited. East of the centre of the
island is a ruin measuring 146 feet in circumference and 4 feet
inZ2
Excavations Begin
high.’ There were other prehistoric ruins also, and a mosque

built by the first Sultan of the Maldives in ap 1153-66. The note
ended: ‘Digging here a stone “box” with a bright red powder
and a golden statue was found.’
‘It was a golden cock,’ Loutfi added. ‘It was brought to Male
but lost.’
At 10 am the Golden Ray anchored in the open sea off the
Nilandu reef. If nothing else, we wanted to hear the story of the
golden cock from the mouths of the local people. There was a
village on this island, according to Loutfi, of 760 inhabitants.
They had already spotted us from the beach, and through the
walkie-talkie Loutfi was informing the chief of our intention to
come ashore.
A dhoni came out to pilot our launch in across the reef
through a long and’Shallow channel cleared of protruding
corals. The water was crystal clear. It seemed clearer than the air,
and all the fantastic shapes on the bottom showed up as if seen
through a magnifying glass. We marvelled at the beauty all
around as we moved through the bottle-green shallows over the
reef which sheltered the golden beach of the palm island from
the assaults of the sky-blue ocean.
At the head of the pier we were received with hearty hand-
shakes by the chief, the second chief, and all the men of
important rank in the little community: first the customary
exchanges of questions of well-being and good wishes in Arab
style; then we started walking along the pier, towards the
village. Loutfi now began to pass on the questions we had
already posed to him to some of the elder men who seemed to
have the sole privilege of answering.
Sure, somebody had come from Male and they had dug up
three boxes of stone, covered by stone lids. They were all a little
more than 30 centimetres (1 foot) square. Two had been carried
away unopened. But one was destroyed as it was opened and it
contained a golden cock. There was also a metal! plate with some
script, but the script could not be understood. All were sent to
Male.
Loutfi was visibly embarrassed when he had to confess that
nothing like that existed in Male. Yet the chief insisted that
nobody on the island had taken anything. The official records,
he said, showed that the golden cock and the metal plate with
123
The Maldive Mystery
the inscriptions went to Male. He was willing to show us the

place where they had been dug up.
We walked in from the beach between the palms and im-
mediately entered the wide and admirably clean sandy streets
of the little village. All the women and children were lined up
along the road as we passed, or peeping from behind the doors
of the little houses. As if to excuse their curiosity, the chief told
Loutfi that no foreigner had come ashore on this island for seven
years.
Walking along I noticed that we ourselves were staring at the
spectators along the road at least as much as they were staring at
us. Some of the women and children were remarkably beautiful,
and not only the youngest men in our party exchanged glowing
comments to that effect. There was in particular one young
woman sitting on a bench, stoically smoking her water-pipe,
and another tall one with long flowing hair standing with a little
baby clinging around her neck, both of whom could have
competed victoriously at any beauty contest in the world.
Neither of them reacted, however, to the cameras that were
directed at them.
Not all the people were equally good-looking, indeed they
showed a remarkable variation in physical features. In general
the Maldivians must be considered handsome by any inter-
national standard, yet most of them are so exceedingly short,
reaching only to the chest of the average European, that they
would have appeared like dwarfs except for the fact that they are
always extremely well proportioned. For this reason they often
look like teenagers until they become old.
The majority, as in Male, look like Singalese or Indians.
Among the taller types there are those who could pass for Arabs,
Jews, Ethiopians or other people from Asia Minor and East
Africa. The real beauties were commonly tall and remind one of
the fair-skinned European type of Polynesian more than of any
people in the neighbouring territories of southern Asia. In
contrast to Polynesia however, these beauties made no move to
tempt the visitors with their feminine charms. Their Moslem
faith was stronger than any temptation. Abdul joked happily
with Saliya and Palitha as Buddhists, and Oystein Johansen asa
Christian, at the fact that here he would be the only one who
would have a chance.
124
Excavations Begin
The local men who accompanied us barely had time to assure

us that there were no sculptures of any sort, nor any other old
objects left on this island, when an innocent-looking little boy
who ran along with us contradicted them by telling us that he
had a fragment of what Abdul translated as a ‘statue’. To the
embarrassment of the elders he ran off and came back with what
seemed like a neck and shoulder fragment of an image. The boy
drew in the sand something that resembled a bust when he told
us what this figure had looked like before he broke it.
As we tipped him some Maldive coins for his courage in
showing us his fragment, other kids ran off and returned with
more pieces of worked stones, but they were too fragmentary
for us to say more than that they had not been shaped by nature
nor, very likely, by any Moslem. Since they all got their reward
anyhow, it became too much for the adults and aman came with
a big chunk of a smoothly vaulted limestone fragment. Oystein
Johansen gasped.
‘A phallus fragment!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wrote my thesis on
prehistoric phallus distribution, so I know what this is!’
We were all amazed. Loutfi admitted that this was supposedly
the shape and size of the lingam they had found on Ariyaddu,
but which was lost. The sculpture was broken lengthwise with
one half missing, and when we showed the islanders with signs
where the missing part was broken off, two young men dis-
appeared into some nearby shrubbery, digging with their
hands, and soon they came back with another big fragment of a
phalloid stone of the same size. The two big pieces did not fit
together but there were obviously other fragments lying around
in the neighbourhood.
The archaeologists were excited and wanted to dig in this
area. These broken sculptures certainly represented vestiges
from some pre-Moslem cult. Here was firm evidence which
supported Loutfi’s report that a lingam stone had really been
found on the last island we had visited — even though it had
since been lost and we had merely been shown the carved base,
representing the feminine parts. If these were truly the broken
parts of lingam sculptures, then they would have been carved by
Hindu worshippers, for phallus worship, which is unknown to
Moslems, never pertained to Buddhism. Since we had found
Hindu images as well as Buddha figures in the museum closet,
125
The Maldive Mystery
we were all convinced that our new discoveries represented

phallus images of a Hindu type.
Loutfi agreed that the archaeologists should start work right
here. He strongly recommended that we stopped for a day or
two on this island to investigate this very area. There was no
reason to object, and we decided to start operations there and
then.
Just a few steps away was a low sandy mound which would
hardly have been noticed, as it was thickly covered by under-
growth, had it not been for the fact that the islanders told us this
was where the stone boxes with the golden cock had been
found. We told the chief that we wanted help to clear the low
mound. He said that he would round up as many men as we
needed next day, but he could give us twenty women right now
to clear the undergrowth. Next moment a crowd of barefoot
women in their long colourful gowns swarmed into the thickets
with jungle knives, cutting left and right and pulling the long
leafy branches away from the site.
Soon the whole area lay clear but for the big trees and palms,
and in the midst of it was the mound where the golden cock had
been found. It seemed to be nothing but a heap of loose white
beach sand. There was also a fresh pit in the ground a few steps
away where the men had dug up the phalloid fragment. We
stopped them from touching anything more as all digging was
to be done by the archaeologists.
From the islanders we got some coils of fine rope twisted and
braided from coconut husks. Then the archaeologists staked out
the limits of the test pit they intended to dig and marked it off
with tight ropes. No sooner did they start scraping the loose
sand with their trowels than they hit sculpted stones which they
brushed clean and found to be fragments of still more phalloid
sculptures. As one of these was lifted out from the ground, it
proved to match perfectly the first fragment the islanders had
brought us. With the two pieces held together the sculpture was
complete and not a single chip was missing. It appeared a
perfectly shaped and smoothed phallus. Its identity could not
be mistaken, with the little hole on the top and the ring around
the shaft representing circumcision.
As the digging proceeded still more phalloid fragments
appeared in the same trench, and in between lay also some
126
Excavations Begin
peculiar limestone carvings in the shape of the strangely seg-

mented towers customary on top of Buddhist stupas as well as
on Hindu temples. It looked like one umbrella, or mushroom,
set on top of the other in diminishing sizes from base to top. We
termed these sculptures ‘umbrella towers’ when we found that
they were almost as common in the trench as were the phalloid
stones.
Miniature towers of this kind in ancient Asia were commonly
buried as votive offerings. But these were not buried as offer-
ings. On the contrary, as with the phalloid images, they had
been broken and thrown away as undesirable objects. From the
way all these fragments lay together in confusion it was obvious
that they had been tossed there haphazardly, later to be deliber-
ately covered with beaeh sand.
By the time the day’s work was ended we had recovered from
the one test trench five phalloid stones, out of which two were
complete and set on short cylindrical bases, and we knew that
there would be more to be found when work was resumed the
next morning.
Before we left the dig, however, we had learnt from the local
people that the name of the low mound where the golden cock
had been found was Fua Mathi, which was translated as ‘Testicle
Height’.
While at first we had all unhesitatingly accepted the phalloid
stones as lingam sculptures and assumed the Testicle Height to
be the remains of some sort of fertility temple, Skjdlsvold was
impressed by the many little ‘umbrella towers’ found with the
phalloid stones, and called for caution. Stones just like these had
been found by archaeologists in Sri Lanka, too, and there the
phalloid type of stone with an ‘umbrella tower’ on top repre-
sented a miniature stupa.
The Testicle Height had been built from beautifully cut stones,
but, when Islam was introduced by the first Sultan of Male,
these pagan buildings had been stripped. The worked stones
were used to build the nearby mosque, which was the second
oldest in the Maldives. The oldest was the one the same Sultan
had first built in Male.
While the archaeologists were cataloguing the day’s finds
Loutfi and I went to visit this mosque. It was big, and in every
respect surprisingly impressive for such a small community.
127
The Maldive Mystery
Inside we found the mosque decorated with beautiful hard-

wood carvings in arabesques which dated from the original
building period, well over 800 years ago. Certainly the local
people would never have built such an edifice today. Part of the
walls were magnificent, fitted together from perfectly shaped
and dressed blocks of large dimension. Certain sections had
been reassembled entirely as in the dismantled temple, and the
result was another example of the spectacular ‘fingerprint
masonry’, the same story, in fact, as on Fua Mulaku. The first
mosque had been conveniently built, probably in record time,
by stripping ready-made blocks from a non-Moslem temple.
As they brushed the sweat away, the archaeologists were
quite overwhelmed at the result of the first day’s digging. In
Norway they could dig for a whole season and be happy if they
hit upon even as much as this. Here, on an atoll in the Indian
Ocean, they had dug a test pit and immediately hit upon all
those phalloid images or stupas and ‘umbrella towers’, which
were now lined up along the trench.
Johansen, who as a phallus expert knew how rare similar
objects were in Europe, was literally beaming. Loutfi was no
less pleased and amazed. Only one such lingam had ever been
seen in the Maldives before, but it was lost. Here we had five,
already numbered and secured for the Male Museum.
Seeing that these long hidden oddities were not only toler-
ated but also made all of us happy, even the Nilandu islanders
began to rejoice with us. This had to be celebrated. And not just
with coconut juice but also with something to please the eye
and ear. In the main village street the little girls of the island had
been lined up for a dance, with their long black hair falling
down over spotless white school dresses with blue neck ties. A
man and a girl were squatting in front of them with drums
carved from coconut wood covered with ray skin. As we arrived
they started a rhythmic drumming and the girls began a lively
Maldive song to which they all danced. It was a regular South
Sea atmosphere, enjoyed every bit as much by the village
spectators as by us.
Before we went back on board Bjorn Bye and I ran to have a
quick dip in the crystal clear water between the beach and the
reef but, almost as soon as he dived in, Bjorn sprang out again
with a yell. Something had hurt him so badly that the pain was
128
Excavations Begin
to last for several days and a scar remained on his arm. He

caught a glimpse of the creature and found another of the same
sort stranded on the beach. It looked like a crystal vase floating
upside down with the rim broken into sharp teeth of a brown
colour, as if dipped in paint. The village medicine-man came
running with a cocktail of herbs to soothe the pain. ‘Tatun Fulhi’
explained the islanders, which Abdul translated as ‘sharp
bottle’, it was the local name for this strange whitish coelenter-
ate, which, although it had a hard jagged edge which cut,
seemed to be a distant relative of the jellyfish.
Next morning we were ashore early to start fencing in the
archaeological site. While one of the archaeologists continued
the trench where more phalloid fragments and ‘umbrella towers’
appeared, the other staked out a 2-metre (about 6-foot) wide
trench across the low circular mound of pure white beach sand.
It did not look like a hawitta, nor did the islanders refer to it as
such. To them it was just Fua Mathi, the Testicle Height.
After less than two hours’ careful digging and scraping with-
out encountering anything but pure white sand, Skjdlsvold
yelled. He had hit a worked stone. It had a dressed and fluted
profile on one side. What was more, another of the same kind
was adjoining it, and another, and another.
Johansen joined him and, scraping and brushing, they soon
uncovered the top of a straight stone wall. Digging further they
found another layer of worked stones underneath the first one,
and still another. And another again. Johansen brought out his
compass and exclaimed with excitement in his voice that this
wall was oriented precisely east-west.
The digging was continued along this buried stone wall in
each direction until we hit a corner at both ends. At each corner
adjoining walls ran due south. We now guessed that the struc-
ture had been square, and as the north wall we had uncovered
proved to be 10.5 metres (1142 yards) long, we dug a pit 10.5
metres south of the north-west corner, and correctly hit the
place where the west wall ended and the south wall began. We
had accordingly discovered a perfectly square, sun-oriented
structure.
However, this wall had not been built to enclose an interior
room; it was not part of any house. While the outside of the wall
was beautifully shaped and finished, the inside was rough,
129
The Maldive Mystery
irregular and unworked. Obviously the inside of this building

was never meant to be seen. It had always been filled with sand,
as solid as any Mesopotamian pyramid. This was also evi-
denced by the fact that inside the wall we found nothing but
pure sand, while outside we found all sorts of worked stones
that had tumbled down from above.
At this stage, with our previous experience from a similar
mound on Gaaf-Gan, I was so convinced that we had hit upon
another structure resembling the ziggurat type that I promised
‘to eat my hat’ if we did not find some kind of ramp entering
exactly at the centre of one of the outside walls. We had already
started digging along the west wall from the north-west corner,
and there we ran into a beautiful secondary wall of large square-
cut stones set at right angles to the main wall on the outside. But
this wall was only 4 metres from the corner and, accordingly, not
centrally placed as I had predicted, since we had found the wall
to be 10.5 metres long. Besides it was too narrow to have been a
ramp, whereas it could very well be the wall of an adjoining
building.
As I was the proud owner of that marvellous blue felt bush-
hat from Nepal, given to me by Bjérn, I had no desire to eat it. I
suspected we had found one retaining wall of a broad cere-
monial ramp, filled with sand like the building itself. Since
this wall was exactly 4 metres from the north-west corner, |
marked out the same distance from the south-west corner witha
stake set in the ground. Here I was sure we would hit upon the
other side of a centrally placed ramp. Twenty minutes later 1was
shouting that | did not have to eat my hat! As the work
proceeded, the second wall of the ramp showed up precisely
where I had set the marker.
About the same time, Johansen found a large limestone
fragment. ‘This is classical architecture,” he shouted. ‘This
carving resembles what the early Greeks called triglyf and
metope.’
We all admired the fragment. It lay among those that had
fallen down from somewhere above and was buried on the
outside of the wall. It was indeed decorated ina style the Greeks
had borrowed from the ancient Middle East. Below a projecting
rim it was crenellated in high relief with alternating rectangular
knobs and notches.
130
Excavations Begin
‘There must have been a temple on top of this mound or

pyramid,’ said Johansen. ‘Triglyf and metope are only found on
the upper edges or eaves of structures.’
Loutfi and our liaison officer, Kela Maniku, were visibly
impressed by the design of the wall profile we had discovered
below the ground. It had come as a great surprise also to the
island population.
The front of the wall consisted of nine tiers of worked stones
in a complicated arrangement of steps and overhangs. The
lowest three tiers projected in steps to form the plinth or
supporting base of the entire structure, above which the wail
rose vertically. But the four uppermost tiers were intricately
chamfered and rounded in various ways, with the top tier
projecting as a cornice in front of the one below, like the bow of
a boat. The upper surface of this tier was finished smooth and
clearly marked the floor of a first terrace, or platform. The total
effect was sophisticated and impressive.
When we asked Loutfi and the local islanders what shape they
thought the lost upper part of this structure originally had,
Loutfi drew in the sand a stepped pyramid with a small domed
temple on top. This assumption was clearly based on the
stepped remains of ruins these islanders had seen or heard of
elsewhere in the Maldives.
All that the archaeologists could confirm from the remaining
evidence, however, was that we had uncovered the sun-
oriented remains of a square, stepped, stone-lined and sand-
filled structure, approached on the west wall by a centrally
placed ramp. The polished surface of the upper tier of stones
marked the end of the first terrace, but some sand-filled struc-
ture must have continued above, to judge from all the stones
and sand that had fallen down on all sides. The amount of sand
indicated that at least one or more solid terraces had been
superimposed on the one still left, and the stone decorated with
the triglyf and metope-like motif suggested that a roofed temple
had stood on top, as drawn by Loutfi.
On the fourth day of digging the work began to get monoton-
ous for Loutfi and Kela Maniku, and they spent more time with
the men of the village than with us. Suddenly, before noon, they
came striding back and headed straight for the exposed stone
wall. They took another careful look at the mouldings and then
131
The Maldive Mystery
came over to me. Loutfi confided, with a secretive smile, that

they had done a lot of thinking since yesterday. They had spent
the previous night in the village, and all the old people told
them that they had heard from their ancestors, who had heard
from their ancestors, that there had once been seven pagan
temples on this island. And around these seven temples were
seven walls with seven gates. The largest of these temples
would most likely be the one converted by the first Sultan,
Mohammed Ibn Abdullah, into the first mosque. They sug-
gested, therefore, that we all come along to take a new look at the
oldest mosque on the island.
Quite correct. We had realised that this mosque had been
built from reused slabs. Now Loutfi and Kela Maniku were
pointing out that its foundation walls had the very same profile
as the foundation walls of the temple we had just dug out of the
sand.
The mosque had been built on top of an old base wall that was
12 metres (over 13 yards) long and thus bigger than the founda-
tion we had dug up under the Fua Mathi mound, which was 10.5
metres (almost 11% yards). Our two Maldivian friends were
triumphant. The first Sultan had indeed chosen the foundation
of the largest of the seven temples as the base for his mosque,
and somewhere in the surrounding forest must be the sites of
the other five pre-Moslem temples in addition to the one we had
found.
We had to give our friends credit for their alertness, and now
that we examined the mosque closely we even found evidence
on one side of a former ramp. It had been mortised into the
foundation wall but later removed when the temple was trans-
formed into a mosque with steps up to a door entrance on the
short side. One wall had been entirely rebuilt with small stones,
as the original temple had obviously been square and too big for
the needs of the Sultan.
We checked the foundations of the mosque with our compass.
They ran astronomically correct, north-south, east-west. At the
hour of prayer, therefore, we took the liberty of peeping in at the
worshippers. It was a comical sight. They were all kneeling
diagonally to the rear wall, properly facing Mecca as Moslems
should. They had to adjust for the fact that the mosque was not
directed towards Mecca as mosques should be.
132
Excavations Begin
Having made this strange observation, I asked Loutfi about

that first Maldive mcsque, which the Sultan had built in Male.
Did the worshippers prostrate themselves diagonally to the
hind wall in that mosque too?
Loutfi thought only for a second and then he started to laugh.
Yes, indeed, it was precisely the same in Male; and in some of
the oldest mosques in the Maldives they had even painted lines
diagonally on the floor showing the worshippers in which
direction to prostrate themselves according to the Koran.
When I asked him why nobody had found this strange before,
Loutfi admitted that he had been puzzled himself but he had
been told that in ancient times people did not know enough
geography to realise precisely in which direction Mecca lay.
Obviously, however, they knew enough geography to realise
precisely in which direction were east and west. Apparently
those who built these first foundation walls were more interested
in the sun than in Mecca.
Due east of the mosque a wide clearing had been made
through the uninhabited forest down to the beach of the lagoon
about 300 metres (328 yards) away. It was wide as an avenue and
covered by white beach sand, kept free from any weeds. The
purpose of this wide avenue was never explained to us. It
seemed to serve for ceremonial processions, if such ever took
place, from the mosque to the lagoon. Right in front of the
mosque, just where the avenue started, was a small house or
pavilion which seemed to block the road until we took a closer
look at it and found it to be open at both ends. It was a sort of
magnificent gateway built from huge slabs, smooth as table
tops. There were stone benches on each side, and the roof was
supported by hardwood columns, hard as bone, like the wood
carvings inside the mosque, although some of them showed
clear signs of burning.
The village elders had told Loutfi that this was the only one
left of the seven gates of pre-Moslem times. According to
Nilandu tradition all the other gates had not only been burned
but also levelled to the ground. This was the only one that
remained.
The elders now came to point out where at least some of the
seven walls had gone and Loutfi asked if the archaeologists
could direct the islanders in digging some test pits to find
133
The Maldive Mystery
whether anything remained. By trenching the loose sand we

discovered in every case the remains of stone walls where they
were said to have been, and inevitably they ran in the directions
east-west or north-south. Some of them had obviously been
beautifully decorated with mouldings.
We found hundreds of identically shaped stones smaller than
a fist, flat on the sides but with the front strongly vaulted over a
protruding lip. The rear was unworked. These ornamental
bosses had presumably been set their own width apart in a
continuous crenellated frieze running along the walls. But some
of these buried walls contained fragments of blocks with
mouldings from earlier temples that had been torn down, even
some carved with triglyf and metope-like decoration similar to
those fallen from the temple of the Testicle Height. The builders
of the seven pre-Moslem walls had therefore been preceded by
earlier temple architects, presumably with a different religion.
Once again we had evidence that the Maldives had a com-
plicated past long before Islam was introduced. Theoretically
Buddhist wall builders could have used parts of Hindu temples.
As this vast temple area ended, the terrain dropped down a
couple of feet with a marked slope just where the houses of the
village started. The whole area was termed Faru Mathi by the
local people, which Loutfi translated as ‘Top of the Wall’.
A constant spectator during our work was Ahmed Moossa
Domaniku, a tall, slim man witha sharp face and a thin, strongly
beaked nose. Domaniku was the former island chief in Nilandu
and himself the son of a chief. He wanted us to dig at a certain
place in the wide sandy avenue, right in front of the mosque.
His father had once dug there to drain water away from the
mosque, and he had hit upon a stone box covered by a lid. It
contained ochre colour and some shiny white metal. There was
also a piece of what he called lead with inscriptions on it. In
those days people believed that black magic was important to
the island, explained Domaniku, so his father had reburied the
box with all its contents in the same place. Unfortunately
Domaniku could only remember the area approximately, so the
dig resulted in nothing.
As Loutfi considered this man one of the best informed on
Nilandu, I asked him if he had heard of any other people who
had lived here in pre-Moslem times. Yes, said Domaniku. He
134
Excavations Begin
had heard of the Redin and the Holin. Of the Redin he knew
nothing but that they were great builders and had been here
first. The Holin had been here later, they had even come back by
ship to try to conquer the Maldivians and re-enforce their own
religion after Nilandu had been converted to Islam. But the
Holin had been driven away and had to return to their own
land.
I asked where the Holin lived, only to be answered that, since
they were Holin, they probably lived in the Land of the Holin.
Domaniku had nothing to add except that they worshipped
statues and were not Moslem.
According to Domaniku the Holin had been Buddhists, but
here Loutfi interrupted and explained that these people called
all non-Moslems Buddhists. Domaniku had not heard of
cannibals, but he knew that there was some ‘business’ between
the Maldivians and the people of Azékara. Some Maldivians
even intermarried with people from Azékara. They came to
Nilandu with textiles, pottery, plates and ‘food’ which they
exchanged for cowrie shells, dried fish and coconut rope.
While the island workmen were digging test trenches in
search of the remains of the seven walls and the treasures of
Domaniku’s father, another islander came to us bearing the
upper half of a strange tombstone. Moslem tombstones are flat
with a rounded top for women and witha sharp central point for
men. The one this man brought had three points side by side,
however. It was very old and deeply pitted from erosion. Our
friends from Male had never seen Moslem tombstones of this
shape. Even the local islanders said that this was not a Moslem
stone.
The man who brought the carving was willing to show us
where he had found it. He took us for a long walk on a wide trail
right through an extremely beautiful forest of coconut and areca
palms mixed with bread-fruit and big jungle trees. We must
have been on the opposite side of Nilandu by the time he made
us crawl through a thick undergrowth of ahi bushes. Loutfi told
us that ahi was popular for making red dye.
Inside the thickets we entered an area where the upper parts
of tombstones barely emerged from the ground wherever we
crawled. Some of them had the normal Moslem shapes, but
many had three and some even had five points, almost like a
135
The Maldive Mystery
crown on the upper end. Nobody could give us any explanation.

For the lack of better ideas I wondered if the multiple-pointed
tombstones could be those of men grown up with another
religion, but converted to Islam before their deaths. This was
pure speculation, but the burial ground could well date back to
the days when Islam was first introduced.
We were back at our dig next to the Testicle Height, where
ever more phalloid stones were brought up from underneath
the sand, when word came from the village that the dhoni of the
atoll chief had just arrived from Magudu island. The atoll chief
was a great man in the Maldive communities, as he was selected
by the government in Male. The chief of Nilandu with his little
radio station had obviously notified the atoll chief about our
findings.
A moment later a broadly built man with a genial face and
bowler hat came escorted by the island chief and other men
from the village. He had a twinkle in his eye and, with his round
red nose, he could have been taken for a disciple of Bacchus
were it not for the fact that he was a Moslem and had hardly
even tasted a glass of beer all his life. He saluted us with a
friendly touch of his finger to his bowler hat.
Skjdlsvold had just dug up a big, complete phalloid image
which he lifted out and set at the edge of the trench, dusting it
with his little brush.
‘Do you like it?’ he asked politely while looking up at the atoll
chief.
The atoll chief rubbed his nose for a moment and then he
answered through the interpreter:
‘No. But maybe my wife would have liked it.’
From the spontaneous reaction of the crowd, there was no
doubt that they understood exactly what the sculpture repre-
sented.
From his own island the atoll chief could contact Male with
his stronger radio. After he left the island, the message came to
us from the village that a fast government vessel had just arrived
from Male with the Minister of Atoll Administration on board.
He was the brother of the President and one of the fifteen
members of the National Council for Linguistic and Historical
Research. His Excellency Abdullah Hameed had come to inspect
our discoveries, and he was amazed when he saw what we had
136
Excavations Begin
brought out from the ground. By this time we had uncovered

parts of twenty-three different phalloid sculptures in addition
to a large number of ‘umbrella towers’, stone discs with sockets,
moulded stones, and slabs with varieties of elegant decoration.
As the Minister left he was visibly pleased with what he had
seen. Nothing had been plundered or destroyed, on the con-
trary what seemed to him to be a completely new hawitta had
been added to those they had feared we would destroy.
Before the Minister returned to his ship he told Loutfi that he
was free to permit us to dig wherever we cared to.
We had all become so engulfed in our unexpected discoveries at

the temple complex in Nilandu that we had almost forgotten we
were on our way to the Equatorial Channel. Five days had
already been spent on an island where we had never intended
to dig, and one month was all the time we could count on for the
two archaeologists and the use of the Golden Ray. Five teams of
archaeologists could dig here for five years and still make
new discoveries. The magnitude of this prehistoric cult centre
seemed quite out of proportion to the size of the island.
What was so special about Nilandu? Why did the first Moslem
Sultan find it important? For even the written record shows that
he came straight here to build the large mosque as soon as he
had built the one in Male.
And why did the non-Moslem Holin find the same island so
essential to them that they came back to it when the Sultan left,
and tried to reintroduce their own faith?
When, back on board the Golden Ray, I took a fresh look at the
navigation map I thought I had found the answer. Nilandu was
exactly in the centre of the far-flung archipelago, exactly as far
from the northernmost island as it was from Addu atoll in the
extreme south. From the days the Maldives had become a single
nation this would be the logical centre for the national cult and
administration. From the days the sun had lost its importance
and the images of human gods were erected in the temples,
Nilandu, rather than the Equatorial Channel, would be the
natural assembly point for the local hierarchy.
When Islam was introduced and the king became sultan, he
would never succeed in introducing the new faith, even by
force, unless he first went to Nilandu to level the main pre-
137
The Maldive Mystery
Moslem temples to the ground. This done, he would have to

build a mosque to Allah where the main pre-Moslem temple
had stood, partly to remove the spell of the demons, but also to
remove temptation away from those who had been accustomed
to come to this place and worship foreign gods.
Down in the hold of the Golden Ray, wrapped in cotton wool
and packed in sacks and crates, there lay a heavy cargo of
sculptures considered sacred to the people of Nilandu until the
Sultan arrived. Who had carved them still remained a riddle to
us, although it was the Holin as far as the local population was
concerned. But one thing was sure. They had been destroyed
and buried by the pious servants of Sultan Mohammed Ibn
Abdullah in the middle of the twelfth century Ap.
The stones we had secured for the Male Museum this time
were so big and numerous that a long line of men had to wade to
their chests to bring them to a deeply loaded dhoni waiting off
the beach.
As the expedition members climbed on board the dhoni the
whole village, large and small, assembled on the beach to wave.
It was an exotic spectacle with all the brown faces and the
colourful dresses of the women shining warmly in the light of
the setting sun.
We waved from the boat and they waved from the beach until
the tropical sun sank vertically into the sea and we climbed back
on board the Golden Ray with all our treasures. We were all sad
to be leaving the island, but were looking forward to further
adventures on islands we were to visit next.
138
GHAPTER Vil
In the Wake of the Redin

Redin from the North, Buddhists from
the East
“MANGIARE, MANGIARE, MANGIARE. Food is ready!’

I folded away the rap I was studying and jumped up from
my berth to join the others at the breakfast table. I had been
inhaling the warm aroma of freshly baked Maldive style chapatis
ever since being awoken by a sudden change in the ship’s
rolling. No alarm clock is more effective than the new rhythm of
rolling or pitching a ship makes as it starts to move, even if it has
been riding at anchor off an unsheltered coast. A quick glance to
either side of the vessel showed that we were again right out in
the Indian Ocean, with Nilandu and all its nearby islands on the
Faaf atoll disappearing behind us.
We were still at the breakfast table when we entered the next
lagoon with beautiful little palm islands and frothing reefs all
around. Some were inhabited. Loutfi pointed at one of them
and, giggling at happy memories, told us how he had spent a
year and a half there when he was a prisoner. A Maldive prison
term was seldom spent locked up inside four walls in Male.
Instead, the criminal was simply expelled from his own island
and confined to some other island for a certain length of time.
Loutfi had been punished because he was a friend of an out-
going President. It resulted in the finest vacation he ever had.
When he was set ashore the sympathetic local population built a
little hut for him and beautiful women took turns to serve him
morning tea and lunch. The fishermen brought him fresh fish,
sometimes even cigars, Loutfi added, and laughed as he puffed
on one presented him by Johansen. But a government repre-
sentative came on inspection and forbade these services. From
139
The Maldive Mystery
then on the food was secretly put into his hut while he was away
at the mosque for his morning wash.
We passed along a dream island where the early morning sun
sent rays low in between the forest of coconut palms, lighting
up the red dress of a woman watching us motionless from
amongst the greenery. A Gauguin masterpiece brought alive.
Johansen said he would do anything to be sent to prison there.
Further away we could just discern some palm tops above the
distant starboard horizon.
‘Had we time to spare we should have called there,’ said
Loutfi. ‘That is Maadeli, also known as Salazar or Temple Island.
It is full of ruins.’
We had no time to spare. This was a pity for, according to
Loutfi, this was the next Redin island along our route. That
morning I had again been studying Loutfi’s marks on my map.
After our unexpected visit to the first Redin island, Loutfi had
written in green ink on my map the names of all the others
where he knew the Redin had lived, according to local tradi-
tions. What was more, he had marked with green arrows their
legendary migration route.
From old Maldive informants we later learned that the Redin
had made their first landfall at Ihavandu island, a tiny speck of
land which was the extreme north-western point of Maldive
territory. From up north Loutfi drew his arrows straight south to
Ari atoll where we, on board the Golden Ray, had picked up the
Redin’s trail southwards at Ariyaddu. From there we followed it
to Nilandu. Although now missing Maadeli we would pick up
the Redin route again in Kuda Huvadu, which we had to pass
anyhow. From there again the Redin had moved southwards
from one atoll to the next until reaching the Equatorial Channel.
There the last settlement had been one on Addu atoll, the
southernmost of all, before they left the Maldives altogether. As
far as time permitted we would take a quick look at all the other
Redin islands along our route southwards.
I was half dozing in the sun on the foredeck when I sighted
the huge, round dorsal fin of a whale-shark with its white dots.
Then Bjorn shouted, calling my attention to a strange fish I had
never seen before, although we found it to be common in the
Maldives. It shot from the surface of the lagoon as if it were a
flying fish ready to take off. But it never did take off. Long and
140
slim as a snake it remained with the tip of its fan-shaped tail in

the water while the body stood up vertically with a beaked head
pointed forward like the neck and head of a duck without a
body. Like a submarine periscope, but with nothing below
water except the 'tiny tailfin bent backwards, it literally flew
along on the surface until it decided to dive and swim like a
normal fish.
Far away on our port side was a sand bank with two big
turtles dozing in the sun.
As we reached the southern end of the sunny lagoon of Dhall
atoll, we dropped anchor at Kuda Huvadu. While the others
stopped with Loutfi in the village, the archaeologists and I
walked into the forest with the chief and some of the village
elders to see a man-made mound, not considered to be a
hawitta.
We were taken to a huge, low and round mound of pure white
sand brought from the beach. The name was Us Gandu, trans-
lated simply as ‘The Mound’. It measured 22 metres (about 24
yards) in diameter, but not a single worked stone was to be
seen. I got suspicious when I learned that the oldest mosque on
the island was nearby, so we went there. We stood speechless.
The rear wall of the mosque was pieced together from the finest
‘fingerprint’ masonry I ever saw. The best example of fitted
stone masonry was supposed to be the famous Inca wall in
Cuzco, Peru, where the great tourist attraction is a stone with
twelve corners. Here, on a totally insignificant mosque ona tiny
islet in the Maldives, was another one. Set in this smooth stone
wall was a block, roughly one metre square, with its facade as
carefully planed as if cut and polished by machine; but all
around the edge, cut into twelve sides with twelve corners,
everything fitted so precisely into the complex shapes of the
surrounding stones that the fissures would barely show up ina
photograph. It was incredible to find such a masterpiece of
stone-shaping art here. Everybody has heard of the Incas and of
Cuzco in Peru, but who has heard of the Redin or of Kuda
Huvadu in the Maldives?
Beside that magnificent wall were the two tombstones of the
master mason reputed to have done this job. One tall carved
slab was raised at his head and another at his feet, as customary
for important Moslem persons. The footstone had beautiful
141
Ler > avenoee
Ihavandu
isHA
“ i =A?) Nalanau
Milandu
°
L 6 eee Pandy
Lumbo Kandu NOONU
Giravaru
Nee EHAVIVANT
| s° 28 vg
ia << > a m
yi = E120
fea
Hukuru Ethi @ eo
Ariyadu (8) <2 ESE
{-3° Nilandu Pe
is
NILANDU MULAKU
THA (KOLHUMADULU)
fe3 Kimbidu : (13) ledu
Muna Fushi LAMU (HADDUMAT!)

@® Gan
(5) Hitadu
ONE-AND-HALF-DEGREE CHANNEL
GAAF (16) vitigiti

(HUVADU)
(SUVADIVA) 17) Kondai
(18) Gan
Lo X19) Vadu
EQUATORIAL CHANNEL
FUA MULAKU
Ro ADDU
Pais EN ene
ah
Se be apesfc
ne
oR fee:
GAAF ATOLL
-
THE EQUATORIAL CHANNEL
UTE
FUA MULAKU @
+o'30's
ADDU ATOLL
yr as |Midu
Hitadu® i:
REPUBLIC OF MALDIVES
Left: The atolls of the archipelago. The numbers indicate the successive
settlements of the legendary Redin. The islands of Rasgetimu, Gira-
varu, Male and Isdu played important roles in the Hindu and Buddhist
periods of the islands before the introduction of Islam in 1153.
Above: The islands of the Equatorial Channel. Enlarged detail showing
individual islands (black) and coral reefs.
The Maldive Mystery
decoration with bands and scrolls in low relief around the

design of an elegant jar. The headstone was equally elaborately
ornamented around a frame with inscriptions written in two
different types of character. Both scripts were skilfully carved
to stand forth from the stone in relief. The one was in the
curvilinear Arab letters, the other in some strange rectilinear
characters as unknown to our Maldivian friends as to us. Each
tombstone had five points on top, rather than a single one. |
asked why. Nobody knew. The chief hesitantly suggested that
multiple points might possibly have signified that this buried
person was a skilled mason. In view of the Nilandu burial place
this theory was not convincing, and since this was expressly
said to be the first mosque built on the island, the mason who
built it must himself have been born with the earlier religion. I
held to my suspicion therefore that such untypical tombstones
might belong to those who were not born Moslem but were
converted later.
If this converted master mason had actually carved the
twelve-cornered stone himself and not merely moved the entire
wall from an old temple, then we as investigators had an
important lesson to bear in mind: in AD 1153, when Islam was
introduced, the Maldive religion was changed, but the people
and their techniques remained the same. This would explain
why the Maldivians, until the present century, were renowned
in the Arab world for their skill as stone carvers. They produced
the finest Moslem tombstones to be found anywhere.
In front of this little mosque was an outdoor gateway, just like
the one in Nilandu. A sophisticated decoration of elegant vases
in a row was carved in relief on the stone benches flanking this
ceremonial passage. A perfect ‘Star of David’ could clearly be
discerned on the outer wall of the gate and made me wonder if
some ancient Jews had come here too. But then I remembered
that David was regarded as acommon ancestor of both Jews and
Arabs. When the chief saw me looking at it he explained
that this ancient symbol was Suleiman modi, the seal on King
Solomon’s ring. When the Maldivians start to write charms, he
added, they use this sign at the beginning and at the end.
By this time Loutfi had caught up with us and asked if
anybody had ever found some buddu on this island.
Yes, indeed. Next to the old mosque they had found the stone
144
head of a man, so big that they could barely reach around it.
They had buried it again near the mosque. An eager search for
the place was now started, but the underbrush was so thick that
they could not recognise the exact spot. Instead they recalled
that they had also found a small stone animal. It turned out, to
our surprise, that they had sent it to Male.
‘When?’ asked Loutfi. They figured out it had been in 1942.
That was a great pity, according to Loutfi. The museum had not
yet been created then, and nobody would ever know the fate of
that animal image.
The best description of the large image head was given to us
by the atoll chief, Mohammed Kaleyfan, who had come to this
island to see it personally before it was buried. A bit of the body
was attached to the head. The face resembled a human being
and not a demon. Thé lips were closed with no teeth or tongue
showing. There were marks on the sides suggesting very long
ears. When we showed him photos of the big Buddha head and
the diabolic demon heads from Male Museum he immediately
pointed at the Buddha. It was just like that, he said, but more
damaged.
Did Kaleyfan know what the Redin looked like? People on
this atoll and on Nilandu said that the Redin had red hair, he
answered, but they said nothing about the skin colour. The
sculptures the Redin had left behind showed, however, that
sometimes they looked like people and sometimes they looked
like a pudding.
‘A pudding?’ we queried.
‘Yes,’ the interpreter repeated. ‘He says badibai and that is the
kind of a pudding he has seen in Male.’
We asked them to draw a pudding in the sand and indicate
the size. We were shown a drawing of a vaulted image which
indeed resembled a ‘pudding’ but still more the shape and size
of the phalloid sculptures we had excavated in large numbers
on Nilandu. The atoll chief had obviously seen some such
images among the shattered pagan ruins and assumed that
they, as well as the human statues, represented self-portraits
carved by the mysterious Redin in the dim Maldive past.
There was nothing more to learn but that the Moslems had
long ago broken all such carvings and used them in their own
buildings.
145
The Maldive Mystery
As soon as Bengt and Ake had filmed the twelve-cornered

stone we had to rush back to the village and the ship. Captain
Pakar was already getting worried. There was still a long way to
go that day to reach the next safe anchorage. Kuda Huvadu was
the last island at the southern extremity of this atoll. Now we
had a short stretch of open water ahead until we reached
Kulumadulu atoll where we had to enter the lagoon and navigate
between all sorts of uncharted reefs and shallows before we
could drop anchor off Vilufushi island.
That afternoon we passed the most beautiful palm islands I
have ever seen. With the sun low on our starboard side it threw
a glowing sidelight on to the tiny islets, which seemed to float
by like flower baskets on our opposite side. At the height of the
day, when the equatorial sun stood at its zenith, the island
would not look this beautiful from the sea. The dense roof of
palm crowns would then form a huge parasol, shading every-
thing beneath it, and with the blinding white beach in front,
our eyes would not be able to distinguish anything in between
the palms. But this late afternoon sidelight lit up the interior of
the islands, with their huts and colourfully dressed people
amongst a wealth of greenery that formed a park-like landscape
which resembled the stage of a theatre more than the real
world. Under the spell of this picture of an earthly paradise I
made an entry in my notebook that the Maldives are even more
beautiful than any of the coral atolls in Polynesia.
Shortly before sunset we dropped anchor in the shelter of
Vilufushi island. A number of us were set ashore with Loutfi,
who had been asked by his Ministry to discuss a new school
building with the chief. Vilufushi was said to have 1,315 in-
habitants. The whole island was one big town. No forest, no
archaeology. A Taiwan fishing vessel that had come to buy fish
lay at anchor next to us, but nobody went ashore. The chief told
us that it was eight years since the last foreigners had set foot on
the island, and they were Asiatics too. By leaving Male and the
tourist islands behind we were really moving in a world all its
own.
As the sun rose we were already on the move due south.
Loutfi recommended that we make a short-cut from Vilufushi
and leave aside for the moment the next Redin island, Kimbidu,
on the south-western extremity of the same atoll. According to
146
In the Wake ofthe Redin
Loutfi there was an important hawitta there about 10 metres (33

feet) high, but it had been plundered.
Kulumadulu atoll sank in the sea behind us. Not long after-
wards the first palm crowns of Haddummati atoll, also called
Laamu atoll, rose up in front. On the north-western extremity of
this atoll was the next Redin island, Muna Fushi, but this once
important island had been washed away in the last twenty years
and the large and beautiful temple ruins which Loutfi remem-
bered had tumbled into the sea. All we could see were some
jagged coral rocks projecting above the wild surf.
It was about 10.30 in the morning when we had to change
course and steer due éast along the reef to round the eastern tip
of this atoll.
We were so taken by-Loutfi’s itinerary of the Redin, which
clearly indicated their arrival from the north, that we were
puzzled by what he told us next. He pointed ahead to the island
that formed the east cape of this atoll, and was in fact the
easternmost island of the whole archipelago.
‘That island has the largest hawitta now standing in the
Maldives,’ he said. ‘The name of the island is Isdu, which means
“the first island sighted”’.’
‘How can it be called “the first island sighted” when the first
land seen by the Redin was in the extreme northern tip of the
Maldives?’ I asked.
Loutfi had no explanation. All he could say was that the
hawitta on that island was so high that it could be seen by
navigators far out to sea. As he was pointing, we began to
discern a big dark hump, as tall as the palm crowns, emerging
from the sea far ahead of us.
‘Whatever the reason for the name,’ said Loutfi, ‘Isdu island
has been extremely important in the history of the Maldives. It
was from this very island that one of the royal families came
who went on to Male to rule. Buddha images have been found
on Isdu.’
This might explain the name. We knew the Buddhists had
been here, and if we could trust local tradition, they had arrived
after the Redin. It would have been logical for the Buddhists to
have come from the east, and thus sight this easternmost island
first, since the Buddhists could have come from Sri Lanka. Sri
Lanka was the most important Buddhist centre in this part of
147
The Maldive Mystery
the world at the time that the Arabs came to introduce their
Moslem faith to the Maldives. There was no reason for the early
Redin to have come from the east, they might well have come
from the north, as had the Arabs when they, the last arrivals,
expelled Buddhism from the Maldives. After all, the Arabs were
not the first seafarers to roam the Indian Ocean north of the
Maldives. To judge from archaeological evidence in the Indus
Valley, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, merchant sailors and
explorers had travelled in that part of the ocean earlier than
anywhere else in the world.
As we drew nearer to Isdu, and could discern the surf break-
ing from the east, right at the foot of this colossal structure, we
marvelled at its dimensions. It rose like a giant black dome
above the surrounding palm forest. Another and quite different
question now puzzled us. How was it possible that no modern
archaeologist had come to investigate these strategically located
islands when they contained prehistoric ruins like this man-
made mound on Isdu, which could even be detected from far out
at sea? There was only one answer. Modern seafarers, who did
not set foot ashore, would have taken it for some kind of recent
structure, or depot, and never suspect it to be a prehistoric relic.
We rounded the easternmost cape of the Haddummati atoll
where the reef was drawn out like a long finger pointing
eastwards with Isdu at its extreme tip. And on Isdu again the
big hawitta stood with its base almost in the sea on the eastern
promontory of the island. Thus we were able to admire it from
three sides while we rounded the cape and continued down the
opposite side of the reef. Apart from the impressive size, and
the location which would have been ideal fora lighthouse, there
seemed to be nothing left of interest. Former facing stones were
stripped away and there was nothing else to make a visit
worthwhile, unless there was a long period of time for properly
conducted excavations.
We were soon sailing past the next little island on the same
reef. This was Dhambidu and, according to Loutfi, an attempt to
re-establish Buddhism had been made here sixty years after the
Maldives were converted to Islam. I noted Loutfi’s word ‘re-
introduced’ with interest. This was the first time I heard a senior
Maldivian official openly referring to a Buddhist period ante-
dating their own Moslem history.
148
After the two Buddhist islands on the eastern extremity of the

atoll, there was a narrow opening in the coral reef where Loutfi
and Pakar agreed to turn in across a belt of bright green shallows
where we rode over the atoll ring and into the protected lagoon.
There we were met by the atoll chief who came on board froma
big dhoni to join us as we followed the same reef southwards
inside the Laamu lagoon and anchored off Gan island. This was
Gan of Laamu atoll, which, like Isdu on the same atoll, was
marked by Loutfi as a Redin island. Indeed, there were two
more Redin islands with the same name which Bjorn and I had
explored on our last visit. Gan on Addu atoll, and Gan on Gaaf
atoll, were separated from each other by the Equatorial Channel,
and this Gan on Laamu atoll was only separated from Gaaf atoll
by the One-and-Half-Degree Channel. Three Redin islands all
named Gan were thus flanking the only two navigation channels
that permitted safe passage through the Maldive archipelago.
From now on we were to see so many prehistoric mounds that
it would be hard to keep them all separated without reference to
our notebooks and diaries that were filled in every day. On this
Laamu Gan we were to visit some of the hawittas which, more
than any others, had been brutally dug into by Bell, and con-
vinced him that all the hawittas were Buddhist stupas, no matter
in what condition he found them. The largest one on this island
was measured by Bell to be 35 feet (10.6 metres) high, although
even in his time it was pitiably devastated and covered by large
trees. Today no trees were left, so that this Gan hawitta now
looked like an enormous heap of large lumps of coal, with a
huge scar, made by Bell, running down like a valley on one side.
With every single facing block long since removed it was
impossible to visualise the once elegant temple with a seven-
tier pinnacle on top, as reported to Bell. Bell stresses that the
structure had been ‘most drastically stripped by the islanders’,
yet he had seen enough to state that the masonry of this
building had once consisted of surface-dressed madrepore
slabs encasing a rubble core of the same material. He found that
the entire superstructure had already disappeared, together
with virtually every trace of the base staging, ‘nothing but a few
yard’s width of neck and convex casing of the dome on the
South West front has resisted the ravages of man in addition to
Nature’s corroding forces’.”
149
The Maldive Mystery
We were given the same name for this hawitta as recorded by

Bell, Hat-teli. But sometimes this mound was also referred to as
Hai-tele. Our informants said that Teli was the word for a
cooking pot, that Hate meant ‘seven’ and Hai was the word fora
royal umbrella. It would seem that both these names referred to
the former pinnacle which rose like an ‘umbrella tower’ or seven
cooking pots reversed and set on top of each other.
When Bell, with forty Moslem islanders, dug into what their
ancestors had left of this once magnificent temple, he made
what he termed ‘an astounding and portentous discovery’.
Directly under the summit they unearthed a huge, broken face
of a colossal Buddha, carved from coral stone. Although the rest
of this monument could not be found, Bell assumed it to be part
of a standing Buddha, and estimated its height to have been
about 15 feet (4.5 metres) from head to foot."* Below the broken
face of this giant lay the mutilated, headless image of a small
seated Buddha. Although saved from obscurity in the debris by
Bell, their fate was to remain in even deeper obscurity. These
discoveries were never mentioned to us in Male, and even when
we asked, nobody could tell us how and where they might have
disappeared. Nobody could be found who had been present
during Bell’s dig.
We needed little imagination to understand the solid foot-
hold the Buddhists had established on these oceanic islands
before Islam took over. It must have been a stunning sight for
seafarers to see a white Buddha standing 15 feet (4.5 metres) tall
on the top of this colossal man-made hill, shining like snow in
the tropic sun from dressed and moulded coral blocks.
Perhaps the islanders of Gan did not know, or perhaps they
were intentionally secretive when they told us that no image
had ever been found on the island. It brought to mind Bell’s
early statement when he stressed that the Gan islanders were
doubtless holding back information on Buddhist ruins lest |
punishment befell them at the hands of His Highness the
Sultan’s zealous Moslem servants.”
Like the huge mound we had seen from the ship on Isdu, this
one on Gan lay very close to the sea, so close in fact that strange
looking crabs were playing around in the waves which tumbled
in over the reef, and right up to the foot of the hawitta. The
thickets on the inland side had recently been cleared to some
150
distance from the ruins, and the atoll chief, who had come with
us, said it had been done on his order when the Male radio
announced that we were travelling in order to see such things.
This gave us a clear view of a small hawitta just to the south-
west of the big one. It had not been touched by Bell and some
fine blocks carved with ornamentation still lay on top. Close by
also was the top ring of a large circular bath of which only a few
of the upper tiers of squared masonry blocks emerged from the
ground. It had been used for normal bathing until only forty
years ago. Until then cool, fresh water had seeped in through
round holes in the bottom slabs.
A wide road, with the remains of stone walls on each side, ran
due west from this temple area through what had once been a
big ceremonial gate, nowall iin ruins. Shaped ornamental stones
could be seen here and there in the road walls, but they had
possibly been taken from elsewhere and reused.
Skjdlsvold came crawling out of the bushes and reported that
he had counted six man-made mounds in this area. As we
crawled around visiting them we came upon two men with
sledge hammers who were breaking up beautifully ornamented
facing stones which they then piled up in heaps ready to be
carried away on a big raft to a neighbouring island. Loutfi
estimated that they had broken up enough hawitta dressing
stones to build four houses. The atoll chief put the two men
under arrest. At our suggestion the President had already
issued a new law forbidding further destruction of ancient
monuments of any sort. The two men said in their defence that
people had to build houses somehow, and it was forbidden also
to cut down the leaves of the palm trees, which were reserved
for building tourist houses on the islands around Male. To cut
coral from the reef was a much more difficult job than smashing
up old pagan ruins. Besides, it was no longer any secret that
breaking up the barrier reef had begun to cause havoc on the
coast with the loss of breeding grounds of inshore fish. When
arrested, the two men showed no sign of either remorse or
dismay and Loutfi commented, with a smile, that it was now
their turn to benefit from temporary exile on some other island.
The area around the big hawitta, where those two limestone
prospectors had made their harvest, was referred to by the
islanders as [hu Ma-Miskit which Loutfi translated as the ‘Old
151
The Maldive Mystery
Big Mosque’. This name seemed misleading for something

which was obviously a Buddhist temple complex. But on re-
checking Bell’s record the reason became clear. At that time he
had seen here the ruins of the island’s first mosque, Ihu Miskit,
which he translated as ‘The Former Mosque’. It had rested on
the base, still in excellent preservation, of what Bell identified
as the priory of the Buddhist monks. During our visit these
ruins had either been broken up by limestone hunters or had
become totally buried in dense undergrowth. Clearly, however,
according to Bell, this first mosque on Gan had been built on
foundations already existing from an earlier religious structure,
precisely as we had found to be the case with the first mosque
on Nilandu.
There was another reason to suspect that the Buddhists had
earlier done the same when they arrived, that is, using the
groundwork of still earlier builders. In fact, there was a strong
parallel with the large hawitta on Fua Mulaku, of which the
islanders sang that it had been created by the Redin, and then
built by the Buddhist Singalese. Bell had found that this Gan
hawitta had carried a Buddhist dome and Buddhist statues,
yet he put on record that ‘no tradition exists regarding this
mound, beyond the attribution of its construction to so-called
eReding].”
The Redin were not Buddhists. Nobody in the Maldives
confused Redin with the Buddhist Singalese. I sat down on the
top of this colossal monument and tried to reassess what seemed
to be conflicting leads in Maldive prehistory. Redin from the
north, or Buddhists from the east? Perhaps both. We knew,
from the demonic images and Shiva bronze figurine, that the
Buddhists had not been alone in reaching the Maldives before
the Moslems came.
From the top of this former stupa I had a wide view over the
ocean. The road was open to these islands from any direction.
The Redin could indeed have come here from the north,
and built this colossal mound as a stone-faced hawitta. The
Buddhists could then have come from the east, conquered the
islands, and put a stupa dome on the Redin hawitta. Last of all
were the Arabs. They came from the north in the Redin’s wake.
They stripped the stupa to build their mosque on the founda-
tion of the Buddhist monastery, and left the naked rubble fill of
152
the Redin hawitta as the shapeless, man-made hill on which I

was sitting.
I scrambled down the steep talus slope to the others who were
still exploring the area. We returned to Mukuri Magu village
and, with our landing barge, followed the coast of Gan about 1.5
kilometres (1 mile) south-westwards. Then we walked for about
ten minutes along a trail between coconut palms and high
undergrowth into the Kuruhinna district. Here we came to a
small temple mound referred to by our guides as Bombaro.
Bombaro means ‘round’ and enough was left of this structure for
us to see part of a perfectly round base supporting a wall
fragment of elegantly shaped stones still standing higher than
ourselves.
The whole building had been solid, filled with coral stones.
This was easy to detect as Bell had been here before us and had
dissected the ancient structure, right into its centre. On the
north-west side, opposite Bell’s dig, a ramp ran high up the
wall. This was a most peculiar structure, and by far the best
preserved we had seen. Bell referred to it as ‘Mumbaru Sthupa’.
We cut away enough of the crooked branches and heavy
undergrowth to see as much as possible of the remains. I
marvelled at seeing such a sophisticated piece of architecture in
the Maldive jungle, and recognised some of the fine ornamental
carvings we had dug up around our sandy mound on Nilandu.
Here were examples even of the elegant type of triglyf and
metope-like motif. None of us was sufficiently familiar with the
various aspects of Buddhist architecture to identify these ruins
merely from what we saw, but this had been Bell’s own subject.
He had come from Sri Lanka as an expert on Buddhist buildings
to see if he could find something familiar here. He had found the
large Gan hawitta so badly destroyed that there was nothing to
identify but a few traces of its former dome. This prompted him
to identify the mound as a former stupa, and as the oldest form
of stupa known on Sri Lanka. He suggested a period ending
about ap 500.
The little structure we were now admiring also had the
remains, according to Bell, of a dome which matched the Sri
Lanka norm, but this was not true of the well-preserved walls
underneath it. This lower part he termed an exceptional con-
struction. In fact, it was not at all the kind of temple Bell
153
The Maldive Mystery ——_—_
anticipated: ‘the compact little sthupa at Kuruhinna belongs

architecturally, as a complete structure, to a type apparently
unique whether in Ceylon or India’.”
If the Buddhists had built no structure like this either in Sri
Lanka or in India, who then had designed the plans for this
building? Could it be that the big stupa on this same island had
been built with a similar unconforming substructure before it
was reduced to its present shapeless state? If not, then this was
an indication that two distinct architectural types of temple
building had reached the Maldives in pre-Moslem times.
It was tempting to ask: was this fine little temple a Buddhist
dome built on top of a pre-Buddhist construction?
Filled with fresh food for thought we returned to the launch.
On our way back to the Golden Ray we passed three boys who
were punting along the lagoon with a remarkably fine log raft.
The logs were slightly curved up in the bow, with the longest in
the middle like the curved fingers of a hand. This was precisely
the custom shown in the earliest drawing of a balsa raft from the
coast of Peru. This raft was very professionally built with cross
beams and ingenious lashings, and clearly it had not been built
by the boys who now landed their craft and put it ashore next to
a larger one of the very same type which belonged to a fisher-
man. Such rafts had been very common throughout the Maldives
until recent years. They were still preferred to dhonis when it
came to crossing reefs and shallows with heavy cargo. They
were built from very light wood and were known as kando fati,
where kando simply meant ‘log’, and fati was translated as ‘lying
one by one’.
When we left next morning, we were never again to see such
well-preserved hawittas until we reached the one we were to
excavate ourselves on Gaaf-Gan.
From the cluster of former Buddhist centres on the Laamu atoll,

which had begun with Isdu in the eastern extremity, we con-
tinued with Golden Ray southwards inside the same lagoon.
Other small islands followed in a close chain on the same reef.
First we stopped at Funadu, where Loutfi had to discuss another
new school project with some 800-900 inhabitants. There was
nothing for us to see on this island, they said, so while waiting
we strolled in the clean and well-brushed village streets. On the
154
wall of a woodcarver’s tidy house was a sign in Divehi letters

which Abdul translated as: ‘To spit in front of the house is not a
nice thing so for you I inform this. Abdu Rahiim Ali Finihiage.’
Further down the road was the village mosque. Not old. Built
about ap 1500, or contemporary with Columbus. But inside the
mosque was a corridor surrounding a smaller and older mosque
enclosed as a shrine inside the big one. And this was really
beautiful. The walls were shining smooth as if composed of
large sheets of polished white marble, cut and fitted to perfec-
tion. As if the fingerprint fittings of larger and smaller blocks
mortised into the edges and corners were not sufficient chal-
lenge to the mason, hé had in places cut a square hole as big as a
postcard into the middle of a block only to patch it up again with
a small stone shaped to ft with minute precision.
Had these walls been built by a Moslem who had inherited
the skills from his island predecessors? Or was this part of a
Buddhist or Redin building converted into what became the
first mosque on Funadu island? We could not give the answer.
We found several pre-Moslem temple stones with mouldings
casually reused in garden walls on this island. But knowing that
temple stones were smashed and carried from one Moslem
island to the next, we could not tell whether or not they came
from former buildings on this same island.
At the southern extremity of the Laamu atoll we reached the
exit where the lagoon opened into the One-and-Half-Degree
Channel. Two islands flanked this exit, Hitadu to the west,
which was a Redin island, and Gaadu to the east. We stopped
first at Gaadu. The atoll chief was still with us and he confided
that two bronze buddus had been found here by a person
digging foundations for a house.
We had tea and turtle egg cake in the island chief’s house and
were then taken on a walk in the forest. We were shown no less
than three different hawittas on this island, all robbed of facing
stones and in very poor condition. Worked stones lay scattered
about, one of which was beautifully decorated with the lotus
motif. Another, carved with horizontal and vertical curves
inside and out, precisely like the block of an igloo, had surely to
be part of a former dome or beehive-shaped building.
In the spacious and clean village street a boy came out of his
home of woven coconut leaves and showed us a basket full of
155
The Maldive Mystery
white cowrie shells the size of small birds’ eggs. This was the
first time we had seen in quantity what used to be the most
important trade item of the Maldives in former times. The boy
thrust his hands into the contents of his basket and let the little
empty mollusc shells fall through his fingers as if they were
silver coins. Indeed this is precisely what they had been in the
Maldives since before written history.
Although he clearly treasured his basketful of ‘boli’, neither
he nor his family could imagine how much this little mollusc
meant in our efforts to trace the capacity and range of early
Maldive voyagers.
We were not to see any more cowrie shells in the Maldives
except the handfuls which other little boys picked up for our
curiosity along the beaches. But in Bell’s time they were still
common currency within the group and he mentions that, at the
turn of the last century, each man on Isdu had to pay 18,000
cowries in tax to the Sultan for himself and one wife.”
Both Bell and Maloney stressed the extreme importance of the
cowrie shell in the early economic life of these islanders. The
cowries had placed the Maldives on the map of the outside
world, even before their own written history began. The fact
that this archipelago functioned as a sort of bank or mint for
the surrounding continental nations impressed the business
oriented Arabs, even before they brought the Moslem faith
there.
The Arabs had barely started to take over the ancient trade
routes off the coasts of India when Sulaiman the Merchant, in
the period ap 850-900, recorded how travellers had visited the
Maldives and witnessed the importance of the cowrie shells. He
first stated that there was an ocean on either side of India and
that between these two oceans lay numerous islands.
They say that their number goes up to 1900. These islands

separate two seas. They are governed by awoman . .Inthese
islands, where a woman rules, cocoanut is cultivated. These
islands are separated from one another by a distance of two,
three or four parasangs [about six to fourteen miles]. They are
all inhabited and they grow the cocoanut-tree in all of them.
The wealth of the people is constituted by cowries, their
queen amasses large quantities of these cowries in the royal
156
depots. They say that there is not in existence a people more

industrious than these islanders.”
In the early tenth century we learn from El Mas‘udi that

cowrie shells were cultivated in the Maldives: and about 1030
Al-Biruni wrote the same, and added that these islands were
called the ‘Cowrie Islands’. In the twelfth century Al Idrisi
remarked that the trade of the Maldives consisted of cowrie
shells.* By 1343, when the great Arab traveller Ibn Battuta came
to spend a long time in the Maldives, he wrote:
The money of the islanders consists of ‘Wada’. This is the

name of a mollusc, collected in the sea and placed in pits dug
out on the beach. Its flesh decays and only the white shell
remains. A hundred of them is called siya, and 700 fal; 12,000
are called kotta, and 100,000 bostu. Bargains are struck through
the medium of these shells at the rate of 4 bostu to a dinar of
gold. Often they are of less value, such as 12 bostu to a dinar.
The islanders sell them for rice to the people of Bengal, where
also they are used for money. They are sold in the same way to
the people of Yemen, who use them for ballast in their ships
in place of sand. These shells serve also as a medium of
exchange with the negroes in their native country. I have seen
them sold, at Mali and at Juju, at the rate of 1,150 to a dinar.”
Ma Huan, a Chinese Mosiem who served with Cheng Ho’s

expedition to the Indian Ocean in 1433, wrote a book on his
return to China. He sailed direct from Sumatra to the Maldives
in ten days and from there he sailed on to Mogadishu. His map
gives an error for Male of only eight seconds, but what is
remarkable is his statement that Maldive cowries in heaps are
sold to Bengal as well as to Thailand.”
At the turn of the fifteenth century, coinciding with the
discovery of America, Vasco da Gama and the first Europeans
entered the Indian Ocean when the Maldives were still func-
tioning as a cowrie shell bank. The Portuguese now tried to
wrest the trade monopoly in the area from the Arabs who had
by then held it for half a millennium. During his services in
the east between 1501 and 1517, a Portuguese soldier, Duarte
Barbosa, wrote about the Maldives: ‘At these islands is much
157
dried fish, which is exported; as also some little shells in which

is great traffic with Cambay and Bengal, where they are used for
petty cash, being considered better than copper.”
Shortly after, in a book published in 1563, J. de Barros, the
historian of Portuguese India, also pointed out the great import-
ance of cowrie shells from the Maldives in the maritime com-
merce of the Indian Ocean:
With these shells for ballast many ships are laden for Bengal
and Siam, where they are used for money, just as we use small
copper money for buying things of little value. And even to
this kingdom of Portugal, in some years as much as two or
three thousand quintals [100-150 tons] are brought by way of
ballast; they are then exported to Guinea, and the kingdoms
of Benin and Congo, where they are used for money, the
Gentiles of the interior in those parts making their treasure of
it. Now the manner in which the islanders gather these shells
is this: they make large bushes of palm leaves tied together so
as not to break, which they cast into the sea. To these the
shellfish attach themselves in quest of food; and when the
bushes are all covered with them, they are hauled ashore and
the creatures collected.”
As late as 1611, Francois Pyrard wrote that he witnessed that

thirty to forty ships per year left the Maldives with cowries for
Bengal.” While early Europeans saw all those ships leaving the
Maldives for Bengal on the north-eastern extreme of India,
others recorded that they were in demand just as far up on the
north-west coast. An early British party thus reported in 1683
that they bought 60 tons of cowries in the Maldives. Only by the
force of their guns could they obtain ‘permission’ to load the
cowries and take them on their own ships to the old Maldive
market place of Surrat in the Gulf of Cambay.” From this time
on cowries began to lose their value as a medium of exchange in
the Indian Ocean.
The little pale shells which the boy showed us had thus
indeed impressed the early merchants. Not for their modest
beauty; the large cowries, like the leopard shell and countless
other molluscs in this ocean, were far more pretty than these. It
158
was the Maldive monopoly as currency provider that gave the

islands their place in early records.
‘This is Maldive history,’ said Loutfi as he squatted beside the
boy and scooped up handfuls of cowrie shells which he poured
back into the basket. ‘This was the wealth of our nation since the
days our civilisation began.’
‘Since the days of the Indus Valley civilisation,’ I could have
added if Ihad known then what I was to learn a year later. Only
then did I revisit the Gulf of Cambay where the early written
records told me that cowrie shells were shipped from the
Maldives. Only then did I come back to the prehistoric port of
Lothal, the harbour city of Mohenjo-Daro, capital of the Indus
Valley civilisation. Lothal had been the most active port in the
Gulf of Cambay, and probably of all Asia, between about 2500
Bc and 1500 Bc, wheft the Indus Valley civilisation collapsed.
From then on the port was forgotten, buried in sand and
silt, until rediscovered and excavated this century by modern
archaeologists.
As I came back to revisit the little museum built at this old
port I noticed something in a glass case which I had overlooked
before. There, among the treasures excavated at the Lothal
wharfs was a hoard of small white cowrie shells, Cypraea
Moneta, the very species the Maldive boy had shown me in his
basket. As Lothal had been a dead port since 1500 Bc, this little
hoard, if nothing else; showed that the tradition of the value of
cowries had survived in the Indian Ocean for more than 3,000
years.
Did the first settlers of the Maldives bring with them some
special appreciation for cowrie shells from their former father-
land?
Had the historically recorded import of cowrie shells to
the Gulf of Cambay area continued uninterrupted through
the subsequent centuries after the fall of the Indus Valley
civilisation?
These were questions easier to ask than to answer. Certain
was it that the Maldive shipbuilders mastered the art of build-
ing seaworthy vessels before they settled these islands. And
there was no reason to suspect that the ships that brought them
there, as ready developed master architects and temple builders,
had been less seaworthy than those which later brought them to
159
The Maldive Mystery
the Gulf of Cambay when the early Arabs and Portuguese

arrived. Directly or indirectly, the cowrie shells of Lothal had a
bearing on the mystery of Maldive prehistory.
I asked the boy what he was going to do with all his cowrie
shells. We learned that his father was going to sell them in Male.
‘From there they will be exported to merchants in India,’ ex-
plained Loutfi.
‘What for?’ I asked, but nobody had the answer.
In the afternoon we moved to anchor off Hitadu, the Redin

island across the narrow outlet from the lagoon. From the deck
we could see now at least a dozen islands running along the reef
until they disappeared on the horizon, while the One-and-Half-
Degree Channel lay open outside the lagoon.
Loutfi and the atoll chief confirmed what the local islanders
told us, there was no archaeology to be seen on this island, even
though it was a Redin island. We therefore spent the afternoon
in the village, while Martin took a nap on the ship. When he
woke up he decided to join us and was set ashore in the launch
where he found nobody but an islander of his own age. Trying
to locate us, Martin assumed we were visiting some ruins and
by now he had learnt one Maldive word, which he told the
islander: ‘hawitta’. The islander took him by his hand and with
no further conversation the two walked through the village and
far into the forest where Martin was shown a hawitta, but
without seeing any traces of us. He returned to the village
streets where he could not miss us for long, and asked why we
had left the ruins so quickly. Ruins? There are no ruins on this
island. Martin was triumphant. He had found the ruins, and we
all followed him as our guide.
We came to an old burial place closed in by a high stone fence
ornamented with a large number of small white flags fluttering
in the breeze. Some early Moslem of great importance had been
buried here. From this high, white-washed wall a clear open
road led directly down to the lagoon, and outside the gate lay
two rows of some of the finest carved stones we were ever to see.
Some of them were pedestals of large round columns so beauti-
fully ornamented that they could have come from some ancient
cathedral except that none had ever existed in the Maldives.
Other stones were large cornerpieces of elaborate doorways,
160
everything testifying to the former existence of some magnifi-

cent building of which no foundations could be seen.
About 90 metres (100 yards) away, however, hidden in dense
undergrowth, the otherwise flat ground surface rose to a sandy
hill — the stripped remains of a former hawitta. A central
depression on top indicated that the mound had been plun-
dered. Since nobody could give us the name we termed it
‘Martin’s Hawitta’.
That evening we had a great celebration on board in honour
of our intrepid discoverer, but those who tended to feel the sea
went to bed early. We had to set out that same night across the
wide open One-and-Half-Degree Channel in order to reach the
reefs on the other side before sunset the next day.
-
Pat
161
CHAPTER VIII
Return to the Equatorial

Channel
The Lost Inscriptions
BLUE OVER, blue under. Intensive light. The fine line where the
blue above met the blue below rose slowly above deck level on
one side to sink again and come up as slowly on the other side.
Those who were suffering from the gentle rolling fumbled for
anything they could hang on to and staggered below. Others
blessed the fresh sea breeze in the shade of the canvas. Like a
cradle or a rocking chair, a friendly rolling ship allows the mind
to relax.
We needed this break away from land. Away from all the
stones. We had been overwhelmed by all we had seen in the last
few days. Indispensable clues to the riddle of the Maldives were
churning about in our minds’ computers, requiring time for
digestion. Time to draw a deep breath before we dived into
more revelations. For we were wasting no time.
We were now sailing into the real realm of the sun-god. It was
unbearably hot outside the canvas shade. The sun would be at
full power when we landed on the next islands ahead. Just
below the horizon in front of us lay the large atoll of Suvadiva,
also known as Huvadu, alias Gaaf. That is the sun’s real domain.
That is where it lured the early sun-worshippers to sail into the
Equatorial Channel. That was where the unknown architects of
the past had quarried limestone blocks to build the big ‘sun-
temple’ on Gaaf-Gan.
We were still on the trail of the Redin. We would actually be
calling at two other Redin islands on the north and east side of
the Gaaf ring-reef before we reached Gan on its southern
162
Return to the Equatorial Channel
extremity. The ring-reef of Gaaf stretched all the way from the
One-and-Half-Degree Channel down to the Equatorial Channel.
Gaaf-Gan was uninhabited, but the two other Redin islands we
would pass on the way were both inhabited. The first had no
traces of any earlier population, but the second one had, Loutfi
said. t
The first was Viringili, or sometimes Viligili. We entered Gaaf
lagoon through the northern reef and anchored off that island
just as ‘Mangiare’, as we now called him, cleared the lunch table.
This was the present seat of the atoll office, with a population of
some 1,200. There had been a big hawitta on this island, said
Loutfi, and there was’still a street in the village called Hawitta
magu, which meant Hawitta road. It ended at the coast where
the former hawitta had been lost to the sea.
With some doubt in our minds we accepted Loutfi’s assur-
ance that there was nothing of interest left for us to see on this
island, and the rest of us remained on board as he and Wahid
were set ashore with three of the crew to fetch rainwater, fresh
fruit and dried fish.
Because of many coral reefs we left the Gaaf lagoon again only
to enter it once more in the late afternoon through another
opening near Kondai, the next Redin island. We counted
twenty-two low palm islands around us on the horizon as we
dropped anchor off Kondai. Nothing could stop us from going
ashore here when the island chief came out in his dhoni and
told us of a strange bird they had just found in the forest.
‘A bird?’
‘A bird.’
‘With feathers?’
‘With feathers. But of stone.’
Full of curiosity and expectation we jumped into the dhoni
and landed in Kondai together with the chief.
Ashore was a village of some 250 souls. Many of them had
seen the stone bird, but nobody knew where it was now. It was
gone. The man who had found it in the forest had already lost it
in the village. The stone bird had simply disappeared.
But Redin? Had anybody something to tell us about the
Redin?
Redin? They had never heard the word. There had been
nothing on this island before the mosque was built.
163
The Maldive Mystery
‘Patience,’ said Loutfi in a low voice. Quietly he offered to

guide us into the forest while there was still daylight. We could
come back and look for the bird later.
We crossed a field of banana plants and headed for the
uncleared jungle. The sun was already low as we left the last hut
behind us for a twenty-minute walk through dense tropical
forest to reach what Loutfi wanted to show us. Two of the village
men with long jungle knives followed silently, no doubt driven
more from curiosity than by a desire to clear our path. Thick
moss-green limbs of jungle trees stretched above our heads
with their burden of parasitic ferns and orchids which tempted
even Loutfi to cut off samples for his garden in Male. The trail
branched, and branched again, until we entered trackless
thickets and, seemingly only by chance, came upon a totally
crumbled temple mound. It stood no higher than a man and
measured some 10 metres (about 33 feet) across. A crater on top
told of a former dig.
The two Kondai islanders had nothing to say. They acted as if
they had never been to this site before. But asked if the place
had a name, one of them mumbled:
‘Hawitta.’
About 90 metres (100 yards) away lay another mound of
slightly larger size, also completely covered by jungle. Among
the coral rubble a few worked stones could be seen, some even
with plaster mouldings, but all black and soft with age.
The name of this place?
Also just ‘Hawitta’.
We barely got a glimpse of a third mound when we had to
search for a quick way out of the thickets. It had become too
dark. The jungle knives came into their own. Loutfi explained
that the village people rarely had any reason to come into these
thickets, therefore hardly any of them seemed to have known
about these things when he himself stumbled upon them twelve
years ago. The island settlement had been on the opposite side
of the island ever since the people of Kondai embraced Islam.
For some reason which we never learned, the entire island had
been depopulated about twenty years ago. The present popula-
tion had returned to the island and resettled in their abandoned
homes as recently as 1975.
The sun set and left us in the dark, so we cut our way out to the
164
oe

——
nearest beach and followed the open sands around the coast
back to the village.
There was little to see but stars and silhouettes of roofs as we
fumbled our way into the unlit village streets where we stopped
among dark walls to give Loutfi a last chance to locate the stone
bird. A growing crowd of silent people came slowly out of the
huts to stare at us as much as the sparse light from the stars
permitted. They seemed to have the night vision of bats and
owls, however, unspoiled as they were by sharper lamps than
the little flame on their own oi! burners. Even Loutfi seemed to
have no trouble moving about as he left us in the crowd and
disappeared in the dark night.
Somebody had come out with a smali oil lamp flickering in
the wind. In the faint Jight I could see a happy flash of triumph
in Loutfi’s face when he finally came back and grabbed my arm.
He whispered that he had found the bird. But perhaps it wasn’t
a bird. Maybe it was the head of an elephant. I was to follow
him.
We sneaked away together. As Loutfi had suspected, he had
found the sculpture in the hut of the caller of the mosque. That is
where we went. This religious leader confessed that he had
hidden the stone figure merely to save it from destruction by the
village population who argued that the Prophet forbade pagan
images of any kind.
Before I knew it I was holding in my hands a limestone
sculpture as big as a cock and black with age. It was a head. I
could see an almond-shaped eye staring at me with a devilish
expression. It didn’t look like a bird. In the dark night it seemed
dominated by a coiled up snout that looked more like an
elephant’s trunk than the hooked beak of a bird of prey. The
shrewd expression in the eyes was also that of an elephant, yet
there were clearly feathers to be seen on top of the head and all
around. But there was also a row of large molar teeth exposed
below the coiled up snout. It was some sort of demonic mon-
strosity, the head of a grotesque monster broken off at the neck.
I could not help feeling that I had seen something like this
before. In some museum, perhaps. Loutfi had never seen any-
thing like it in the Maldives. The caller of the mosque had no
comment. He was only too pleased when we carried the heathen
image away.
165
The Maldive Mystery
Bjorn Bye was soon beside us with matches.

‘I have seen many heads just like that!’ he exclaimed. ‘In
Nepal!’
Nepal, the mountain kingdom in the Himalayas, is as far
above and distant from an oceanic atoll as anyone could be. It is
also the only nation in the world where the state religion is pure
and unmixed Hindu.
‘Hindu!’ The others had now joined us. ‘That’s a Hindu
Makara head!’ said Skjélsvold.
We began to perceive what the caller of the mosque had
passed into my hands. It was the head of the Hindu water-god
Makara, an ever-present demon decorating the entrances to
Hindu temples and sculpted as projecting waterspouts in sacred
Hindu fountains. For a few days we had been so absorbed by
Bell’s Buddhist visions and the stupa complex on the last atoll
that we had forgotten that Maldive prehistory had room for still
other religions. As the Buddhist religion had been replaced by
Islam over 800 years ago, this Hindu sculpture could well be
1,000 years old. I held it as tenderly as if it were a baby and did
not let it go until the archaeologists wrapped it in cotton wool
and stored it safely away, in a case in the hull of Golden Ray, for
transport to Male Museum.
The Maldive crew on board nodded in agreement when we
told them that the stone head was Makara. ‘Yes, makara,’ they
confirmed. And yet none of them had ever seen or heard of
anything like it. In their own language, however, the word
makara survived as the term for ‘bad’ or ‘evil’. Even the head of
Buddha or of an angel would be makara to them since Moham-
med had forbidden portraits of any living creature.
The man who had brought this head to the village willingly
took us along to the place where he had found it, not far from the
village cultivated area. This time we entered the jungle well
provided with flashlights and a kerosene lamp. He led us to a
spot cleared of undergrowth where we wriggled in between
lianas, fallen trees and stems. The deep black forest soil had
been freshly dug and thoroughly disturbed. I picked up a
beautiful little stone dish once probably used for incense
or offerings. The whole area was littered with carved lime-
stone fragments and sherds of hard plaster with parallel
imprints from cane walls or roofs. All the big blocks had been
166
Fed
dug up and removed, no doubt looted for house building.

There was nothing left to indicate the presence of a former
mound. How much havoc the plunderer of this site had accom-
plished was anybody’s guess, but our guide pleaded ignorance
of the freshly announced law protecting pre-Moslem ruins. We
ought to have denounced him and got him a prison term,
Maldive fashion. Instead we gave him a harsh warning. And a
recompense for having saved the Makara head.
As the sun rose we were on our way straight south again for
Gan. We remained in the sheltered Gaaf lagoon, alert for coral
reefs and changing sand-bars, and headed for the southern end
of the ring-reef. Two low islands, one short and one long, rose
into sight in front of us. Gadu and Gan. Gadu crammed with
houses. Gan covered with jungle and coconut palms.
Our binoculars told us that news of our arrival had preceded
us. A crowd of people had already come across the narrow
channel to Gan from Gadu, and when we got close enough they
made signs to direct us to the best spot for anchoring. There was
shelter and deep water just off the sandy isthmus where they
were standing. Ocean swells came rolling in from the white-
capped Equatorial Channel outside, and broke like cascades as
they entered the lagoon over the shallow coral reef separating
the two islands.
As we jumped ashore from the barge a tall fellow with a
familiar face stepped forth from the waiting crowd and greeted
us one by one with both hands. It was our old friend, the
‘owner’ of the island. We were back on familiar ground.
Radio Male had announced our planned return to Gaaf-Gan.
Hearing this, the ‘owner’ had taken matters in his own hands.
For three days now he had brought twenty men across from
Gadu to clear trails and begin opening up the jungle around the
great hawitta.
Not a little uneasy about this unexpected enterprise, we set
out on the hour-long walk, eager to see that nothing had been
disturbed. The narrow trail had been broadened considerably,
but everything was still so familiar to Bj6rn and me that we
almost felt like greeting the big flying foxes as they took off from
the palms.
The ‘owner’s’ twenty men all carried jungle knives, long-
handled axes and spades. One of them even carried a heavy iron
167
The Maldive Mystery
pry-bar across his shoulder. This annoyed the archaeologists.

Archaeology is always conducted carefully and delicately, with
little trowels and brushes, not with brutal iron crowbars. When
I tried to tell our Maldive friends that we needed no digging tool
as gross as this, it was gently explained to me that the crowbar
was not for use on the hawitta. It was brought only to make a
hole in the ground for private use. It was a sort of portable toilet
for the workmen.
We reached the treeless spot with the stone-lined well where
the forest opened up and gave view of the Equatorial Channel.
As our trail forked off inland we began to smell the smoke of
burning wood. When we approached the site where the jungle
hid the sun-temple, fire was crackling and smoke rose above the
forest roof. A few of the workmen had rushed ahead of the party.
In a small clearing they were throwing trunks and branches on
to a camp fire to chase the mosquitos away. Behind them rose
the steep hill. I barely had time to get an impression that
nothing seemed to be damaged, when Johansen behind me
burst out in excitement:
‘Ai-ai-ai!l’
The two cameramen were straightaway in action — Bengt with
his microphone under the noses of the archaeologists to get
their first comments, Ake with his camera panning from excited
faces up to the summit of the artificial hill.
For some seconds Bjorn and I remained speechless. Clearly
we had not been able to convey the magnitude of this mound to
our companions. We had not seen it this way ourselves. The
jungle in front of the structure had now been cleared away on
the east side, and from there a broad belt had been laid bare up
the steep slope of the mound from the base to the top. It was
colossal.
Skj6lsvold and Johansen now began to grasp the magnitude
of the archaeological task awaiting them. Here was a man-made
structure of a size comparable to the largest royal tombs of the
Vikings. Years would be needed to complete a professional job
here, not merely a few days.
‘We need not go into the mound now, Arne,’ I explained
when I read Skjdlsvold’s mind. ‘We have to come back.’
“Yes, but we have time to check the shape of the foundation,’
he answered, relieved. It was he who would be in charge of the
168
ot
Return to the Equatorial Channel—
excavations. ‘We may even find some organic material to give us

a carbon dating.’
‘Sure,’ said Johansen optimistically. ‘Anything we find will
be the first archaeological dates from the Maldives.’
A quick trip around the hill assured us that no harm had been
caused by the workmen. They had just cut down trees and
cleared vegetation. The last time we came we had merely seen
glimpses of dark coral blocks lost in the greenery above our
heads. This time we could see the side where we had climbed,
right up to the colossal kandu tree that still stood untouched on
top. There were others somewhat smaller down the slopes, even
in the cleared strip, left because it would be quite a job for these
people to fell them with their home-made axes. Surely the large
roots must have harmed the structure. We had therefore brought
with us a long loggers’ saw. But the giant on the summit was too
magnificent. We gave orders to let it stand. It was too huge to
grow any bigger, so the roots down through the coral fill had
probably done whatever damage they would do. But surely the
colossal dimensions of this tree made the hill look smaller.
As the clearing proceeded all around, the profile of the hill
showed up on all sides. Even the men from Gadu were visibly
impressed. Their own mosque was dwarfed in comparison to
this structure. They made no attempt to give the honour of this
work to their own ancestors. This was the work of the Redin,
and the Redin to them were a former people with more than
ordinary human capacities. Ordinary people, such as those
living on these atolls today, they said, had enough to do
struggling to wrest a mere living out of fish and coconuts. None
of them would find time to collaborate in an enterprise like this.
We agreed. And the first conclusion the archaeologists
reached, even before a shovel was put into the ground, was that
the builders of this hawitta must have had access to something
the present population lacked. They must have had intimate
links with the outside world, and support from somewhere
abroad. Whoever the immigrant Redin had been, they must
have maintained a surplus in their economy permitting such an
extravagance as the erection of religious shrines of this magni-
tude. Stripped of all its former facing stones and elegant decora-
tion, and deprived of either temple or spire on top, the solid
edifice still stood as high as any tumulus commemorating the
169
The Maldive Mystery
greatest prehistoric kings in Europe, as bulky as an average

Mayan pyramid or a ziggurat in Mesopotamia. Yet the area of
land supporting it was tiny, and barely rose above sea level.
Sand and reefs, deprived of riches of any kind. No metals or
precious stones. No fertile fields. Cowrie shells, yes, and the
almighty sun. The midday sun beamed from its zenith, and the
natural channel linking east to west ran along the shore.
Wher the hill was laid bare there was still no indication that
either Buddhists or Hindus had made use of this mound,
although they must have been here as they had been on so many
of the other islands nearby. The Moslems had clearly carried
away all the fine facing stones visible above ground. As we
searched every trace of worked stone among the coral rubble
forming the steep talus of the hill, we continued to find some of
the squared blocks with sun-reliefs — high reliefs of the sun
sometimes with, and sometimes without, wings. Certainly the
sun had been the centre of attention among the builders of this
hill. We had not seen sun-symbols on the hawitta we dug on
Nilandu, nor among the ravaged Buddhist stupas we visited on
the various islands on our way down to the Equatorial Channel.
Only here on the equator. Here, indeed, where we had first
come to look for possible traces of sun-worshippers.
As we extended the clearing and searched all around the hill,
we noted that the sun-decorated blocks were present on all
slopes except on the northern side. On the side facing north
they were conspicuously absent. Johansen attributed this to the
fact that people coming from the northern hemisphere asso-
ciated the sun only with the east, south and west, never with any
other direction, although here on the equator the sun seasonally
shone even from the north.
It was an interesting observation. If Johansen’s reasoning was
followed, this would exclude an arrival of these sun-worship-
pers from any parts of southern Asia, from any part of the
tropical belt which extended to 23°28’N. The Indus Valley and
Mesopotamia lay beyond this tropical area, however, and any
sun-worshippers in these northern culture centres would never
see the sun to the north.
At the foot of the hill we knew that straight walls would be
preserved under the fallen debris. The archaeologists therefore
began their work by carefully lifting up all the loose blocks that
170
aad
had slid down from above and covered the base. Each stone was
carefully inspected for evidence of carving before it was carried
away and discarded. We had seen a section of a straight wall on
our previous visit of discovery. And now others appeared. As
we suspected, it was the late Moslem removal of the retaining
walls that had caused the core fill to slide down and form a
round hill. But before the Moslems arrived the lower part of the
temple was already buried in a growing layer of forest soil and
wind blown sand.
When we removed the fallen rubble and began excavating the
sides of the building, we found the full lengths of the buried
base walls were indéed preserved. But to our bewilderment the
walls seemed to take unexpected turns. At the first corner which
we exposed the wall-turned left, and at the next, when we
expected it to turn left again to form a square, it turned right. We
began to suspect some sort of irregular or star-shaped founda-
tion. But at the end of the first day’s work it was clear that the
main building was perfectly square and oriented to the sun.
What had at first seemed to be irregularities were the adjoining
walls of ramps centrally placed on all four sides, just as so
commonly seen on Mexican pyramids.
As work began on the second day the outline of the pyramidal
structure, with its four ceremonial ramp approaches, was
evident. And in the process of clearing we had already sorted
out from the fallen rubble a large collection of shaped and
decorated blocks. The solar symbol in high relief dominated,
but now we had also found suns carved so small that there was
room for two on the same stone. One cornerstone had four such
suns, two vertically above each other on each side of the corner.
Particularly artistic were some stones decorated with pairs of
suns intercepted by triple staffs, running as a continuous
pattern.
One small limestone corner fragment was so completely
covered by a complex design of tiny suns, indentations and
rows of miniature columns, that only a highly skilled designer
could have composed it and only a master craftsman carved it.
The carving went deep into the stone and all the details were so
minute that it had to be part of some exceedingly elegant frieze,
or perhaps the corner knocked off some small shrine. There
were also fallen cornice slabs with different designs. Some had
171
The Maldive Mystery
the by now familiar band of lotus petals. Others were deeply

indented in the manner resembling the classical Greek type of
triglyf and metope.
Most astonishing was an elaborate building block that began
to show itself frequently at the south-eastern corner of the
pyramid. The first we noticed of this type had all its deep
cavities so thickly clotted with soil and white plaster that, until
cleaned with trowel and brush, it seemed to be a plain squared
building block. Then we suddenly saw a stylised cranium
seemingly staring at us with the hollow eye-sockets of a death
skull. The staring impression was caused by ridges running
around the eye-sockets like goggles, elegant goggles with a
straight upper rim, leaving an eerie expression. The cranial
image was compressed from above. It had a pit for the nasal
opening and no lower jaw. But if these cornerstones had been
placed on top of each other the dense row of square knobs that
were carved as a crown on the skull below would become the
teeth of the one above.
A short bar ran down below each eye-socket, like a flow of
tears, just as the classical tear mark symbolised rain from the
sun-god in the ancient art of Mexico and Peru. In the Mayan
ruins of Chichen Itza I had seen stylised death skulls carved as
building blocks in sun-oriented temple platforms. Pyramids,
ramps, stone skulls with tear marks in sun-oriented temple
walls: perhaps this was enough to make my imagination run
wild. Perhaps these did not symbolise death skulls at all. The
way we held these stones they could not represent anything
else. And our workmen, who had never seen such carvings
before, pointed to their own faces and, eyes closed, made the
signs of cutting off their own heads. But when I later showed a
photograph of one such stone to an archaeologist whose
speciality was the Orient, he turned the photograph upside
down and said the goggle-framed concavities did not represent
eye-sockets at all, but caves with a vaulted roof and flat floor.
Similar motifs were known from religious art in ancient
southern Asia and were interpreted by local scholars as being
symbolic of the caves in which early monks had taken refuge.
But if caves, why always carved in pairs? And the tear marks?
Turned upside down, did each represent a column on top of a
cave? None of us had any explanation. Whatever be the case, in
172
as
Return to the Equatorial Channel—
reconstructing the forgotten past there is always a danger of

being led astray by enthusiasm and preconceived ideas. Certain
it is that these and the many other sculpted stones we saved
from the rubble were carved from splendid designs, and once
upon a time; when all were assembled in the white limestone
walls of this colossal edifice, shining in the sun, it must have
been a sight for the gods.
Now that it lay before us as a lofty heap of rubble it seemed
more a monument to man’s eternal egocentricity. Throughout
the ages men of all creeds have fought those who thought
otherwise. We have always believed, and still do, that We, our
extended ego, are on the right side. We know the only truth.
What We believe, others should believe too. If not, our god
wants us to kill and destroy.
The worshippersof Allah had destroyed what the worship-
pers of the sun had laboriously built here. But surely the
worshippers of Shiva or the worshippers of Buddha must have
been here in between. We checked every stone to try to read the
full story. Our Maldivian friends were as fascinated as we were
by the buried masonry and every sculpted stone that came out
of the ground. Each time we lifted up a block with a new
ornament, they shouted in delight and speeded up the work
with rhythmical Maldive songs. When a small crystal ball
turned up in the biack soil, the shouting rose to a crescendo.
They all assembled in the corner between the ramp and main
wall on the east side where the glittering little thing came forth
from the ground. When it was lifted up like a glass egg they all
began to swing their bodies and sing and clap their hands,
imitating an old wrinkled comedian with a single tooth
and a huge hat who danced solo up on the slope. It was a
wonderful team to work with. Good-humoured, intelligent and
effective. They were quick to grasp the fact that crystal was not
found naturally in the coral atolls of the Maldives, so that this
ball showed contact with the outside world.
‘It is a phallus,’ exclaimed Johansen, and pointed to the
realistic shape with a deep perforation at a flattened base which
indicated that the penis-like object had been set on a stick.
Skjlsvold agreed, but later pointed out that miniature stupas
were carved more or less with this form in ancient Sri Lanka and
on the continent, and used as votive offerings. We all agreed
‘ ibs
The Maldive Mystery
that the stupa itself had a suspiciously phallic form. The stupa
was known to symbolise rebirth, so perhaps it represented the
male phallus rather than the pregnant female womb as has
commonly been suggested.
When we reached the original ground level on which the
hawitta had been built, Skjdlsvold climbed up to measure the
full height. From the top of the mound he took a horizontal
sighting to the hand of Johansen who had climbed a nearby
jungle tree and let his tape measure hang down straight to the
ground. In its present reduced state the remaining structure still
rose 8.5 metres (28 feet) above the ground. The original walls
now completely exposed at the base measured 23 metres X
23 metres (about 75.5 feet square), which gave a ground area for
the pyramid of 529 square metres (5,700 square feet).
During our work we made another interesting discovery. The
temple walls had once been covered by white plaster. A thick
coat of very hard lime plaster still stuck to the most protected
sections. Where the soil had been most humid this covering had
softened and come off. A perfectly preserved section was the
corner where the east side of the ramp adjoined the south wall.
Here the plaster coat was so thick and solid that no contour
could be seen of the stones beneath. This helped us to
understand why we had found crumbling remains of white
plaster plugging up the deep concavities in the ‘skull’ stones.
We also found ‘sun-stones’ with only a segment of the solar disc
visible because plaster still caked the rest. Many building blocks
did indeed appear not to be ornamented until we broke off the
thick plaster cover which hid the decoration from sight.
Why had the ancient sculptors gone to all the trouble of, first,
carving these elaborate motifs, and then hiding them under a
cover of plaster so thick that they could not be seen?
The answer seemed obvious. The original artists had not
smeared the plaster cover over their own decorations. This had
been done by other people with a different creed, who had come
subsequently and remodelled the pyramid for their own use.
Again we encountered this evidence of two different periods
reflected in the religious architecture before the Moslems came
and stopped the use of the hawitta. Originally built for sun-
worship this pyramidal structure had in its last phase been
taken over by people who no longer paid divine honours to the
174
sun. They thus covered up the existing religious symbols to

obtain an all-white, unornamented structure. This was in fact
what the Buddhists had done when they white-plastered over
the whole surface of their large stupas on Sri Lanka.
Important information had been gained merely by clearing the

Gan hawitta. But with the old walls exposed Loutfi and our
Maldivian workmen expected us to dig into the mound, now
that we had the permission to do so. They took it for granted
that we had only come to look for the hidden riches in the
hawitta. But there is more to archaeology than exposing buried
walls and searching for treasures. To their surprise the work-
men were told to sharpen some short sticks which Skjdlsvold
and Johansen then hammered into the level ground outside the
hawitta. The sticks were set as corner marks for very precise one
metre (3.28 feet) squares, and a string was tied between them.
Exactly inside these strings, and nowhere else, digging should
begin, the archaeologists explained to the puzzled islanders. It
clearly made little sense to them why they should dig on one
side of the string and not on the other. Or better still, why not
inside the hawitta?
When they came with their picks and shovels to start digging
within the strings, they got another surprise. They were told to
put their good tools away, and were handed some tiny masons’
trowels instead, not much bigger than spoons. And they were
not even allowed to shove the pointed end into the ground, only
to use the edge to scrape away thin layers of dirt, under rigid
supervision. It must have seemed really silly to them.
These people had known Skjélsvold as an amiable person
with a friendly smile behind his glasses and mighty beard, and
the younger Johansen as a humorist always ready for a joke. But
now, if a trowel dug down instead of scraping evenly, or if it
passed beyond the string, Skjolsvold would shout at them and
Johansen yell in despair. And if someone stepped too close to
the strings so that the edge of the dig broke off and fell down in
the trench, then these two crazy foreigners would become as
upset as if the sand had fallen into their soup. There were
neither smiles nor praise unless the sides of the dig were as
smooth and exact as the floor.
When the measuring stick showed that 5 centimetres (2
175
The Maldive Mystery
inches) had been scraped away, the archaeologists declared a

halt. Much commotion went on before the confused workmen
were allowed to go on scraping deeper. Always 5 centimetres at
a time. Neither more nor less, although they had to reach the
solid island bedrock in the end anyhow.
The eyes of the workmen widened even further when
Skjélsvold stooped in front of their noses only to pick up a tiny
bit of charcoal. He put it ina labelled plastic bag. Then Johansen
picked up some old fish bones and a minute fragment of a
broken pot and saved them too. The workmen now laughed
openly, but went silent and looked really worried on our behalf
when they saw that we were so afraid of missing the smallest bit
of this rubbish that we used a screen of chicken netting to filter
the dirt they had scraped loose.
For fear that the isianders should lose all respect for us and
think we had lost our wits, I called upon Abdul as interpreter to
explain what was happening. The workmen listened with
surprise and interest and, as they grasped the idea, were visibly
impressed.
There were machines in our homeland, we explained to them,
that could tell the age of a piece of bone, shell or charcoal if such
materials were put inside and burnt. It measured a kind of
invisible radiation that came from everything that had once
been alive, plants or animals. We called this method C-14 or
radio-carbon dating, and the answer given would be approxi-
mate, but often less than half a century wrong. The smallest
piece of charred wood or a splinter of a chicken bone could tell
us roughly when the fire had been lit or the chicken eaten.
From now on our Maldivian workmen became men of the
profession, and no piece of organic material the size of a grain of
rice would escape their attention.
But why the broken bits of old pots?
Potsherds cannot be dated by machines, but very often they
can be by human experts. The type of earthenware and the
shape and colour of the pots differ from one part of the world to
the other. Even within the same area the type of pottery often
changes from one century to the next. Human bones and any
parts of beasts and plants may decay and disappear, but
potsherds will last forever. They can only be broken into smaller
pieces. In many cases a little sherd from a broken pot can tell us
176
where and when the pot had been made. I could have explained
that pottery to an archaeologist is what stamps are to a
philatelist, identifiable as to place and time, but I realised that
our audience had never seen a stamp. Never mind, they all used
pottery, imported from India. And they knew potsherds well
enough not to let the smallest fragment escape their attention.
They tried to tell us that they would find the buried potsherds
and bones much faster if they could dig with their own big
tools, like in their taro fields. Why scrape with those little
spoons, and only 5 centimetres at a time?
Not only because fragile objects could be broken by picks and
shovels before they were seen, but also because it was important
to keep a record of how deep everything was found below the
surface. Anything found, say, at the depth of 20 centimetres (8
inches) would be older than what was found only 5 centimetres
down, and oldest of all would be anything found on the rock
bottom. The deeper down the further back in time. As every-
body knew, the freshest humus and the most recent human
waste would always be on top.
The side walls had to be straight and smooth, so the layers
would show up clearly in profile. This would show us if the soil
had been disturbed by someone digging in the past; for in-
stance, a hole would be seen filled with soil or sand of a different
colour than the ground beside it. Like a wall painting, different
types of soil, ashes or sand will show up in layers above each
other. They will tell their own story of climatic changes, forest
fires, sand storms, floods, or various forms of human activity. If
the workmen dug the trench so that the wall became rough and
uneven, none of these natural lines of unwritten history would
show up.
After these explanations, our Maldive helpers were divided
into teams of four, two scraping and two sieving. And no
archaeologist could ask for a more eager, attentive and meticu-
lous group of field workers.
Three days allotted to Gaaf-Gan was only enough to whet the

appetites of the archaeologists. But we had to move on. And just
as sure, we had to come back when we had more time.
As we climbed the hill again and again we did not yet realise
that sculptures of both lion and ox lay buried in the rubble
Wes
The Maldive Mystery
under our feet. But we realised we were climbing a monument

pointing to the main Maldive mystery. This little island did not
offer voyagers an economy permitting such a sophisticated and
impressive temple. With whom had the prehistoric Maldivians
had their political and religious ties resulting in this cultural
extravagance?
As we sat on the top of the hill looking out over the jungle roof
and the more distant crowns of coconut palms, Skjdlsvold
and Johansen both expressed with emphasis the notion I had
long nourished. The geography, the location of these Maldive
islands, perhaps combined with the cowrie shells, had made
them an important port of call or transit station for advanced
civilisations navigating the Indian Ocean in pre-Moslem times.
Vadu was another island west of Gaaf-Gan and on the same
ring-reef. Like Gadu and Gan it was right on the Equatorial
Channel. People were living there, said Loutfi. It was the last of
the Redin islands on this atoll, and it was the very island where
the plaque with the strange inscriptions had been found.
We weighed anchor by sunrise and, navigating carefully in a
curve inside the lagoon, reached Vadu less than two hours later.
We had loaded so many heavy stones on the foredeck that we
had to spend the time of the crossing restowing them to give
even balance to the ship. In Male Museum they would be
protected. Not so exposed on Gan now they were known to
potential house builders from Gadu.
At Vadu the anchor had no sooner rattled to the bottom when
a dhoni came from shore with the island chief. This dark-faced,
broad-built man looked more African than anyone we had seen
on these islands, and we later learnt he was a distant relative of
Loutfi. Yet Loutfi saluted him coldly, and for the first time he did
not even introduce us, although we were set ashore with the
chief. With the big chief walking amidst us mute and sombre,
Loutfi told us bluntly in English that he did not like the man. It
was he who had been ordered to send the written tablet com-
plete to Male. It was complete when Loutfi had seen it where it
was dug up, but broken, and with parts missing, when a dhoni
brought it to Male. The disobedient chief should have been
reported and punished, said Loutfi. But he did not deserve a
term in exile on another island, he added with a twinkle in his
eye.
178
Return to the Equatorial Channel——
Loutfi and the chief led us in silence through the main village
street. It was the cleanest, most orderly and best swept village
street we had ever seen, and that is saying a lot in the Maldives.
Well-groomed women sat busy working in front of the pic-
turesque little houses, some white, built from limestone, some
tanned and plaited from sun-baked palm leaves. Martin Mehren
remarked that we had not seen any foreigner but ourselves
since we left Male. No beach on the Riviera was as tidy and well
raked as the white sand between the rows of houses where the
women, squatting or sitting on low stools, paid little or no
notice to us as we passed. Nobody greeted us. Here, as in Male,
there is no word for salutation. Not being an expert, I could only
see that the women were lacing or somehow weaving or twin-
ing together a multitude of brightly coloured yarns with weights
on their ends and hanging over a large satin covered ball held on
the lap. The result was a broad, curved band more multicoloured
than the rainbow, which they attached as a neckpiece on their
full-length Victorian style gowns. This was the traditional
womans attire in the Maldives, explained Loutfi. Formerly all
women used to wear it. This immediately brought to mind the
ancient Egyptian fashion. Nefertiti. Once in a while we even
saw a Maldive woman who matched that proud pharaonic
beauty in bearing and the refinement of her features.
Where the broad village road ended an equally wide and
well-swept street turned right between the low walls of a
Moslem cemetery. Sticks with small banners of white cloth
fluttered in the wind. Moslem tombstones, old and beautifully
carved with scrolls and other artistic decoration, were half
hidden in weeds. Abandoned. Many were broken. Loutfi said
that the inscriptions were written in the second oldest of the
three known kinds of Maldive script, called dhives akuru. Like
tana akuru, the script used today, it was written from right to left.
The oldest script known had been evella akuru, which had been
written from left to right.
At the end of the short road lay a mosque and the large tomb
of an important Moslem saint, a gabled hut built of white-
washed stone slabs, and flying white flags. Here rested Vadu
Dhanna Kaleyfanu, also known by the Moslem name Moham-
med Jamalu Ddeen, perhaps the first person to embrace Islam
on this island. This was where the Khanzi people had found
179
The Maldive Mystery
refuge after they fled from Gaaf-Gan, according to the old men
on Gadu. But the Singalese cat people who drove them away
had later come here too and killed them all, according to the
same stories. If Singalese they would have been Buddhists. And
if the tradition was founded on fact, the saint under these flags
might have been a Buddhist who embraced Islam, which was at
last triumphant.
The mosque was not big but well built with beautiful wood
carvings as full of arabesques as the tombstones. The high
window openings looked out over the low stone wall that
enclosed the sacred ground, to what seemed like a refuse dump,
a long low heap of sand and broken slabs of stone. Loutfi
climbed over the wall and stepped on to the rubble. We fol-
lowed. This was where the inscribed slab had been dug up, he
said. He had seen it himself, here, complete.
The archaeologists scratched their heads as we walked back
and forth over broken pieces of limestone. Disappointed, they
affirmed that there was nothing here that they could do. It was
too late. Everything had recently been turned upside down. No
possibility for any stratified archaeology. No sense in scraping
away 5-centimetre layers where old and new all lay muddled
together in complete chaos.
Loutfi regretted this. The local people had dug here recently
looking for squared stones which they could re-use for new
houses. That was how they had hit upon the plaque. Loutfi had
seen it right here. That fellow, he said, pointing at the chief who
sat gloomily and with a guilty conscience on the wall, that fellow
had promised to send it to Male. And now he could not even
remember where the missing fragments were. His people had
searched everywhere but found nothing.
‘Perhaps there will be other things if we search through this
mess,’ I suggested.
‘It won’t be an archaeological dig,’ responded Skjélsvold. ‘But
there could be pieces worth saving.’
The Vadu men were sent by their chief to fetch shovels.
Without much enthusiasm they began lifting away stones
and digging sand from one end of the long pile. They knew
there was nothing of interest to be found for they had
already turned everything upside down themselves. But work
started. We checked every bit of stone rubble before it was
180
carried aside, while the chief sat morose and motionless on the
wall.
We had barely started when Johansen shouted. The mortised
base of a round column appeared under the sand and was
brushed clean. From previous experience Loutfi suggested it
was a pedestal, perhaps of a column mortised together in
sections. Gradually we found four more. We had barely pulled
part of a beautiful plaque decorated with a band of lotus motifs
out of the sand, when all the workmen dropped their shovels
and even the archaeologists turned away from the excavations.
On the other side of the wall came a long column of women,
dressed in green, red and other bright colours, some of them
very pretty. Many wore the Egyptian-style rainbow band as
collar and cuffs. They carried mugs and glasses with sweet
rosewater for us and the workmen to drink. Even though the
sullen chief sat undisturbed on the wall and refused to drink,
there was a trace of satisfaction in his face when he saw the way
we all rose and enjoyed the refreshments. He had organised it
himself, wishing to make up for his previous misdemeanour.
The visiting ladies were neither timid nor frivolous, but so
charming and gentle that their presence with the rosewater was
like a merry cocktail party being celebrated on arubbish dump.
How different these women were from their shy and secluded
sisters in other Moslem countries. Here, as elsewhere in the
Maldives, was a clear survival of a pre-Arab society where
women were not only the men’s equal in privilege, but where all
existing records from foreign visitors state that the ruler of these
cowrie islands was customarily a queen. Even the legendary
Khanzi ruler of Gaaf-Gan had been a queen.
The work of checking the limestone rubble was now resumed
with greater enthusiasm, but the schemes of the repentant chief
were not exhausted. The equatorial sun was scorching and we
were again parched with thirst when another procession of
different women appeared with fresh supplies of the same cool
drink.
In spite of these delightful interruptions, or perhaps because
of them, work went on at full speed with singing and laughing.
Stones rejected or overlooked by those who had dug here before
us were hauled out of the sand and placed in the shade of nearby
trees. There we brushed them clean and could inspect them,
181
The Maldive Mystery
undisturbed by the clouds of mosquitos which had dived upon

us in the jungle of Gaaf-Gan.
Skjélsvold was brushing a broken piece of worked stone
incised with a strange symbol. It looked like a pear-shaped
hammer head set on a handle. The rest was broken away. I was
checking a stone on which a human foot had been pecked out,
as if a sandal had stepped in molten lava. Then Bjorn Bye
shouted in triumph; he had found a long stone covered by lime
plaster just as on Gaaf-Gan. Picking off part of the plaster he had
found what I had silently hoped for but never dared expect: a
row of sun-symbols. Here, as on Gaaf-Gan, we were right on the
Equatorial Channel. And here was the sun-ornament again,
which we had found on none of the other islands except Gaaf-
Gan.
Carefully we broke off the thick lime cover from the stone
surface. The full length of one side was found to be covered by a
most decorative pattern of little suns. The design of the stone
was divided into vertical frames surrounding alternating groups
of three small, or two large, sun-reliefs set above each other and
carved in different forms.
We had found a considerable number of these magnificent
sun-stones, all covered by plaster, before we noticed evidence
of paint on some of the hidden surfaces. The sun-covered
building blocks of white limestone had originally been coloured
red.
The refined taste and great skill of the stone carvers was
revealed when we began to find fragments where the concentric
rings of the sun-disc were surrounded so artistically with flower
petals that the corolla of the flower became the rays of the sun.
All were painted red. Realistically carved in high relief, each
sunflower was the size of a marigold. Only religious fanatics
would have covered up these masterpieces of art with a plain
coat of plaster. Whoever had laboriously concealed these solar
motifs had in turn been overcome by others who objected
equally strongly to their taste and faith. Later the Moslems had
smashed the stones to bits and thrown them on the refuse heap.
The people of the island were well aware of what their
ancestors had done when they embraced Islam. The mudimmu,
or caller of the mosque, did not hesitate to tell us that the refuse
heap we had dug was filled with sand and building blocks from
182
the pagan temple that had once stood where the mosque was
now, just on the other side of the stone fence.
A visit to the mosque convinced us that local memories were
right. The mosque stood on the beautifully shaped foundation
wall of an earlier temple. Now this foundation was covered up
with plaster like the sun-stones, but where the plaster had
peeled off we found the same classical mouldings we had first
seen when we dug the buried temple in Nilandu. The people
told us there were also the remains of a low mound on the
opposite side of the mosque. A man had found decorated
plaques there too when he dug to plant maize but nobody knew
the fate of those plaqués.
Searching the brush-covered neighbourhood in vain for other
ruins, I came back to find Skjélsvold and Johansen very excited.
They had found the fragment of a plaque with incised but
nondescript symbols, and a thick block with one broken sun-
wheel and one engraving of a sign resembling the Buddhist
symbol for the baby Buddha. While admiring these discoveries
we had to give way to Johansen who was carrying a large and
heavy block. A huge sunflower with a pattern of rays which
spread out over its eight petals stood out in high relief from a
slightly larger, decorated disc which again rose from a cubic
base. This magnificent sun must have stood on top of a square
post or else projected from the temple wall. One central and four
peripheral holes had been drilled straight into the ornamenta-
tion as if intended to hold pegs.
Just as the mudimmu was calling for prayer in the mosque and
the workmen were putting down their tools, Wahid bent down
and picked up a bead, an ochre-coloured bead of agate, perfor-
ated as if part of a necklace. Agate does not occur naturally on
coral islands. This bead had made a long sea journey.
Seeing our excitement over the bead, one of the workmen
claimed he had found about 200 of them digging in this place.
They had been brought to the atoll office. And lost. Two had
been saved by the mudimmu, and after prayers he willingly
passed them on to us. One was of agate but slightly bigger and
brighter than the one we had found. The other was of shell, and
not round but long and slender, slightly thicker at midpoint and
perforated lengthwise. Not long after, one of our workmen
picked up one of that same type from our dig. I was sure I had
183
The Maldive Mystery
seen necklaces combining these two types of bead — excavated

at Lothal, the port of the Indus Valley civilisation. Clearly I had
to return there to make a comparison.
Some lumps and big sherds of an extremely hard greyish-
white material really confused us as we took them for pieces of
modern concrete. As we had never seen concrete anywhere in
the villages, why this evidence of modern construction work in
an old refuse dump? Loutfi laughed. This was not concrete at all.
Cement was not introduced to the Maldives until after the First
World War. This was something the Maldive people had known
how to make from the earliest times. He showed us that the
‘concrete’ was full of black dots of crushed charcoal. The Maldiv-
ians had always been accustomed to mix ash and charcoal
powder into their lime, and then add ‘honey’ from the top of the
coconut palm. They drew the juice from the palm and boiled the
sap to make what people in India called jaggery. This ingenious
blend of lime, charcoal powder and jaggery made a ‘concrete’ as
hard as flint.
Since the rubble heap had been disturbed, it was impossible
to tellin which epoch this invention had been made or adopted.
We told the workmen to dig half a metre deeper than what
seemed to be the ground level below the refuse mound. A whole
series of lime-covered sunflowers appeared, as well as several
small fragments of broken tablets or plaques. But no sign of any
piece matching the inscribed fragments sent to Male.
We had gone through almost the full length of the heap of
rubble and were on the verge of abandoning hope. It remained a
mystery how such large pieces, with pictographs, could have
disappeared without trace. Yet, although failing to find what we
were looking for, we had encountered new evidence supporting
our discoveries in Gaaf-Gan. When Islam was introduced to this
area Moslem fanatics had broken and destroyed a masonry
temple already covered by white plaster. Probably this temple
had been a solid structure filled with sand or coral rubble inside
the facing walls, like the ones we had dug in Nilandu and Gaaf-
Gan. Certainly it had stood on a foundation platform with
mouldings like the temple in Nilandu.
When the early Moslems destroyed this already plaster-
covered temple, they probably also broke the plaques with
pictographs, except the last one left complete until broken in
184
recent months. That was due to the indifference of the chief who
now sat on the wall looking down on the havoc. Completely
covered by plaster as they were, the beautiful solar discs and
sunflowers had probably never been seen by any Moslems, not
until we uncovered them from the thick coat of ancient plaster.
An exploring party led by Skjdélsvold had returned from the

eastern part of the island where they had been shown a large
hawitta. The core of coral rubble rising to a hill was now a
familiar sight, and as there were no carved facing stones to be
seen on the ground, they came back to catalogue the material
rescued from the rubbie.
This was when Loutfi came slowly striding from the mosque,
witha broad smile. _ -
‘I have found them,’ he said.
‘Found what?’
‘The missing pieces!’ Loutfi laughed in triumph.
We hurried to follow him over the low wall to the well in front
of the mosque. Here some men had stripped to the waist to take
a shower bath. They dipped a can tied to a long stick into the
sacred well and poured the water over head and body, paying
particular attention to arms and feet, the Moslem way. They had
been standing on some flat and smooth slabs laid as a pavement
around the well to avoid stepping in mud.
Giggling with satisfaction, Loutfi now pointed at these slabs.
They were still wet from the last shower, shining smooth, but
with no decoration. We had all passed them many times. What
did Loutfi mean?
‘See what I have discovered!’ Loutfi bent down and turned
three of them over.
There were the missing inscriptions! The lost pieces. They
had just been turned upside down for the bathers to stand on.
How crazy! There were the pictographic symbols in a row,
flanked by swastikas, the big sun-wheel and other strange
signs, the same as on the slab fragments found behind the door
in the museum closet. But one of the three pieces at least was
part of a different plaque. A new discovery.
“Hurrah for Loutfi!’
We all shook him by the hand. He had reason to laugh. We
had been digging in the heat a few metres away all day. We all
185
The Maldive Mystery
laughed and rejoiced with him. Even the stout chief came down
from the wall with his big white teeth exposed in an uncertain
smile. The least happy was the mudimmu when he came out from
the mosque and saw the bare mud around the well as we carried
the inscribed plaques away.
There was one more island the archaeologists had to see. We

could not leave the equator without showing them Fua Mulaku,
the lonely island smack in the middle of the Equatorial Channel.
On our second day on Vadu we were off by midday and
steered south into the open Channel. Knowing what to look for
as we sat in the stern of the rolling ship and watched the island
disappear behind us, we could see the large hawitta on Vadu as
a hill higher than the forest. Once upon a time, when it rose
white and entire above the island, it must have been a perfect
landmark for navigators. Sailing vessels reaching the Maldive
archipelago along the equatorial line would either have sighted
the hawittas of Vadu and Gaaf-Gan on the northern side of the
Channel, or the one on Fua Mulaku in the centre, if not perhaps
the now lost ‘tower’ of Addu marking the southern flank.
Four hours after we left the Gaaf lagoon we passed into the
shelter of Fua Mulaku. It was late February, so the seasonal
monsoon had turned to north-east since our last visit in Novem-
ber. This time therefore we tied our ship to the thick mooring
rope on the exactly opposite side of the island, just where the
three cameramen had been caught by the surf last time.
We rode in on the surf without difficulty, and jumped on to
the steep boulder beach as our landing barge was grabbed by a
group of little men and boys. Appearing as a giant among them
was Ibrahim Didi, our host from last time. His house was just
behind the broad sand dune, and still vacant for us. With Golden
Ray moored out at sea beyond the thundering surf we had to
operate from a base ashore. Food and equipment were landed
with us. Once installed, we set out for the village in search of
bicycles.
In a tall palm-thatched shed near the other coast we saw a
large sea-going vessel under construction. Broad and tall like a
Spanish galleon, it was designed precisely like a child’s image
of Noah’s Ark. The hand-sawn planks of coconut wood were
joined together with wooden pegs and adzed and chiselled to
186
such a perfection that it was a pleasure to the eye. This type of

tall ship was entirely different from the long and slender open
dhoni with its elegant Egyptian—Phoenician curves and prow.
Loutfi was less impressed than we were. He told us that three-
masters of this type, built and sailed by his family in Addu atoll
decades ago, were very much larger. This type was called vedi,
which offered a clue to its origins because vedi was also the
word for ‘boat’ in North Indian languages.” Clearly such expert
ship builders could have had maritime contact with people in
any part of the Indian Ocean.
But these seafaring islanders were not only carpenters. Their
naval ropes were secénd to none. Formerly the planks of their
ships were not pegged but sewn together from water resistant
cord of coconut husk. We learnt that the very thick, 150-metre-
long (nearly 500 foot) cable to which Golden Ray was now
moored had been made by the people of Fua Mulaku from
twisted hibiscus bark.
We first headed for the Kedere mosque to start work in
clearing the beautiful half-buried masonry bath. With five
islanders I took charge of this operation, while all the others
cycled off to the large hawitta. Skjdlsvold wanted to look for any
trace of the original masonry walls.
The purpose in digging further down the masonry walls of
the ceremonial bath was to check if benches were running
around the sides, such as in the brick-built bath of Mohenjo-
Daro and the slab-lined bath of Bahrain, the Sumerian Dilmun.
At present the vertical walls and the broad stairways dis-
appeared down into a fill of dry sand and coral rubble. But the
stone-lined well in the centre contained water a little way down.
Local people had told us that this well in the middle had been
built in very recent Moslem times, when the bath itself had been
filled, on orders from the government in Male, with sand and
coral pebbles from the beach.
With shovels and bare hands the five workmen dug away
sand and gravel and lifted out big chunks of broken Moslem
tombstones and lotus-decorated pre-Moslem temple stones. All
had been thrown in to cover up the once sacred temple water.
Sheltered from the sea breeze it was oppressively hot down
inside with the equatorial sun shining right over our heads. As
for me I was fully rewarded when broad and well preserved
187
The Maldive Mystery
stone benches became revealed and were carefully scraped

clean with our hands. Although hoped for and half expected,
this seemed a revelation, indeed a direct repetition of the baths
in Mohenjo-Daro and on Bahrain.
About the length of a hand further down my toiling helpers
got their reward. Cool water began to filter between their bare
toes: freshwater, and as cool as in the well. Soon they stood
ankle deep and had to give up using spades as the sand was
washed off by the water. With both hands they dug deeper and
deeper, and faster and faster as they were refreshed by being
able to immerse themselves more deeply in the bath.
They were all sitting in water up to their necks, and throwing
up pebbles and stones, when a real Methuselah came staggering
with his stave and peeped over the edge. Seeing the men in the
bath he got such a shock that his knees began to wobble. I
rushed up just in time to drag him into the shade of the mosque
before he fainted. He came to when one of the workmen
climbed a palm, picked a coconut, and poured fresh juice down
his throat.
At this point Loutfi came and told us that the old man with the
beard and Moslem cap was the mudimmu of this tiny mosque.
His name was Hussainu and, according to records, he was 104
years old. When we asked about the bath, old Hussainu got
talkative. He remembered before it was filled with rubble from
the beach. Only clear water then. As clear as in the well now.
Many men and women would bath together. There were stone
slabs at the bottom as smooth and clean as the walls. Now the
water was muddy only because we stirred up the fill. In olden
days there had been plugged holes as outlets in the bottom.
Only freshwater would run in and out of these holes, as in the
well now. It was drinking water, and yet it would rise and sink
with the tide of the sea. When the tide was high the water in the
bath would reach to his chest, and to the navel when the tide
was low.
We checked the water level. As in the round bath we had dug
in Nilandu it varied some 20 centimetres (8 inches) with the
ocean tide. It always kept slightly below the wall benches,
where people could have been sitting on dry stones. We counted
the steps down to the stone bench. There were seven. Lying on
the bench with my arm in water to the shoulder I could feel the
188
smooth wall blocks running on as perfectly fitted together as the

walls we could see. But to dig the bath to its bottom would bea
major job without a pump. And as we learnt that Maldive law
required the boulders and sand to be thrown in again before we
left, we dug no further down than the men could reach sitting
head above water.
If the government were to allow an exception to its rules, this
prehistoric structure with its magnificent stone work, solar
orientation and big basin filled with crystal clear water, would
make a unique national monument. To science it would be an
undamaged specimen of an architectural feature that was once
important in the Maldive archipelago.
Work was still going on lifting stones out of the bath when
Martin Mehren arrived on his bicycle, curious to see if we had
found the stone benches. He stood balancing on a pile of
boulders near one wall when he was stung by something so
small and fast that it was gone between the stones before he saw
it. He felt little pain, and made no comment, so we noticed
nothing. He left unconcerned about an insignificant episode
that was almost to bring an end to his life.
Leaving the workmen to enjoy themselves splashing in the
bath at the end of their job, | mounted my bicycle to see what
was happening at the hawitta. The steep hillock had now been
cleared of a dense growth of pandanus palms and other trees. As
at the bath, here also, a large crowd of spectators had assembled
to watch the work. I wrote in my notebook:
The men work fast and efficiently. They always learn quickly
and demonstrate intelligence. Men and women have a great
sense of humour. There seems to be no sex discrimination.
The women are completely unafraid and self-confident.
Wahid claims that on this island women have more to say
than men. The young boys and girls are extremely bright and
very good-looking. Some of the young girls on this island are
among the prettiest I have seen.
With a large number of men and women helping them, the

archaeologists had cleared the seaward side of the hillock of turf
and soil, and some well-preserved wall sections of large thick
blocks were exposed. This had clearly been a Buddhist dagoba,
189
The Maldive Mystery
not square but round, without a single wall stone carved with
ornaments, but with clear evidence of a former coat of white
plaster. A crude stairway of unworked beach boulders curved
up the side of the slope. Perhaps this was a secondary feature,
since the blocks in the wall were carefully squared, although not
flat and smooth like the facing slabs we had seen on this and
other islands.
Skjélsvold pointed out traces of four walls above each other in
terraces, each one stepped in from the wall below. An old man
claimed to have seen six such tiers when the hawitta was still in
its proper shape.
It was impossible to say from surface observation whether or
not this Buddhist dagoba had been shaped around the core of
an earlier structure. When the Moslems came it must have
looked like a terraced conical pyramid, plastered white and
dominating the island and the surrounding sea.
Loutfi was missing from the dig. He had been limping for a
few days since scratching his leg and getting an infection. Now!
learned to my dismay that he felt ill and had gone to see the
‘doctor’. Everybody in the expedition had bandages around
their legs because of small cuts and scratches. Everybody but
me. I instead had my head bandaged because of running into a
broken branch in the jungle. Luckily these jungle germs never
seemed to climb higher from the ground than to infect grazes
and cuts below the knees.
The ‘doctor’ proved to be the only island health worker, a fine
young Maldivian of 19 years with two weeks training at the
hospital in Male. We found him with his patients on a sort of
verandah at the entrance to the atoll office. In a wooden ham-
mock Loutfi lay wrapped up to his nose in stacks of thick
blankets, shivering with cold. Ona camp-bed beside him lay, to
my great surprise, an elderly gentleman. Martin! One of his legs
was swollen like a melon with two tiny stings side by side,
rubbed by the young man with a grey piece of cotton wool.
Martin was not happy at all. He had taken his own snake
medicine, had vomited, and now had pains in both leg and
stomach. Seeing Martin’s foot I could not help thinking of six of
our workmen on Gaaf-Gan, six out of sixty, who had elephan-
tiasis in one or both legs. Some tropical mosquitos spread the
microscopic worm that causes elephantiasis, but the growth is
190
ae
always a very slow process. The marks on Martin’s leg looked

suspiciously like those of two snake teeth. But everybody swore
there were no snakes in the Maldives, so perhaps it was one of
the large centipedes I had seen among the boulders. Their sharp
pincers are as ‘poisonous as the tail of a small scorpion and,
perhaps aided by germs on the dirty piece of cotton wool,
sufficed to start the complications that followed. Martin became
seriously ill.
Both the health worker and Bjorn, our own excellent first-aid
man, ran out of bandages and medicine, so Wahid rounded up
four islanders willing to take him through the surf to fetch our
medical chest from the Golden Ray.
It was dark when they left and close to midnight as they came
back, all five bruised and beaten, dripping wet. But Wahid was
proudly bearing the medical chest. When we opened it, sea
water poured out as from a mug. Coming back from the ship the
little dhoni had been capsized by the surf and all five men
thrown into the frothing sea. But it was near land and, miracu-
lously, they had all managed to struggle ashore with the dhoni
upside down.
‘I never let go the chest,’ said Wahid with modest pride, and
apologised for the soup of medicine and water inside.
This was when we first heard of a team of Japanese camera-
men who had come here last month by dhoni from the airport
island of Addu-Gan. They had read a press report about our
observations on Fua Mulaku last year and had come ashore ona
one-day visit to film the hawitta and local life. As they left, the
dhoni had capsized at this very same place. All lives were saved
but, according to the islanders, the heartbroken Japanese had
lost two film cameras and all the 160 rolls of new and exposed
films they had brought to the Maldives. This, however, was not
to be their last effort to film in our wake.
Next morning we had to get out to our ship from that same
place ourselves. Martin was so ill that we had to deliver him to
the airport on Addu-Gan before we started the long leg north-
bound with Golden Ray.
Not only Ake, with his precious cameras, was tense after a
sleepless night thinking of this moment. We assembled on the
beach with the red sunrise over the sea, ready to depart. We
were watching the wild surf, prepared to jump into the dhoni at
191
The Maldive Mystery
the right moment. Four towering waves rose behind each other,
tumbling in across the reef, followed by an interval of smaller
breakers when we had to hurry out to the open sea as fast as our
four island experts could swing their oars. At a sign from the
helmsman, who jumped on board first, the oarsmen pushed off
while big Loutfi, wise from experience, let himself be carried
Page 1: Happily heading for adventure on unexplored islands at

the equator, the author (left) and Ake Karlson are passengers ina
Maldive dhoni. Behind Ake is the detached bow piece of the
vessel lifted off by the crew as it serves no practical purpose.
Since time immemorial it has been a traditional ornament in
Maldive boatbuilding which shipbuilding experts have found
remarkably suggestive of the papyriform bow of the wooden
Egyptian and Phoenician ships.
Page 2: The atolls of the Maldive archipelago stretch for 900 km as
a semi-submerged barrier dotted with islands and blocking
maritime traffic around the southern tip of India. From the sea
voyagers cannot detect the islands until the palm crowns emerge
above the horizon as the ground surface never rises more than
about 2 metres above sea level.
Page 3: Above: The low atolls of the Maldives are rich in archae-
ological remains of great antiquity, many of them visible from
far out at sea. Yet archaeologists have overlooked the islands
because of the widespread feeling that ocean navigation began
with Columbus, so nobody could have reached the Maldives in
prehistoric times.
Below: As we cleared the jungle and dug around the base of a
large mound we found it had been built by man. Below ground
we discovered astronomically oriented walls which had once
been part of a pyramidal structure faced with ornamented lime-
stone blocks and filled with coral rubble. The archaeologists are
checking the excavated soil and Mikkelsen is picking potsherds
from the sieve. ;
Page 4: Above: Cleared of jungle the pyramidal mound of Gaaf-
Gan appears like a giant ant-hill with the workmen and only one
giant tree left on top. Stripped eight centuries ago for the sculp-
tured facing slabs, only the coral rubble fill was left above
ground.
Below: On Nilandu island the hidden walls of an unknown
temple appeared as Skjdlsvold and Johansen were working with
trowel and brush.
192
Yili
AGGARE
ES
nee?
dry-foot into the dhoni. Too proud, Martin waded, and was
pulled into the little boat which met the first surf with a leap,
and leap by leap carried them all to safety in the open rolling
waters. It was a relief to see them and all our equipment safe up
the ladder of Golden Ray. Two more trips and we were all back
Page 5: Above: The preserved remains of the Nilandu temple,

which were found protected below ground level, proved that it
had been an elegant structure. A compact core of beach sand had
originally been retained with classically profiled facing stones to
form a sort of pyramidal structure oriented to the sun and witha
walled ramp approach on one side. Carbon datings from the
interior fill, as well as from a buried wall surrounding the entire
temple area, disclosed that this religious complex had been
rebuilt about ap 550, aselegantly carved stones from some earlier
structure lay thrown in among the fill.
Below: Completely buried in the sand we discovered the cere-
monial stairway leading down to a large circular bath with
beautifully fitted stone walls. Fresh water rose from the buried
bottom to stone benches running around the sides.
Page 6: A lion sculpture found on an oceanic island. Only the
forepart with head and flexed front legs had been sculptured,
whereas the hind parts were shaped as a square block, showing
that these felines had once been set like decorative gargoyles into
the facing walls.
Page 7: Self-sustained until present generations, the Maldive
islanders have a staple diet of fish and coconuts and they can draw
fresh water everywhere by digging wells into the limestone bed-
rock. Village homes were built from palm leaves, but houses built
from coral rubble and lime are now becoming more common.
Page 8: A modest modern mosque of palm leaves beside an
impressive prehistoric ceremonial bath. The first Moslems had
destroyed what to them was a pagan temple and reused the
dressed slabs as tombstones. But, rather than destroy the pre-
historic bath they filled it up and built a round well in the middle
to serve the mosque. A megalithic stairway and smooth, beauti-
fully fitted slab walls of pre-Islamic origin rose above the well,
and as our excavations began, wide stone benches appeared
around the walls. Fresh water came up to the level of the benches
where the bathers had once been seated. The workmen were
delighted to get a refreshing bath under the scorching equatorial
sun as the clearing of the loose fill went on inside the old
ceremonial basin.
193.
The Maldive Mystery
on the fine little hospital ship, southward bound for Addu atoll
with the airport.
Martin was still on his feet when we parted from him and
Wahid on Addu-Gan. Next morning the little plane was due in
for its flight back to Male, while we began our cruise back there
by sea. We were later to learn that our unfortunate friend
reached Male in desperate condition. He was saved by a visiting
lady doctor from India who arranged for an emergency seat ona
full plane to Germany where he was rushed to the tropical
department of a Frankfurt hospital. And from there to quaran-
tine for unidentified diseases in Oslo. The source of his infection
was never in fact identified, and although he recovered he never
quite cleared the trouble out of his leg. The old Arctic explorer
had never thought he was risking his life by stepping down the
broad stairways to aswimming pool.
Our own voyage northwards went smoothly, with only one
unforeseen event. We crossed the Equatorial Channel and most
of Gaaf lagoon on the first day and, after a night at anchor off
Kondai island, we reached Viringili in the same lagoon late the
next morning. We anchored again because the captain was afraid
of reaching land and reefs on the other side of the One-and-Half-
Degree Channel before daylight broke the morning after.
Some distance from our ship lay a strange kind of watercraft
full of children playing and diving. It looked like a huge raft
with a hut on it. Not the type of log raft we use in the Maldives,
said Loutfi. He shouted a question to two men in a passing
dhoni, and we learned that the mysterious craft had been found
on the outer reef off the east coast of Viringili yesterday. Some
fishermen had found it and, perhaps from superstition since
they saw no crew on board, they had set it on fire. Then they
towed it into the lagoon. Nobody wanted it until the children
had pulled it to pieces, then the separate parts would be sold at
auction in the village tomorrow.
We launched our barge and hurried over before the strange
craft was completely destroyed. Little boys were busy tearing
down parts of the cabin wall, but as we approached they dived
overboard and swam ashore.
It was a raft indeed: large, and built from giant bamboo. I had
never seen bamboo as thick as this. Thick as telegraph poles and
tied together in three layers under eight cross beams of wood
194
with anothe layer ofr

thick bambooasa deck well above the water.
We climbed on board the craft which maintained a perfect
stability.
‘This is not Malaviane said Loutfi. ‘We have no bamboo.’
‘Bamboo this size does not exist in Sri Lanka either,’ com-
mented Bjorn. ‘It must have come from some jungle country on
the continent.’
‘Perhaps Bangladesh or Burma,’ suggested Bengt. He was sure
he had seen similar rafts of giant bamboo in the Ganges delta.
Twelve metres long and three wide (39 feet by 10 feet approxi-
mately) with a freeboard of40 centimetres (16 inches), the whole
structure recalled the balsa raft Kon-Tiki which had been large
enough to carry me and five companions across the Pacific. The
bamboo cabin had bgen scorched by fire and partly destroyed
by the boys, but it was still well enough preserved to bring to
mind the bamboo hut on Kon-Tiki in size and cosy atmosphere.
The cabin floor was stepped up another 20 centimetres (8
inches) from the main bamboo deck, and in one corner there
was a raised cooking place with a floor of baked clay, still full of
ashes. Above the fireplace was a rack of split bamboo for
smoking fish. The gabled roof with watertight coconut thatch
had a comfortable flat terrace above it just as we had built on the
reed ship Tigris. And like us on Kon-Tiki they had a storage room
under the cabin floor.
We searched the raft and found a few tiny bone-dry fish, but
they had probably jumped on board by themselves. In the
storage room lay two small pieces of paper. Labels fallen off
some can or jar, covered by the scrolls of an exotic kind of script.
‘Not our kind of written characters,’ said Loutfi.
‘Not even Singalese,’ said Bjorn. ‘They don’t write like that on
Sri Lanka.’
‘This looks like Burmese,’ said Bengt with conviction. He and
Ake had just come from Burma, filming the fabulous assembly
of 8,000 Buddhist temples standing in Pagan.
‘Just a minute,’ he added and pulled out his wallet, where he
had a stack of visiting cards from his recent journey. ‘Look at
this!’
We all looked. There was a whole series of scrolls identical
with those on the two labels.
Only on our return to the continent did we get help to read the
195
=
The Maldive Mystery
labels. The first line said: ‘Buddham Dhammam Sangham' — that

is, ‘To Buddha, to the Teaching, to the Monks.’ The second line
said: ‘Tasty and replete with good flavour.’ Underneath was the
brand name of a Burmese coconut candy!
This raft had come by sea from distant Burma, and had passed
Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka on its 3,000-kilometre (nearly
2000-mile) voyage to Viringili in the Maldives. It was com-
pletely covered by barnacles, and with experience of fourlengthy
raft voyages I could tell from their size that this craft had been
floating at sea for less than two months.
Even if Buddha in person had been sitting in the cabin, he
could not have told us much more about the route than these
two labels inscribed in his honour. The teachings of Buddha’s
monks had spread fast from the first source in Nepal down the
river Ganges to the Bay of Bengal, and Burma. Nowhere in the
world had Buddha been venerated with more golden statues
and with costlier pagodas and stupa towers than in Burma,
which has remained a Buddhist nation in spite of its present
left-wing rule. The simplest and most logical route for the
spread of Buddhism to the island of Sri Lanka and the Maldive
archipelago beyond was the route that this raft had taken, with
the north-east monsoon straight across the open Bay of Bengal.
Whether manned or drifting away alone when it left the coast of
Burma, this raft had shown that seafaring Buddhists might well
have by-passed Sri Lanka and come directly from the continent
behind these hidden atolls in the open Indian Ocean.
We left the Maldives on this second visit well aware that the
mystery we had hoped to solve became more complicated the
more we learnt. It was clear enough that Buddhists from Sri
Lanka or the continent beyond had a firm hold on this oceanic
archipelago before the Moslems arrived, and yet others had
been here before them. But one new question that gradually
emerged was not easy to answer. With Buddhism so well
established throughout the Maldive territory, and with the
mighty Buddhist nation of Sri Lanka, with powerful kings and
armies, as their nearest neighbour, how could a handful of
Moslems from distant Arabia come sailing here to tear down all
the beautiful temples and succeed so thoroughly in converting
the entire population to Islam?
196
CHAPTER IX
The Maldives, a
Crossroad in Antiquity
The Pre-European Epoch of Free Trade
MALDIVE History is alesson in religion. Hardly any other nation

with such a restricted area and so distant from outside influence
has felt the imprint of so many different faiths — ranging from
solar cult, the oldest worship of civilised nations, to Islam, the
youngest of the main creeds.
The known chapter of Maldive history begins with the hero
who brought the Moslem faith. Earlier memories have been
systematically erased. The known chapter is mainly of local
interest. The earlier chapters, if only partly recovered, would fill
in important pages missing in world history.
How little we know about the unwritten epochs of the human
past. A voyage may have been put on lasting record when
Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt sent her expedition down the Red
Sea to Punt, or when Alexander the Great marched to the Indus
Valley and sent his troops back to Mesopotamia by sea. But we
know nothing about the vast number of adventurers and mer-
chants who made similar journeys before them. We know
nothing of what happened in the Indian Ocean in the earliest
millennia long before the Arabs and Portuguese came; when
the first maritime civilisations grew up along all the coasts of
Asia; when global trade began with merchant ships which
succeeded in linking East and West together.
Usually the history of a nation begins with a potent king
founding a dynasty. The Maldives is a definite exception. A
long dynasty of kings was already there before known Maldive
history started. This kingdom ended when Maldive history
197
The Maldive Mystery" 0 nt
who
began. The last king was made a sultan by a pious foreigner
started local history. He caused all the kings to
came by sea and
con-
disappear into oblivion, except one, the one he himself
in his
verted. With neither arms, nor with any Maldive blood
d the
veins, he introduced a new faith, new laws, and founde
present Moslem Maldive state.
In the great Friday Mosque in Male hangs a long board,
in
beautifully sculpted, with entwining Arab letters raised
relief. Carved in the century after the event, it commem orates
the arrival of Abu al Barakat, the intrepid Arab voyager who
brought Islam to the Maldives and built this mosque. The
the
mosque itself, the oldest in the nation, is one of those where
ly to the corner because the
worshipper must kneel oblique
older foundation is facing the sun instead of Mecca.
The board with its Arab inscriptions probably made no
impression on foreign visitors until seen and described by the
famous Moorish Arab traveller and author, Ibn Battuta, who
came to the Maldives in 1343. Two centuries had then passed
since the local people had embraced Islam. Ibn Battuta was one
of the many great Arab globe-trotters of his day, and yet his
journeys are among the few known to us, thanks to his own pen.
He came to the Maldives from his home in Tangiers. That is,
long before Vasco da Gama, he had come from his home on the
Atlantic coast to undertake extensive voyages in the Indian
Ocean and reach Cambay in north-west India. It was from this
port area of the former Indus Valley civilisation that he ended
up in the Maldives on his way around the southern tip of India.
Before he continued to China he made a long sojourn in the
Maldives. These islands were known to him before he left the
continent, because he wrote: ‘I resolved to go to the Dhibat
Almahal [the Arabic name for Maldive Islands], of which I had
heard much... These islands are among the wonders of the
world.’””
In the Friday Mosque of Male, Ibn Battuta copied the Arab
inscriptions from the carved board, and rendered the name of
the historic hero who brought Islam to these islands the way he
believed he should read the letters: Abu al Barakat Yusuf, with
the geographical suffix al Barbari, which means ‘from Berber
land’.
198
se
The Maldives, a Crossroad in Antiquity
Through this reading he identified the Maldive culture hero

as his own fellow countryman, and thereby undoubtedly gained
popularity and prestige among his island hosts. Modern his-
torians have quoted and requoted this early reading of Ibn
Battuta, which inferred that Islam was brought to the Maldives
by a voyaget from the Atlantic or Mediterranean shores,
who sailed into the Indian Ocean by way of Egypt and the Red
Sea.
To my surprise Loutfi said that Ibn Battuta was wrong. Islam
had not been brought to the Maldives by a sailor with a home
port as vague as ‘Berber land’. All North Africa was Berber land.
And the route of the historic voyager had not been by way of
the Red Sea, but by the Persian Gulf, on the other side of the
Arabian Peninsula. The way we ourselves had come with the
reed ship Tigris.
Loutfi had studied Arabic in Egypt, and he had taken the old
board down from the wall in order to read the letters better. He
had even compared the text with that of another ancient inscrip-
tion about the same event, painted on the wall of the same
Friday Mosque. There the name of the immigrant hero was
unmistakably Abu al Rikab Yusuf, with the suffix al Tabrizi,
which means ‘from Tabriz’. Tabriz was an important Arab
trading centre in Persia, said Loutfi. It was on the main caravan
route from the Orient to Baghdad and the ports on the river
Tigris.
Back in Male on our return from the Equatorial Channel,
Loutfi showed us the old board which they had now brought
from the mosque to the museum.
‘See here,’ said Loutfi and pointed at some marks where small
projecting dots had come off or been removed from the old relief
letters.
‘The loss of these dots makes all the difference.’ He drew two
almost identical combinations of Arab characters on a piece of
paper. One had the dots, on the other they were omitted. He
showed the paper to a bystander who knew Arabic. The man
read the one with dots as ‘from Tabriz’ and the one without as
‘from Berber land’. The removal of the dots did indeed make all
the difference.
199
The Maldive Mystery
These are the examples that Loutfi drew:
C5 SAN aries
esp pte
As is well known to Moslem historians, Tabriz played an
important part in the spread of Islam into mainland Asia and
down the Mesopotamian waterways to Bahrain in the Persian
Gulf and beyond. Even though the globe-trotting Ibn Battuta
personally came from Tangiers in the remotest corner of ‘Berber
land’, he too crossed the river Tigris to visit Tabriz, which
greatly impressed him. In particular he admired ‘an immense
bazaar called the Qazan bazaar, one of the finest bazaars I have
seen the world over’, he wrote. And in a footnote the translator
of his travelogue explains: ‘Tabriz was at this time at the height
of its prosperity as the entrepdt between Europe and the Mongol
empire.”
Loutfi was not alone in his revision of Ibn Battuta’s reading.
He had barely initiated us in the secret of the missing dots when
a British expert on Islamic studies, A. D. W. Forbes, published a
report on Maldive mosques. Reading the inscriptions on the
wall of the Male Friday Mosque, he wrote: ‘Lines 2-3 of the
inscription read: ‘Abu’! Barakat Yusuf al-Tabrizi arrived in this
country, and the sultan became a Muslim at his hands in the
month of Rabi’al-Akhir 548 [i.e. ap 1153]’’.. He commented:
‘The chief difference between this inscription and the abbrevi-
ated version recorded by Ibn Battuta lies in the use of the nisba
«Tabrizi» instead of «Barbari».™
But this first page of Maldive history was not only carved and
painted in Arab letters in the mosque. The Maldivians had short
history books written in their own Divehi letters on thin copper
strips bound together as proper books. These state chronicles
were called tarikh, and through them and later paper documents
they know the names of all their sultans. The list began with one
ruling as a non-Moslem king from 1141 until he was converted
200
oF
to Islam in 1153. It ended with the one ruling until 1968 when
the Maldives became a republic.
Bell had studied these old written records and wrote:
The conversion of the Maldive Islanders, according to the

Tarikh, came about thus. The Almighty God desiring to
free the natives from their slough and ignorance, idolatory,
and unbelief, and to lead them into the right path, inspired
the Shaikh Yusuf Shams-ud-din of Tabriz, the most pious
saint of the age, ‘whose knowledge was as deep as the ocean’,
to visit the Maldives. The Shaikh there conjured the Islanders
to become Muslimé, but failed until he had roused them by
displaying miraculous powers, suchas the raising of a colossal
Jinni, ‘whose head almost reached the sky’. Then the King and
all the inhabitants became Muhammadans.... Thereafter,
emissaries were sent to the different Atols, who converted all
the inhabitants without exception, whether willing or un-
willing, to the Muslim Faith.
According to Loutfi, the name Shams-ud-din used for Yusuf

here is incorrect as Shams-ud-din was a very famous Arab
scholar from Tabriz who travelled far and wide but returned to
be buried in Tabriz. In fact, throughout the further text of this
old tarikh, the culture hero who brought Islam is referred to
either as ‘Tabrizigefdnu’, the Lord from Tabriz, or simply as
‘Tabriz’: ‘Upon the King, who had previously borne the title
“Siri Baranaditta”’, Tabriz bestowed the name ‘Sultan Muham-
mad”.’ And: ‘Upon the advice of Tabriz, regulations were
instituted for the administration of the Islands, religious laws
duly enforced, and knowledge of the new Faith freely dissemi-
nated. All traces of idolatory were effaced, and Mosques built
everywhere.’”
The following tarikh translation by Bell leaves no doubt as to
the port of departure of this hero:
When God wished to uplift the people of the Maldives from

the pit of ignorance, to save them from ... the worship of
idols, and to show them the right path and light of Islam, the
most God fearing Chief of Saints of that age ... Maulana
Shaikh Ytisif Shams-ud-din of Tabriz was inspired by God with
201
The Maldive Mystery
the desire to visit the Maldives. After that he disappeared

from his native town, called Tabriz (in Persia), and appeared
at the Maldives.”
Clearly the most pious Shaikh Yusuf of Tabriz had not come
to Male on a drift voyage, but with the preconceived plan to
bring Islam to idolaters in a nation already famous everywhere
the Arabs advanced. The Shaikh from Tabriz sailed from Meso-
potamia as well informed as did later his Arab compatriot Ibn
Battuta from the Indus Valley port of Cambay. In fact, the easiest
navigation route for early sailing ships would be that of our first
leg with the reed ship Tigris from Mesopotamia to the Indus
Valley. The next leg would simply be to turn the bow.due south
to the equator, then to turn for the sunrise, and the Maldive
hawittas would show up on the horizon.
Knowing that the devout Shaikh from Tabriz came to the
Maldives intent on converting the population, the question is:
how did he succeed? Why did the King and all his people so
willingly accept the new faith and tear down their splendid
ancestral hawittas?
The old Divehi tarikh and the later Arab account by Ibn
Battuta give two different reasons, both suggesting that the
foreigner succeeded through the use of miraculous powers. The
tarikh has it that he conjured forth a jinni ‘whose head almost
reached the sky’. Nothing but a kite could have been sent that
high at the time, and kites with heads of demons, trailing long
streamers behind were a speciality among the early Asiatic
peoples. But the sending up ofa kite, or any other such trick bya
foreign visitor, would hardly suffice to convert the people
throughout the Maldives.
Ibn Battuta, on the other hand, from personal experience
believed in the local memories of the virgins and the demon
from the sea. His version of the legend, written down six and a
half centuries ago, was more detailed than the one we heard:
Owing to the demon in question many of the Maldive islands

were depopulated before their conversion to Islam. When I
reached the country I was not aware of this matter. One night,
while I was at one of my occupations, I heard of a sudden
people crying with a loud voice the creeds, ‘There is no God
202
Pad
but Allah’, and ‘Allah is very great’. I saw children carrying

Korans on their heads, and women rapping the inside of
basins and vessels of copper. I was astonished at their con-
duct, and asked, ‘What is happening?’ to which they replied,
‘Do you not see the sea?’ Whereupon I looked, and saw, as it
were, a kind of large ship, seemingly full of lamps and
chafing-dishes. ‘That is the demon,’ said they to me; ‘he is
wont to show himself once a month; but when once we have
done as you have seen, he turns back and does us no harm.’
Memories of how this demon from the sea was first scared
away were still fresh in Male when recorded by Ibn Battuta:
The story and the motive for the conversion of the Inhabitants of
these Islands to Islam . . . Trustworthy men among the inhabi-
tants, such as the lawyer Isa al- Yamani, the lawyer and school-
master Ali, the Kazi Abd Allah, and others, related to me that
the people of these islands used to be idolaters, and that there
appeared to them every month an evil spirit, one of the Jinn,
who came from the direction of the sea. He resembled a ship
full of lamps. The custom of the natives, as soon as they
perceived him, was to take a young virgin, to adorn her, and
to conduct her to the budkhdana, that is to say, an idol temple,
which was built on the sea-shore and had a window by which
she was visible. They left her there during the night and
returned in the morning, at which time they were wont to
find the young girl dishonoured and dead. Every month they
drew lots, and he upon whom the lot fell gave up his daughter.
At length arrived among them a Maghrabin Berber, called
Abi'l-barakat, who knew by heart the glorious Koran. He was
lodged in the house of an old woman of the island Mahal
[Male]. One day he visited his hostess and found that she had
assembled her relatives, and that the women were weeping as
at a funeral. He questioned them upon the subject of their
affliction, but they could not make him understand the cause,
until an interpreter, who chanced to come in, informed him
that the lot had fallen upon the old woman, and that she had an
only daughter, who was now about to be slain by the evilJinni,
Abu'l-barakadt said to the woman: ‘I will go to-night in thy
daughter’s stead.’ At that time he was entirely beardless. So,
203
The Maldive Mystery
on the night following, after he had completed his ablutions,

he was conducted to the idol temple. On arrival there he set
himself to recite the Koran. Presently, through the window,
beholding the demon to approach, he continued his recita-
tion. The Jinni, as soon as he came within hearing of the
Koran, plunged into the sea and disappeared; and so it was
that, when the dawn was come, the Maghrabin was still
occupied in reciting the Koran. When the old woman, her
relatives, and the people of the island, according to their
custom, came to take away the girl and burn the corpse, they
found the stranger reciting the Koran. They conducted him to
their King, by name Shantirdza, whom they informed of this
adventure. The King was astonished; and the Maghrabin
both proposed to him to embrace the true faith, and inspired
him with a desire for it. Then said Shanurdza to him: ‘Remain
with us until next month, and if you do again as you have now
done and escape the evil Jinni, I will be converted’. Wherefore
the stranger remained with the idolaters, and God disposed
the heart of the King to receive the true faith. He became
Musalman before the end of the month, as well as his wives,
children, and courtiers. At the beginning of the following
month the Maghrabin was conducted again to the idol temple;
but the Jinni came not, and the Berber recited the Koran till
the morning, when the Sultan and his subjects arrived and
found him so employed. Then they broke the idols, and razed
the temple to the ground. The people of the island embraced
Islam, and sent messengers to the other islands, whose in-
habitants were also converted.”
When we combine the national memory of this event, still

young during Ibn Battuta’s visit, with our own observations,
the jinni from the sea begins to take on human characteristics.
His desire to have the virgins delivered to the idol temple
suggests that the terrible visitor was a performer of religious
rites rather than a common sex maniac. Buddhists do not
perform this kind of religious act, but certain forms of early
Hinduism did. And the demonic images we had seen recently
dug up at the former temple site were of Hindu type. The young
woman’s skull found on top of one of these idols seemed to tie in
well with the Male tradition about this very site. What looked
204
Yad
like a ship full of lamps whenever the jinni came, was probably
just what it looked like: a ship full of lamps. The fiend from the
sea and the fear-stricken population ashore hardly shared the
same faith. This would indicate that the people ashore, at the
advent of Islam from the Arab world, were no longer Hindus,
but Buddhists.
The modern Maldive nation was not fond of admitting the

evidence for the Buddhist substratum, which had been so
systematically erased in the long centuries of sultanic rule.
When Bell had bravely pointed to his evidence of a former
Buddhist influence, his claims were like seeds falling on rock.
But the modern President Gayoom, Maniku, Loutfi and many
others of our Maldive friends were open for a revision of their
own history, which began from a total blank with the first
sultan. No sooner had we brought to Male the sculpted stones
from the sun-temple on Gaaf-Gan, than President Gayoom
referred to our discovery in his foreword to a remarkable his-
torical document, hitherto unpublished. It was a booklet which,
for the first time, revealed the Divehi text and the English
translation of an 800-year-old Maldive copper-strip book, the
so-called loamaafaanu. Though the existence of this book had
been known for quite some time, wrote the President, this was
the first time that any light had been thrown on its contents,
thanks to the painstaking work by Maldivian scholars super-
vised by Hassan Maniku and aided by script experts from Sri
Lanka. Written in the most ancient Maldivian characters known
as evella akuru (‘old script’), this book is unique in including the
genealogy of some Maldive rulers from pre-Moslem times. It
begins in the year 505 after the death of the Prophet (Ap 1105)
when ‘the great King, Sri Maanaabarana of the house of Thiimuge,
the Lord of the Lunar Dynasty became the King of this country’.
It then lists the names and length of reign of four succeeding
kings until the one ruling from ap 1179, in the early decades of
Islam:
The Great King Srimat Gadanaditya, an ornament to the Lunar

Dynasty, resplendant as gold, firm as an Asala [‘stone’] pillar,
defender of the entire hundred thousand of islands, brilliant
as the sun, moon and stars, virtuous in every manner, lord of
205
The Maldive Mystery
love, mine of jewels, adorned with a crown set with gems, —

On the fourth year of his becoming the sole monarch he,
having destroyed the shrine erected previously by the infidel
Kings of Dabuduv, uprooted the Buddha images, and caused
the infidel Kings to read the Shadat [a Moslem creed].*
Here was a clear reference to twelfth-century Buddha images

and a shrine on Dabuduv. Dabuduyv, according to Loutfi, was
Dabidu, the island next to Isdu, ‘The First Island Sighted’,
where we had seen the huge hawitta from the sea. This was in
the compact string of islands on the eastern reef of Laamu atoll
where we had followed in Bell’s tracks, and where we had seen
ruins of Buddhist stupas resting on substructures of a type Bell
said he had never seen in the Buddhist world. Now we learnt
from the hitherto undeciphered text of the loamaafaanu copper
book that this was where Buddhism either lingered on or was
reintroduced.
No wonder that Laamu atoll — with the islands of Isdu,
Dabidu and Laamu-Gan pointing like fingers eastwards to-
wards the Buddhist domain — was most exposed to Buddhist
influence. Although the Maldives clearly was a politically in-
dependent nation with its own sovereign kings, certain religious
ties must have been maintained between the Buddhist priest-
hood on these islands and the high priests in the part of the
world from where the religion had come. The hawittas in
Laamu atoll, whatever they had been originally, were rebuilt by
Buddhists as smaller replicas of the colossal stupas of Sri Lanka,
those built by the extremely powerful Singalese kings, the
rulers of the Lion people. The detailed Buddhist chronicles of
Sri Lanka never refer to any dominance over the Maldive group.
But it would be surprising if the mighty Buddhist rulers of that
large nation made no attempt to re-establish their own faith if a
stranger had come and told the people in the Maldives to smash
their Buddhist images and tear down their stupas.
We never went ashore on Dabidu ourselves, but Maniku
assured us that in the centre of that island lay a large but very
low mound called Bodu Budhu Koalu, which meant ‘Big Image
Temple’, with a smaller one to the east of it, Kuda Budhu Koalu,
‘Little Image Temple’.
Although not meant to deal with the pre-Moslem period,
206
The Maldives, a Crossroad in Antiquity ——
these old Maldive records still give us some unintended infor-

mation. First of all it is apparent that the archipelago was one
nation ruled from Male even before the sultanic period. When
the last of the Buddhist kings was converted, he just sent his
emissaries to the other atolls to have his vassal kings, willingly
or not, accept the new faith.
Another deduction is no less important. The Maldives were
never invaded by the Arabs in force. From the various sources
we learn that a single pious Arab voyager left his home in
Tabriz, and in Male he went to live at the house of an old lady
with a single daughter. Only upon chasing the jinni from the
sea away with the Koran was he brought to see the king. This
means that the Maldive population did not change; it was
the same before and-after the conversion to Islam. The faith
changed, but not the nation. Nothing changed except the cus-
toms, laws and rites enforced by the new religion.
‘Why do you think our ancestors at that time were so willing
to embrace Islam?’ asked Hassan Maniku and fixed me with his
sharp brown eyes as we were chatting one day in his office.
‘Probably an invisible creator god made more sense to them
than the limestone statues,’ I suggested, unable to think of any
better reason.
‘No,’ said Maniku. ‘It was politics. Pure politics.’
‘How? I was surprised. Politics have become a substitute
religion for many in the twentieth century, but this happened
over six centuries ago.
‘You know these islands were easy to reach by ship at that
time,’ said Maniku. ‘Sri Lanka and most nations around us had
regular navies then. Sri Lanka was tremendously powerful and
too close for the comfort of the Maldive kings. If the Maldives
were to change to Islam we would get Arab protection in the
event that the Buddhists from Sri Lanka tried to conquer us. Our
ancestors figured that the Arabs lived too far away to bother
interfering with our internal affairs, yet they would protect us if
Sri Lanka tried to impose their religious sovereignty on us.’
Maniku was as realistic as his own early ancestors. No
miracles, no magic. Sheer political convenience. The behaviour
of men has not changed much during recent millennia. It is
easier to understand the people of the past if we judge them as
our contemporaries. There was no reason to doubt Maniku’s
207
The Maldive Mystery
verdict of how the last chapter of local history began.

The converted Moslem kings inherited a well organised com-
munity from their predecessors. The copper book of loamaa-
faanu which listed the last kings of the Lunar Dynasty and all the
new laws and regulations, was written by a professional scribe,
Padiata, whose last sentence read: ‘As great King Gadanaditya
spoke thus, Padiata ... wrote this.” And then twelve of the
King’s ministers, including the Commander-in-Chief and the
Treasurer, signed the last two copper pages of the book.
Although familiarity with Arab letters was introduced with
the Koran, the Maldivians went on using their own old Divehi
- script. They were accordingly a literate nation even before the
Arabs came. The earliest local type of letters, those used in the
oldest copper books, resemble the characters in the oldest known
writing system of Sri Lanka. Yet since they seem even closer to
the inscriptions carved on the diabolic images of Hindu type
dug up at the pagan temple in Male, they were probably in use
in the Maldives even earlier than the Buddhist dominance.
In knowing that an organised kingdom, with literacy and an
advanced degree of art and architecture, was active in the
Maldives before the Moslem period, we have taken one step
further back into the lost chapters of national history. To gain
further information we may assume that Ibn Battuta arrived in
time to witness many of the old customs from pre-Moslem time.
As an Arab himself he would be inclined to write primarily
about anything curious to a Moslem visitor, and thus less about
Arab influence. For instance, Islamic society was a man’s world,
whereas Battuta noted a difference in the Maldives: ‘One of the
marvels of the Maldives is that they have for their Sovereign a
woman.’
This was not an isolated instance during Ibn Battuta’s visit,
for Abu’l Hasan Ali, another seafaring Arab, wrote about the
Maldives as early as about Ap 916: ‘They are all very well
peopled, and are subject to a queen: for from the most ancient
times the inhabitants have a rule never to allow themselves to
be governed by a man.’
If we trust the legends we ourselves heard in Gadu, Gaaf-Gan
had also originally been ruled by a queen, and this ina period so
early that she was expelled when the cat people, alias the
Singalese, arrived.
208
Ibn Battuta tells us that the Queen, then Sultana, was married
to her own Chief Justice. Every day he and the other Ministers
had to present themselves in her audience hall. There they made
a salutation, and when the eunuchs had transmitted their
respects to Her Majesty, they retired. ‘The army of this Queen
consists of about a thousand men of foreign birth, though some
of them are natives. They come every day to the hall of audience
to salute her and then go home. Their pay is in rice.’
This number of foreign soldiers, paid in rice imported from
Bengal according to Battuta, reflects the habits of a nation with
ample contact with the outside world. Loutfi’s descent from
some early royal bodyguard of tall black slaves brought from
Yemen shows that this custom of importing warriors for protec-
tion was no isolated phenomenon. And the reason seems clear.
Ibn Battuta describes the local islanders thus:
The inhabitants of the Maldive islands are honest and pious

people, sincere in good faith and of a strong will. They eat
only what is lawful, and their prayers are granted . . .In body
they are weak and have no aptitude for combat or for war, and
their arms are prayers. One day in that country, I ordered the
right hand of a robber to be cut off; whereupon many of the
natives in the audience-hall fainted away. The Indian pirates
do not attack them, and cause them no alarm, for they have
found that whoever takes anything of theirs is struck with a
sudden calamity. When a hostile fleet comes to their shores,
the marauders seize what strangers they find, but do no harm
to the natives. If an idolater appropriates anything, if it be but
a lime, the captain of the idolaters punishes him and beats
him severely, so much does he fear the results of such an
action. Were it otherwise, certainly these people would be a
most contemptible foe in the eyes of their enemies, because of
the weakness of their bodies... The islanders are good
people: they abstain from what is foul, and most of them
bathe twice a day, and properly too, on account of the extreme
heat of the climate and the abundance of perspiration. They
use a large quantity of scented oils, such as sandalwood oil,
etc., and they anoint themselves with musk from Makdashau.
It is one of their customs, when they have said the morning
prayer, for every woman to go to meet her husband or son
209
The Maldive Mystery
with the collyrium [eye-salve] box, rose-water, and musk oil.

He smears his eye-lashes with collyrium, and rubs himself
with rose-water and musk oil, and so polishes the skin and
removes from his face all trace of fatigue. The clothing of these
people consists of cloths. They wrap one round their loins in
place of drawers, while on their backs they wear the stuffs
called wilyan [Maldive cloak], which resembles the ihram
[Arab pilgrim’s attire] .. .
When one of them marries, and goes to the house of his
wife, she spreads cotton-cloths from the house-door to that of
the nuptial chamber: on these cloths she places handfuls of
cowries on the right and left of the path he has to follow, while
she herself stands awaiting him at the door of the apart-
ment... Their buildings are of wood, and they take care to
raise the floor of the houses some height above the ground, by
way of precaution against damp, owing to the humidity of the
soil. This is the method they adopt: They dress the stones,
each of which is of two or three cubits long, and place them in
piles; across these they lay beams of the coco-tree, and after-
wards raise the walls with boards. In this work they show
marvellous skill. In the vestibule of the house they construct
an apartment which they call mdlam, and there the master of
the house sits with his friends . . .
All the inhabitants of the Maldives, be they nobles or the
common folk, keep their feet bare. The streets are swept and
well kept; they are shaded by trees, and the passenger walks
as it were in an orchard. Albeit every person who enters a
house is obliged to wash his feet with water from the jar
placed near the mdlam, and rub them with a coarse fabric of lif
[a natural web from palm crowns] placed there, after which he
enters the house . . Any newcomer who wishes to marry is at
liberty to do so. When the time comes for his departure he
repudiates his wife, for the people of the Maldives do not
leave their country ...
The women of these islands do not cover the head: the
sovereign herself does not so. They comb the hair and tie it up
on one side. Most of them wear only a cloth, covering them
from the navel to the ground: the rest of the body remains
uncovered. Thus attired, they promenade the markets and
elsewhere. While I was invested with the dignity of Kazi
210
[Chief Justice] in these islands, | made efforts to put an end to

this custom, and compel the women to clothe themselves: but
Icould not succeed . . . The ornaments of the Maldive women
consist of bracelets: each has a certain number on both arms,
indeed, so that the whole of the arm from the wrist to the
elbow is covered. These trinkets are of silver: only the wives
of the Sultan and his nearest relatives wear bracelets of gold.
The Maldive women have also anklets, called by them bail,
and collars of gold round the neck, called basdarad.»
Extensive overseas contacts with the outside world can be

inferred from this account. Neither gold nor silver can be
extracted from rocks of coral origin, there was no local clay for
making the jars at the doorways, rice was not grown on these
atolls, and hardly enough cotton for spreading cloth to walk
on. Indeed, Ibn Battuta states that the natives barter chickens
against pottery brought as cargo cn ships, and he adds:
Ships export from the islands the [smoked] fish of which I

have spoken, coconuts, fabrics, the wilyan and turbans; these
last are of cotton. They export also vessels of copper, which
are very common there, cowries (wada), and coir (kanbar);
such is the name of the fibrous husk which envelopes the
coconut ... This cordage is used for joining the boards of
their ships, and is also exported to China, India, and Yemen.
It is clear that the export of cotton turbans and copper kettles

was based on local industry with imported raw materials, or
perhaps in some cases a simple reshipping of ready-made
goods coming from one side of the Indian Ocean and intended
for re-sale on the other. Indeed, ships carrying cargo back and
forth between ports in China, India and Yemen, could load and
unload in the Maldives almost any merchandise from all over
the world. No wonder Ibn Battuta could eat butter in the
Maldive Islands in those days, that the Sultana’s lieutenant gave
him the choice of moving about in Male by litter or by horse,
while the official himself, preceded by trumpeters and shaded
by four umbrellas, walked about with pieces of silk thrown for
him to step on, and covered with ‘an ample robe of goat’s hair of
Egyptian manufacture’.
ett
The Maldive Mystery
Ibn Battuta himself even became personally engaged in the

flourishing cowrie shell trade. He sent two Maldivians with his
own hoard of cowries to be sold in Bengal, but in a storm the
ship lost rudder, mast, and cargo, and after much endurance
they landed instead in Sri Lanka sixteen days later. Battuta
subsequently left for Bengal himself, but before that he made a
round trip to Sri Lanka and the west coast of India. He was
under sail for nine days from the Maldives to Sri Lanka; ten days
were spent sailing from Calicut on the south-west coast of India
back to the Maldives; and forty-three days from the Maldives to
Bengal.
All this recorded contact with other lands was taking place
before Ibn Battuta’s visit in aD 1344, and it reflects a long
tradition of trade and seafaring by Afro-Asiatic nations in the
Indian Ocean, in the centuries when mediaeval Europe believed
there was an abyss at the world’s end. This was a period when
the Aztecs and Incas were still masters of their own domains in
America.
In 1498, when Vasco da Gama sailed into the Indian Ocean
and Christopher Columbus had just crossed the Atlantic, anew
era began for Europe. Asa result, an old era ended for both Asia
and America. This had its impact even on the Maldives. The
trade which had flourished freely all around the Indian Ocean
since the days of the Indus Valley civilisation, became strangled
by European monopoly. This is simple history, but if we look at
what we Europeans changed, we will better understand what
local conditions had been before.
The historian A. Gray, reviewing records of early visits to the
Maldives, points out how all the lines of maritime commerce
from China, Indonesia and Further India drew together until
the tip of South India was rounded and the Maldives were
passed. Then they diverged again with different destinations.
Most ships from the east, however, upon passing the Maldives,
would first call at the important harbour of Calicut in south-
west India. From there they would either strike westwards
across the Indian Ocean for Yemen and the Red Sea, or call at the
other flourishing ports northwards to Cambay and the Indus
Valley, and thence across to the Hormuz Straits. What was
landed at Aden in Yemen was carried up the Red Sea for
delivery to merchants in Jeddah or Cairo. What was brought to
212
the then flourishing trading centre of Hormuz was reshipped

up the Persian Gulf and the Mesopotamian rivers to Baghdad
for the caravan routes to Europe.
Clearly the people of the Maldives, with their peaceful dis-
position and their favourable location as a midway station able
to furnish water and fresh provisions, benefited greatly from
this intercontinental trade in which they took a personal part.
They brought their own cowries and smoked fish to ports as far
apart as Bengal and Yemen. Gray shows that one of the most
important itineraries for long-range Maldive merchant vessels
was the route by way of Calicut to the Indus Valley and Hormuz.
This would involve the unarmed Maldivians sailing into the
ports of a wide variety of nations with different political systems
and different religious‘creeds. How was that possible?
Gray gives the answer: ‘A first preliminary observation is that
free trade prevailed: a second, that all nations seem to have had
a hand in it, no one race, as in later days, doing a dispropor-
tionate share of the carrying trade.’
He quotes the Arab traveller Abd-er-Razzak who recorded
Maldive merchants among those who visited the important port
of Calicut and the great emporium of Ormuz (Hormuz) during
his visit in 1442:
Calicut is a perfectly secure harbour which, like that of Ormuz,

brings together merchants from every city and from every
country . . . Security and justice are so firmly established in
this city, that the most wealthy merchants bring thither from
maritime countries considerable cargoes, which they unload,
and unhesitatingly send into the markets and the bazaars,
without thinking in the meantime of any necessity of check-
ing the account or of keeping watch over the goods... At
Calicut every ship, whatever place it may come from, or
wherever it may be bound, when it puts into this port is
treated like other vessels, and has no trouble of any kind to
put up with.
Of Ormuz (Hormuz) the same early Arab wrote that it has not
its equal on the surface of the globe. Merchants from all climates
make their way to this port, he says, and he mentions Egypt,
Syria, Turkistan, China, Java, Pegu (Burma), Bengal, the
213
The Maldive Mystery
Maldives, Malabar, Cambay, and Zanzibar. ‘Persons of all

religions, and even idolaters, are found in gre 1t numbers in this
city, and no injustice is permitted towards any person whatso-
ever, ©
Fifty-six years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama arrived and he
also landed in Calicut. The old Asiatic trade routes were im-
mediately thwarted by the Portuguese blockade of that and all
other ports on the coast of West India. Next Hormuz was also
closed when this port was captured. Gray comments:
The Maldivians got their first practical information of the new

régime when, in the year 1503, four of their ships had the
misfortune to be sighted by Chief Captain Vicente Sodré
[Vasco da Gama’s Commander], then cruising off Calicut.
‘When he (Sodré) was off Calicut,’ Correa relates, ‘he sighted
four sails, which he overhauled and took. They proved to be
gundras, barques of the Maldive Islands . . . Gundras are built
of palm-timber, joined and fastened with pegs of wood
without any bolts. The sails are made of mats of the dry leaves
of the palm. These vessels were laden with cairo and caury .. .
These vessels also carried good store of silks, both coloured
and white, of divers fabrics and qualities, and many brilliant
tissues of gold, made by the islanders themselves, who get the
silk, gold, and cotton-thread from the numerous ships that
pass among the islands on their way from the coast of Bengal
to the Straits of Meca. There ships buy these stuffs from the
islanders, supplying them in exchange with the materials
whereof they are made. Thus are these islands a great em-
porium for all parts, and the Moors of India frequent them,
bartering their salt and earthenware, which are not made at
the islands, and also rice and silver.’
On these four Maldive ships there were also about a hundred

Arab passengers on their way back to Calicut with their pur-
chases. The Portuguese emptied one of the Maldive ships,
placed all the Arabs on board, covered them with dry palm
leaves used as packing material for the cargo, and burnt the
Arabs alive.
While the Portuguese continued their blockade of Calicut,
ships from Bengal and beyond, upon leaving the Maldives,
214
avoided India and headed with their cargo direct to the Red Sea.
When this became known to the Portuguese viceroy he gave
orders that his son ‘should proceed with the armada, and see
what was going on at these islands, and whether ships could be
seized’. The armada set sail for the Maldives but, trapped by the
current, they ended up on Sri Lanka, where the Portuguese
established themselves ashore instead. The Maldives were left
in peace a few years more. But soon Portuguese pirates from
India and Sri Lanka began to raid these islands, where one
record shows that they seized two rich ships from Cambay. In
1519, the Portuguese, despatched an armada intent on con-
quering the Maldives also. This fleet reached Male where the
Portuguese built a fort and the commander compelled the
islanders to deliver their products, ‘paying for it according to
his pleasure’.
Some Maldivians stole away in a boat to fetch a noted Indian
corsair from the Malabar coast. They came back escorted by
twelve Malabar vessels, seized the Portuguese ships which lay
unmanned in Male harbour, and joined by the other islanders
they entered the fort from the unprotected water-side. Thanks
to the battle experience of the Indian corsairs all the Portuguese
were put to the sword, and the corsairs and the islanders
divided a rich booty.
Although the Portuguese continued sporadic piracy in the
Maldives, real trouble began for the islanders in 1550 when their
Sultan, Hassan IX, left the archipelago to join the Portuguese in
India where he was converted to Christianity. This encouraged
the Portuguese to come back and attempt to take over the
Maldives. They failed twice, but in 1558 they succeeded in
conquering Male and for fifteen years the Maldivians were
under foreign rule, the only dark period in their history. This
rule was granted to a hated local traitor, a Portuguese Christian
with a Maldive mother, Andreas Andre, locally known as Adiri
Adiri. The tarikh says:
The Maldivians then submitted to Captain Adiri Adiri, who

proclaimed himself ‘Sultan’. He sent Christians to take charge
in all parts of the Maldives, and enforced submission. The
Portuguese ruled most cruelly for several years, committing
intolerable enormities. The sea grew red with Muslim blood,
215
The Maldive Mystery
the people were sunk in despair. At this juncture God

Almighty moved the heart of Khatib Muhammad, son of
Khatib Hussain of Utimu [northernmost group] . . . to fight
with the Infidels and to end the crying wrongs. Praying to
God for wisdom to conquer, he took council with his younger
brothers.
The tarikh, full of names of those who joined the revolt, tells of
how a little group of sworn freedom fighters started nightly
guerilla warfare throughout the archipelago until all foreigners
were restricted to Male. Joined once more by volunteers from
the Malabar coast, the guerilla force, under cover of night,
stole into Male harbour. The next day had been fixed by the
Portuguese garrison for the execution of all those who refused
conversionto Christianity. But before sunrise it was Adiri Adiri
who died, together with the entire Portuguese garrison.”
As the modern Maldive historian, our friend Hassan Maniku,
expressed it: ‘Every Portuguese colonist departed our shores
through the portals of death, never to return to disturb the
tranquillity of our independence.’®
‘Later nobody has interfered in our internal affairs, although
we were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965,’ added Maniku,
and he showed me his impressive list of close to one hundred
sultans and sultanas who had succeeded each other through six
dynasties of Moslem history.
We, of course, had been digging in the Maldives to find out
what had happened before them. A modern-day President had
requested us to look for anything that would reveal what this
long line of sultans had wanted their subjects to forget.
216
iEHE IRGX
A Lost Chapter in
World History
The Lions and the Bull in the Sun-
temple
‘THE CLIMATE is changing.’

I have heard this remark everywhere I have been on my
travels around the world in the last few years. The monsoon is
blowing in the wrong direction. It is raining in the dry season.
And now, in the rainy season, as I returned to the Maldives for
the third time, the sun was actually beaming from a blue sky. It
was November. We had left here in March after our first test
excavations. Now I was back in Male alone to arrange for a
possible second term of archaeological work.
I was back among friends and could feel it. Maniku was still
out of office, but the President had appointed Loutfi as Acting
Director of the new National Council for Linguistic and Histori-
cal Research. The Chairman was the old, solemn Chief Justice
who this time met me with a handshake and a smile at the door
of Loutfi’s new office.
In Loutfi’s office an extra desk and chair had been provided
for my use, and on the desk lay a stack of booklets, papers and
unpublished manuscripts for me to study. The National Library
was in the next door room. Now accepted as having collabora-
ted with the former Moslem Committee, I was being given full
access to all information pertaining to the Maldive past. To my
surprise, a bright and beautiful little Maldive lady who spoke
perfect English was brought in to serve as my translator for the
Arab and Divehi texts. Iwas even more surprised when she told
217
The Maldive Mystery
me her mother was one of the members of this Moslem Council

for Research. The old Maldive respect for the other sex was
certainly surviving. The young lady was married to a German
husband who had accepted the Moslem faith, and he had just
built a fine Maldive vessel called Shadas after her. It was strong,
with a shallow draft for the island reefs, and he was now ready
to take us anywhere within the archipelago when we resumed
our digs.
My next experience was less comforting. Happy at all these
promising arrangements I walked over to the National Museum
to inspect the sculpted stones we had brought to Male in the
Golden Ray. For lack of other space we had temporarily put them
one by one all over the bare floor with only a narrow trail left for
passage. They were still in the same room, but now haphazardly
piled in towering stacks up to the windows and under the stairs.
Some were broken, many had bad scratches, and crushed stone
had filtered down through the pile.
I made no attempt to conceal my anguish. What had been
carved at least 1,000 years ago and had survived eight centuries
of deliberate destruction, had now been damaged inside the
doors of 4 museum. When the friendly old custodian saw
my despair, he explained that because the Prime Minister of
Malaysia had been on a visit it had been necessary to tuck away
all these ‘old stones’.
Mixed in with our own stones were some large slabs of fine
white marble, which were splendidly carved in relief. The style,
motifs and material differed from anything we had found.
Marble. There was no marble to be quarried in the Maldives.
The central motif on the largest slab was the ‘Tree of Life’, well
known from the oldest Mesopotamian religious art; but here it
was flanked by reliefs of lofty temples with rows of tall windows
and with stupa-like roofs. Certainly not Moslem art.
‘Just been dug up,’ explained the old man with visible con-
tempt. ‘In Male.’ It turned out that workmen had hit upon these
pieces when digging a new foundation under the old Ma-a
mosque. They had notified Loutfi.
‘We do not destroy old things any more,’ said the custodian
solemnly and opened the doors to the closet where we had first.
seen the big heads. On top of one of them now lay a tiny stone
lion, the size of a fist. It had a goatee beard like the Egyptian
218
A Lost Chapter in World History
Sphinx, and on its back was a round depression as if intended to

hold ointment or powder for ceremonial rites.
A lion! In the Maldives!
This was truly exciting.
‘A man brought it from Dhigu Ra, an island in Ari atoll. He
found it last week when digging a well.’
I begged the good old man to take great care of the lion, which
could disappear into anybody’s pocket, and hurried back to
Loutfi’s office. On a borrowed typewriter I hammered out a
memorandum which I gave to Loutfi. It spelt out my conditions
for asking Oslo University and the Kon-Tiki Museum to con-
tinue excavations in the Maldives. A principal condition was
that a new museum should be built in Male to house present
and future archaeological finds from the pre-Moslem period.
Otherwise it would be absurd to dig up any more from the
ground.
Next morning I received my own letter back from Loutfi.
Under everything I had requested there were now green lines.
Loutfi explained that he had sent a messenger straight to the
President’s Palace with my letter. It was up to the President to
decide, and he agreed to everything he underlined in green.
That meant he had agreed to everything. The President had only
one question. Abbas Ibrahim, Minister of Presidential Affairs,
had called back to Loutfi and said the President wanted to know
what the Kon-Tiki Museum could do to aid in the building of
the new Male Museum.
I promised to lay the matter before the board of the museum,
which at least could assist with building plans and technical
advice. That sufficed. Thus we had permission to come back and
resume excavations once the rainy season was supposed to be
over. In January.
‘Come in late February,’ suggested Loutfi. ‘Recently the
seasons seem to be delayed.’
It so happened that President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom had

just been re-elected for a second term in office, and while still in
Male I was invited to his inauguration ceremony. Never, except
at the UN, have I seen such a gathering of diplomats from all
over the world. Under a huge canvas cover at the edge of a sports
field the President with his government and guests were seated
219
The Maldive Mystery
to watch the Maldive guards parade in honour of their re-

elected leader. The United States President had sent, in addition
to the ambassador, his own personal envoy. The Russian,
Chinese and Cuban ambassadors were there too. And represen-
tatives from all of the large and most of the small nations in
Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, not to mention the brother
nations of the Arab world. The young Republic has little to offer
but fish and sunshine, but it is prepared as always to benefit
from unrestricted friendly relations with the outside world.
Throughout their history, Maldive culture has survived through
business with the outside world. And, to the outside world the
habitat of the 160,000 Maldive islanders still has a strategic
position. It is a sort of Gibraltar between East and West.
To this gathering of representatives from the many foreign
nations were also invited the chiefs from all the atolls in the
archipelago. This offered a unique opportunity for me to meet,
one by one, all those whom Loutfi invited to his office because
he thought they might be knowledgeable about the Redin or
other unpublished legends and traditions. The Redin were as
real to some of these chiefs as the rubble-piles of former hawittas
that lay hidden in their jungles.
Loutfi’s version of history was confirmed. The Redin had first
arrived at Ihavandu, the northernmost of all the Maldive islands.
Ahmed Saib, chief of Ra atoll in the far north, said that people in
his area were still full of Redin stories. From Ihavandu the Redin
had next come to settle on Lumbo Kandu in his atoll, and from
here spread to Nalandu, Milandu and Landu, all up in the
northern extremity of the Maldives.
The Redin came long before any other Maldivians. Between
them and the present population other people had also come,
but none were as potent as the Redin, and there were many of
them. They not only used sail but also oars, and therefore
moved with great speed at sea. Because of this they might sleep
on one island, go and pick fruit on another, and cook the meal
on a third.
In some islands there were still tales of how the Redin left
when the first Maldive families came, because they disliked
having commerce with common people. But they came back to
pick limes at night. Limes (Jumbo) seem to have played an
important part in the Redin kitchen, and the lime stories con-
220
centrate about their settlements on Lumbo Kandu and the

island of Rasgetimu in the northern end of Ra atoll. Legend has
it that an early ancestor from Rasgetimu had once, as a stow-
away under deck, taken a quick voyage with some Redin to
Lumbo Kando for limes. On return to Rasgetimu he revealed his
presence without punishment and the Redin even gave him a
share in their harvest. Since that time voyagers from Rasgetimu
have always maintained the habit of leaving two limes on the aft
deck of their dhonis. Perhaps for some such reason, Rasgetimu
was considered to be a ‘good iuck island’. Maavadi Tuttu Be, an
old shipwright from that same area who had built 150 dhonis,
said that each new boat should go to be beached at Rasgetimu
first, in commemoration of the Redin.*
There were references to Redin tombstones buried deep in
the island bedrock on Alifushi island, and to other stone slabs
with carvings of unknown origin on Baara island where there
were still people known for their blue eyes, red hair and sharp
noses. But in this northern cluster of Redin islands, Nalandu,
Milandu and Landu showed the most visible remains from
Redin times, said the chief from Ra. Nalandu is actually a cluster
of uninhabited isles in a shallow lagoon, full of large heaps of
big shells, shells like oysters, which had been cooked over fires
and left by the Redin. On Milandu they had also left a very large
mound of stones. Bell had heard of that mound which his
informant called Redinge Funi, or Redin Hill, and which
people were afraid to dig into because of superstition. But on
Landu, I now learnt, was the biggest of all Redin mounds, the
Maabadhigeé, or ‘Great Cooking Place’. It was also known to
people on the neighbouring islands as the Great Hachcha or
Haikka.
Only quite recently had Maldivians settled on Landu, for the
first time since the Redin left. Hardly anybody else came to
Landu because of the very rough anchorage and difficult land-
ing. But five years ago two young Americans had been ashore
and experienced how the spirits of the Redin still dominated the
island. They had first visited another island in the same northern
atoll and there heard ‘of Landu where jinnis came every day for
dinner and where there was a huge mound. A Maldivian took
them to that island in his dhoni. One of these Americans was
nearly 2 metres (over 6 feet) tall and the other, Dave Doppler,
221
The Maldive Mystery
who came to tell me the story in Loutfi’s office, was a giant too
by Maldive standards.
When these two fair strangers and their dark little Maldive
companion beached on the former Redin island of Landu, all the
people ran away. From their stature and colouring the unexpec-
ted visitors must have looked like the legendary idea of the
Redin. As they walked up the empty village street they saw
people peeping through the door cracks. They entered the un-
locked island office to spend the night there. When the chief atlast
came out the others followed and the old people kept on pointing
at the tall blond men. They were shown the house where food
was left every night for the jinnis. Every morning it was gone.
Next day they went to see the great Redin mound which Dave
estimated to be 15 metres (50 feet) high, in the midst of marshy
land. There was no trail or track near the mound, and nobody
from the village dared to follow the three visitors there. A huge
banyan tree grew on top and other trees and bushes covered the
slopes. There was a temple inside, Dave had been told, but he
had seen nothing except big crude blocks scattered about. I met
nobody else who had seen this ‘Great Cooking Place’ where the
Redin were supposed to have lit their kitchen fires.
From these northern atolls the Redin had established them-
selves along the whole chain of Maldive islands right down to
Addu atoll south of the Equatorial Channel. One of their last
hold-outs had been Addu-Gan, where the airport engineers
had now destroyed their large hawitta. But when the new
inhabitants of the Maldives had come there too, the Redin had
retreated for a while to Hitadu in the same atoll but right on the
Equatorial Channel. Disturbed by the arrival of the new immi-
grants there also, they had in the end gone to live on a small islet
off Hitadu, called Kabo-Hura. Here the Redin continued to
perform their own rites. They danced. The people of Hitadu
could hear the sound of their dumari trumpets when they
danced. The Redin were normally peaceful, but not when they
danced. When the people of Hitadu heard the trumpets some
were irresistibly drawn to that place because of the sound of the
ritual. When they saw the performers they became spellbound
and were unable to return to their own homes. They died on
Kabo-Hura. Their bones were found there when the Redin
left. For the Redin did leave, they did not all die in the
222
Maldives. They went away in the end, but nobody knew where.
The dance the Redin performed was called deo. This meant
‘demon’ to the Maldivians although it meant ‘god’ to the Hindu,
and old folks in Addu said that many of their ancestors died
from the deo dance. Not only people in Hitadu but in all parts of
the Maldives had died from the deo dance. They were naked
when they danced this dance, men and women, for it was a
sexual dance. They ‘did things connected with sex’ during this
performance. The deo dance was prohibited now. About twenty
years ago a letter was sent from Male to all the islands saying
that this dance was forbidden, like alcohol and adultery.
Loutfi was born on Hitadu. He recalled from his own boy-
hood that there had been a small stone house with a corbel-
vaulted roof left by theRedin on Kabo-Hura islet. The islet and
the view from there was so beautiful that the British com-
mander had destroyed the Redin house and built his own
bungalow on the site during the Second World War.
Nobody knew how people used to die during the Redin
dance, but in his book Maloney describes a traditional Maldive
dance which he believes to be of Persian or West Asiatic origin. A
prayer is said and incense is burnt before the drummer begins.
As the music warms up and frenzy mounts, the dancer begins
stabbing his own skull repeatedly with an iron spike and the
blood runs. This tdra dance may well be some remnant of the
Redin deo dance.
Blood sacrifice, although not of human beings, was once
common in the Maldives, but it was certainly of neither Moslem
nor Buddhist origin. Many of our dependable informants in-
sisted that blood sacrifice to the god of the sea, Rannamaari, still
occasionally took place all over the archipelago. In the northern
atolls strange masked dances are still performed where words
from a forgotten language are used to summon supernatural
beings.®
The blend of cultures behind the old Maldive nation became
even more apparent when the chiefs explained that they fol-
lowed three different calendar systems on their islands. They
had the modern year divided into January, February, etc. Then
they used the Islamic lunar calendar. But their own old one was
the solar year of 27 months with the interpolation of an extra
month every eleven years. This solar calendar year was used for
223
The Maldive Mystery
agriculture and by the fishermen. The astrologers who gave

advice to their rulers in former times used these solar months,
and many of the months were named after stars that came
directly overhead during that period.
Maloney had actually been told about five Maldive calendar
systems, three of which were solar. The most important he also
found to be that of 27 months. He shows how this system must
have come to the Maldives from the Sanskrit-speaking area of
north-west India where it was originally a zodiacal system for
astrology. The heavens were divided into 27 segments, each
named after a particular star. Even the Maldive names for each
of the 27 months were clearly derived from the Sanskrit names
for the same 27 months.*
‘What about the dhonis?’ I asked the chiefs.
One observation that had puzzled me and a great many
others was the standard shape of the Maldive dhonis. They had
a marked ‘Egyptian’ form with the tall, arched and incurved
bow ending as if it were in a fan-shaped papyrus blossom. This
was the typical shape of the elegant reed-bundle ships shared
by the world’s three oldest known civilisations; in Egypt,
Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Actually, the Maldive dhoni
had even more in common with the Phoenician sailing ships
which were built from planks and only retained the papyrus
form of the older mother civilisations. Until very few years ago
all Maldive vessels had square sails, like the ships of these
earliest seafarers. We could see these square sails hoisted on
some of the dhonis in the southern atolls. When, at sunrise, they
sailed out of the lagoon with their lofty papyriform bows
against the morning sky, it was like seeing a Phoenician fleet
heading out into the ocean waves.
‘Why do you have that strange bow on all your dhonis?’ I
asked the chiefs and the old shipwright.
‘It is only for beauty.’ ‘It is an old tradition.’ ‘It has no practical
purpose. We call it moggadu or mulahgadu. It is detachable so we
can lift it off when it disturbs our work. It is loose and not part of
the keel,’ were the answers | was always given.
The ship was the only means that could have brought these
people out to their islands. I knew from the beginning therefore
that the standard type of dhoni would be yet another jigsaw
piece in the Maldive puzzle.
224
As I once again sat in the airplane and watched the Maldives

sliding away like leaves on a pond, I knew from my many
informants that, formerly, these islands were a week’s sailing
away from India for the traditional Maldive ships. Not bad for
that period. But today India was little more than one hour away.
Hectic days followed. Back in Oslo I barely had time to
organise the return of a new expedition to the Maldives two
months later. It would be my fourth visit in fourteen months.
The Kon-Tiki Museum and Oslo University showed a very
positive response. Knut Haugland, my companion from the
Kon-Tiki journey and now running the museum, was given
approval by his board to cover all flight tickets to and from Male.
Transport and labour inside the archipelago would be covered
by the Maldive government. Oslo University gave the archae-
ologists leave on full pay, and the Department Head, Professor
Arne Skjdlsvold, agreed to come again. With him once more was
his colleague Oystein Johansen, and this time a third archae-
ologist also, Egil Mikkelsen, the Director of Norway’s National
Museum of Antiquities.
In mid-February we again landed in Male, following local
advice on the timing of: the dry season. The rain was still
pouring down. In the dry season! The sandy streets of Male
were unable to absorb it all. There were more cars there on each
visit, and they had to manoeuvre slowly, avoiding the deeper
puddles while we ourselves hugged the walls to find patches of
dry ground. For millennia the rain clouds had been bound for
the dry zones in Africa. Now they had lost their former sense of
direction and left the Africans dry and these islanders drenched.
‘The sun will shine tomorrow,’ said Loutfi, who greeted us
with a broad smile. His Minister had instructed him to come
with us again. ‘We can leave from Male as soon as you approve
the expedition ship the government proposes.’
Down in the crowded harbour he pointed out a fine little ship,
with both sail and engines, which stood out among the closely
packed rows of dhonis and other Maldive-built ships. Indeed, it
was built from local wood and in the best of Maldive styles, but
with a dash of elegance and as clean as a lady’s handkerchief.
Her name was on the stern: Shadas.
The owner was the young German husband of my Maldivian
translator, Shadas. ‘He built this vessel himself with the help of
225
The Maldive Mystery
a Maldive shipwright and runs it with only an engine-boy anda

cook,’ said Loutfi.
Shadas was indeed a fine vessel, and ideal for expedition work
in these waters.
I met the blue-eyed Moslem owner in Loutfi’s office, a wiry
and fit little German with an open, friendly face and a Moslem-
style moustache as blond as his hair. He spoke to Loutfi in
Divehi before he turned to me.
‘My name is Muhamed Asim Simon,’ he said in good English.
‘I would be glad if you call me Asim.’
We agreed everything on the spot. We would pay the daily
rent for his ship when we were at anchor and used it as our base;
the government would pay their own agreed price for each
travelling day. In record time Asim, with his bicycle and his
happy Maldive cook Zakkaria, helped us provide for the ex-
pedition while his engine-boy Hassan kept watch on all these
treasures as they were delivered on board.
Late one evening we were standing on the waterfront among
a crowd that represented all of Male to witness Singapore
Airlines landing the first Jumbo Jet in transit from the Far East
to Europe. It all went well. East and West were now even closer,
and the Maldives squeezed ever more in the middle. Then we
gathered up our personal belongings to join Captain Asim and
his two-man crew on board the Shadas.
The stars now began to twinkle between the clouds. High
time the weather changed. Loutfi repeated his prophecy. In
addition to him, the crew, and the four of us from Norway,
an official representative from the Atoll Administration had
joined our expedition. A new Maniku: Ibrahim Maniku Don
Maniku.
As the morning sun rose above the horizon we thumped out
of Male lagoon at good speed, bound south for Nilandu.
In the late afternoon we passed through the Ariyaddu Channel
and, as we coasted along the reefs, Hassan pulled in three
bonitos and a dolphin. We rounded Nilandu and this time we
were able to make our way by lead soundings right into the
lagoon. Asim and Hassan rowed in front in our rubber dinghy
and Zakkaria, at the tiller of Shadas, followed their directions.
The draught of Shadas was only one metre (about 3 feet). Asim
found a passage where the depth was almost 3 metres, and there
226
we floated right across the reef which was 400 metres (about 440
yards) wide. Before the sun set we had followed the inside of the
reef back to Nilandu and dropped anchor a few yards away from
the piers. Last time-we were only able to come in here with the
flat-bottomed barge.
Nilandu again.
As darkness fell we were not a little surprised to see a light
twinkle rhythmically out on the reef. Two sharp flashes, a long
pause, then two flashes again. A light-buoy! It was another sign
of how the Maldives were racing into the technological age. We
had seen nothing like this, except in Male, on our visit the
previous year. And Nilandu was well away from any shipping
lane, so this was just marking the reef for the benefit of the local
fishermen. The buoy was powered, we learned to our increased
amazement when we came ashore, by solar energy. We also
learned that, since we last left, a boat from Male had been
here with some Japanese visitors. No doubt this explained the
miraculous light-buoy.
Ashore we noticed other changes since a year ago. The music
from modern Japanese transistor radios blared and screamed at
us from a number of huts in violent discord with the rustling of
palms and the atmosphere of the village, the stars, the lagoon.
Tastes may differ, but this to me was an unhappy blend, like
drinking milk with caviar or playing Beethoven at a football
match.
Perhaps the sound was set at its loudest to impress and
welcome us. As we reached our little sand-filled temple mound
among the palms, the noise faded away, but here too things had
changed. The mound was untouched, but the sandy area around
the trench where we had found the phalloid sculptures had been
turned upside down like a potato field.
‘They took away only one stone,’ said the chief when he saw
how upset we were.
‘They? Who were they?’
‘The Japanese. They came to film what you had found. And
then dug like you did.’
‘Were they archaeologists? Scientists?’
Nobody understood. Loutfi had to intervene. No, we learned.
They were film people. They had chartered a Male boat to film
what they heard we had seen.
227
The Maldive Mystery
We were not in the best of moods when we saw our ‘phallus’

site so disturbed. Hoping to make us happier, however, the
people showed us where their visitors had buried everything
they found. This was of scant service unfortunately to any
archaeologist and reminded us of our digging in the Vadu
refuse place. The Japanese had struck upon a deep stone-lined
pit next to our trench, obviously a square relic chamber under
the walls of the former fertility temple. Into that they had
thrown all they had found, some phalloid stones and ‘umbrella
towers’ similar to ours.
‘A waste of time to dig here any more,’ said Skjolsvold and
turned to look at the untouched areas. ‘What we need now is
more material for carbon datings.’
We held a council on the little temple mound. There was no
dissent. We all agreed that we needed no more phalloid stones
or ‘umbrella towers’; what we required was something to give
us the date of what we had found.
Skjdlsvold stretched ropes north-south across the temple
mound where he wanted to trench. Another long trench was
marked out by Mikkelsen and Johansen on level ground some
200 metres (220 yards) further north, where legend said the wall
had passed which once enclosed the seven former temples.
When workmen had been selected, Loutfi wanted to show mea
place worth digging in front of the nearby mosque. An old man
had told him that a huge swimming pool would be found if we
dug at that place.
There was nothing to see, only a broad sandy road leading to
the nearby village. But thenI got anew shock. We were standing
in front of the great old mosque where Loutfi and Waheed had
made their interesting discovery last time. They had shown us
that the foundation wall under the mosque was precisely like
the one on the prehistoric temple wall we had dug up from the
ground. But where was that splendid wall now?
It was gone. The beautiful stone work had been covered
entirely by modern cement.
I was stunned. Loutfi was furious.
‘Fanatics have done this,’ he exclaimed. ‘They did it because
we discovered it was part of a pagan temple.’
The old pre-Moslem wall was gone forever. On one side of the
mosque was now a deep pit. Here the masons had recently dug
228
sand for their cement. At the bottom of the pit we could see the
top of another buried wall.
The old people were able to tell us that beach sand had been
brought in to bury the pagan bath in front of the mosque. We
dug a test trench through loose sand and found the upper stone
steps of an elegant stairway which led down into the ground.
More men were brought with shovels. There was a half-moon
shaped stone where the stairs began and a beautifully dressed
and fitted line of blocks forming the upper rim of a buried
structure. It was large and circular. As we dug our way down
through loose sand wefound broken bits of limestone, part of a
Moslem tombstone and a phalloid sculpture, all thrown in with
the sand to fill the structure. From the upper rim a broad flight of
stairs with seven stepslanked by vertical stone walls led down
to a stone bench 50 centimetres wide (about 20 inches) which
ran out in a wide circle in both directions.
Just below the bench we hit water. Freshwater. It sank with
the tide as we worked to clear a large segment including half the
rim. The perfectly circular bath was 7.2 metres (23 feet 7 inches)
in its inside diameter. Where the straight walls of the stairs and
the round ones of the bath butted together, the blocks of the
former had been shouldered to withstand the water pressure.
The large ceremonial bath had been built with the same tech-
nical ability and aesthetic perfection as the square bath in Fua
Mulaku; but here all the walls and steps had been covered with
a coat of lime plaster, almost certainly at a secondary stage since
the stones themselves had been smoothly dressed and polished.
The compass showed that the stairs entered precisely on the
south side, from a former causeway that went from the east wall
of the mosque on the now cement-plastered temple foundation,
straight eastwards to the nearby lagoon.
A shout from Mikkelsen and Johansen left no doubt about
their trench having hit the legendary boundary wall of the
former temple complex. There it was indeed. Running exactly
east-west. An amusing interlude came when one of the work-
men shouted that he had caught a ‘modern crab’ on his shovel.
A hermit-crab, of the kind that normally runs around with its
soft body hidden in an empty snail shell, was struggling to get
up from the trench with the lid of a plastic bottle on its back.
Bits of carbon appeared. And pieces of thick pottery. ‘Rumba
one
The Maldive Mystery
moshi’ the workmen called it. This was the kind they used
themselves for storing water in their own houses. But deeper
down Mikkelsen picked up a piece of a greenish ware. ‘Tashi
moshi,’ said the workmen. Loutfi translated ‘Chinese pottery’,
and that was indeed what it looked like to us too.
‘Bardbaro,’ said Johansen, and he put the green sherd in its
proper plastic bag. That was the Divehi term for ‘good, fine’.
This was the first Maldive word we learnt, the most useful one,
and one that served also as a piece in our detective puzzle, for
the Maldivians shared this word and this meaning with old
Urdu, the Indo-Aryan language of the Indus Valley region.
Further down the trench the archaeologists hit upon more of
the Chinese-type potsherds. It had a very special cracked green
glaze and really looked like ancient ware from the Far East. They
found it as well as other ware, shell fragments and carbon right
down to the ground level of the old wall.
At the depth of 90 centimetres (36 inches), Mikkelsen scraped
up a strange bead of red and black mosaic, oblong and perfor-
ated lengthwise. It was a delicate composition and a unique
piece. Our island friends had never seen anything like it. We
had. In some museum. But where?
The buried wall, which proved to be just where the old
islanders indicated, enclosed the whole legendary temple area.
Test pits showed that it ran in a square covering more than two
acres of ground.
The wall itself provided mute information from an epoch
unknown to Moslem tradition. It was built with squared stones
outside and with coral fill inside, and was as wide as a man
could stretch his arms. Way down inside the fill was imbedded a
big limestone piece from a cornice decoration of a former
temple. It was carved with a pattern of knobs and notches that
resembled classic Greek design. A sophisticated temple had
been built on this island, and later it had been destroyed or
fallen into disuse before this pre-Moslem wall was built. Again,
this confirmed our findings on Gan and Gadu.
‘Two peoples seem to have succeeded each other as temple
builders here,’ commented Johansen. ‘And both before the
mosque was built.’
The temple mound indicated the same to Skjdlsvold. His team
had trenched the interior fill of coral sand to the bottom. Only
230
sand, some dirt, and an odd lump of coral made up the solid
pyramid. No charcoal. No relic chamber. No burial. But right
down at ground level, and smack in the centre of the square
base, lay a big conch. A complete marine conch placed there on
purpose, perhaps for magico-religious reasons, by the architects
of the building. Next to the conch lay some unusual reddish or
rather ochre-coloured stones, cut to the size and shape of
modern bricks. Only one was whole; they all lay tossed in as
base fill among loose cora! blocks. We had never seen brick-
coloured sandstone like this before on these islands.
‘We have it, but not much. We call it rat-ga, ‘‘red-stone”’,’
explained Loutfi.
This was one of three types they could quarry. Most common
was veli-ga, ‘sand-stofie’, the smoky-white, coarse-grained
limestone used as building blocks in the temple and all the walls
we had excavated. It formed the foundation of all these islands.
Then there was hiri-ga, or ‘white-stone’, which was quarried
from the outer reef or the bottom of the lagoon. That was the
fine-grained shiny white limestone used as outer dressing
stones by the original temple builders and usually removed by
the Moslems for use in their own mosques.
The presence of the red-stone, which we had never seen
before, was therefore not so surprising. But these discarded red-
stones had been carved as part of some decorated temple wall
and not for fill where we found them.
‘Two temple periods,’ concluded Skjélsvold too. ‘We cannot
say any more until we get the conch carbon-dated.’
Next Gaaf-Gan, for our third time. We could not wait to find out
whether the Japanese had also damaged the sun-temple.
Asim had a firm trust in Allah and was not afraid to take
calculated risks. In the channel between Gaaf-Gan and Gadu he
and Hassan rowed ahead in the dinghy, and dived, until he
came back and steered Shadas right in over the outer reef.
‘It is high tide,’ he explained, ‘and yet the reef is so shallow
outside that the surf breaks before it reaches us.’
Then he and Hassan dived again to fasten a whole array of
ropes from the ship along the bottom of the coral formations
around us; so that when the tide went out we were left as
sheltered as ina swimming pool of calm and crystal clear water,
231
The Maldive Mystery
with coral showing above the surface all around and so little
water under our keel that the largest of the colourful fishes had
to swim around to get past. Porpoises tumbled in through the
unsheltered channel next to us, but there was no room for them
in our pool.
A boat came out with the ‘owner’ of Gan on board, and before
we had time to ask he told us that the Japanese had been here.
They had asked to see what we had found, and were taken to the
great hawitta. But they had not been able to dig, said our tall
friend with a broad smile, because the people of Gadu had
refused to lend them pick and shovel.
The site of the sun-temple was indeed as we had left it. The
great hawitta still lay there complete with the giant kandhu tree
as a spire. Nor did we ourselves intend to open this colossal
mound in search of any hidden relic chambers. That needed to
be done by a major expedition able to build up walls holding the
rubble from caving in when deep trenches or exploring shafts
were opened. Looking instead for datable carbon and potsherds,
we trenched to the bottom of all four walls outside the pyramid,
and ran other trenches at intervals out into the surrounding
terrain. Work was repeatedly interrupted by torrential rain
which came in true tropical style. We hung a huge canvas sheet
up between the trees, and under it sixty of us were cramped
together, being entertained by laughter-loving workmen and
drinking the water that gushed down from the canvas covering.
Then the sun came out again and we were back at work.
The pieces of carbon, bone splinters and potsherds that
fascinated the archaeologists did not particularly appeal to
Loutfi. He was looking for bigger game, and used all the spare
labour to cut trails and clearings in search of more hawittas. And
he found them. In the jungle immediately surrounding the large
hawitta were six more mounds, low, but some of considerable
extent. On top of one of them lay large, long building blocks
covered by green moss but revealing a beautiful decorative
relief of staffs and concentric rings as the moss was peeled off.
Shaped stones lay everywhere, and square blocks with a central
pit that looked as if they could have been pedestals for posts.
Dead east of the great hawitta, and only some 70 metres (230
feet) away, was a marked depression into which I almost fell.
When we pulled away the ferns and branches it proved to be
232
a half-buried ceremonial bath, circular, and built from thick

dressed blocks. In addition to the smaller hawitta we had
visited last time, our workmen cut a trail to another in the
opposite direction, near the southern end of the island and half
an hour’s walk away. When we asked our friends why one huge
hawitta had not sufficed for the former people of this island,
they repeated what we had heard before. There had been more
than one kind of people living here before the last of them were
frightened away by the large cats.
Looking at the faces, and even at the physique of our friends
from Gadu as we were crowded together under the canvas
shelter, there was no doubt left in our minds. Here was the
surviving evidence of a population mixture, from typical Semitic
to Malay, from Européan to Negro.
After we emerged from one thunder shower | noticed some-
thing shining like metal in one of the sun-symbols that had just
been excavated. The rain had washed away all the dirt, and
there was a piece of copper, green with verdigris, inserted right
in the centre of the sun-disc. A careful check on the other sun-
symbols just brought out of the same trench showed the remains
of a thin copper plug rammed in as if to mark the centre. Usually
it was so eroded that only an empty pit was discernible. By
chance there was one broken piece where only half the sun was
left and the whole central cross-section of the stone was visible.
There we saw that a pointed copper spike 8 centimetres (3%
inches) long and 6 millimetres (% inch) thick had been ham-
mered into the stone from the centre of the solar symbol. It took
little imagination to deduce that these copper spikes had been
inserted in the stone to hold something precious so that it could
not be easily removed, very likely a disc of shining metal,
perhaps gold, covering the sun-disc inside the concentric rings.
A very tiny bead of reddish-brown colour was detected by a
sharp-eyed workman as he helped to sieve the excavated dirt. It
was so tiny that it would have been lost through the net of the
sieve had he not caught sight of it. It looked like agate. It may
have been eroded, but nonetheless it was so minute that
nothing much thicker than a hair could pass through the hole.
This minuteness, as well as the material, reminded me of the
famous miniature beads of Lothal where archaeologists had
dug up the remains of a bead factory specialising in just this
233
The Maldive Mystery
kind of mini-bead. Thousands of them lay ready for export by

sea.
‘Moslem girls don’t wear beads,’ commented Loutfi.
Nor do girls lose their beads by the walls of temples, I
thought. This tiny one and the larger one so cleverly composed
in mosaic at Nilandu had probably decorated certain images.
The images had no doubt been broken up by Moslems or by
those before them who had covered the old temple decorations
with plaster.
Carved stones of the strangest shapes had fallen down from
above and become buried at the foot of the pyramid walls.
Nearly all had been broken, and the missing parts thrown
elsewhere and lost. When everything had been in its proper
place this must indeed have been a most elaborately decorated
temple. Some stones were cylindrical and when fitted together
formed part of columns. Others were flat and semi-circular,
others still were straight with classical profiles like plinths. One
was even globular, with a short neck projecting at each pole.
There were slabs with an elegant grid pattern, others with
square and round perforations, and some had steps and stepped
pyramids carved in relief, as well as in three dimensions. There
were also more examples of all the types we had found on our
previous visits.
Then came a big surprise. Mikkelsen had dug up the bust of a
little lion in the corner between the east wall and its ramp. It had
clearly been carved to be set, gargoyle-fashion, into the wall as
decoration. As he brushed the soil off the lion’s head he exposed
a round depression carved at the apex, precisely in the manner
of some of the stone lions carved in pairs at the foot of the Hittite
sun-god. The purpose of this cup-shape is not known. It is one
of the puzzling parallels that also found its way to several of
the stone pumas carved by the Olmec founders of Mexican
civilisation.
Johansen brought up from his trench a broken piece from a
small statuette. The five toes of a foot could clearly be seen on it,
but represented with the sole turned up and flanked by a bent
knee. We turned it round in all directions until it dawned upon
me:
‘It is a piece of a seated Buddha, for he is sitting cross-legged
with his right foot bent up next to his bent left knee. Hindu gods
234
sometimes sit with one foot bent up but then the other hangs
down.’
Then we heard a shout of excitement, turning into triumph-
ant singing. It came from a group of workmen who were
struggling to tear up the huge stump of a tree still left on one of
the ramps. In the deep cavity where the roots had been lay a
stone bull facing upwards. The horned animal was carved front
view, standing with head, forepart and two legs shown, as if in
the process of emerging from the stone. There was a strangely
Mesopotamian feel to this particular carving. As a motif, how-
ever, the lion and the bull were two main symbols of divinity
which ancient Mesopotamia shared with their great neighbours
in India.
Next day we went te work after a full night’s thunderstorm
had passed over. Heavy clouds still hung around. Crazy weather
for the dry season! Damp and rheumatic. A number of the
workmen were missing, although they never seemed to worry
much about getting wet. It was almost noon when Johansen
scraped out what looked like a stone phallus but, when brushed
clean, resembled more the bud of a large lotus flower. Amoment
later he began to yell, and his Maldive team jumped and danced
around him.
It was another lion, this time a complete one with the front
paws bent forwards under the head. It was roughtly 40 centi-
metres long and 21 centimetres high (16 inches by 8% inches),
carved as if lying down but with the hind parts merely squared
to enter into the wall, as was the case with the bull and the sun-
stones. Most strikingly, there was again this mysterious cup-
shaped pit on top of the lion’s head.
Some moments later Mikkelsen came across a third lion
sculpture in the same area, but this one was only a fragment
showing the feline muzzle with mouth and nostrils, and the
right side of the body behind. Whoever had assailed this
magnificent monument of art had done a thorough job. But it
was not the Moslems. For the bull was found thrown in as
part of the building material for the ramp. The Moslems had
destroyed the final structure, but they did not build the ramp.
One evening as Zakkaria was preparing a late dinner, Hassan

was set ashore alone on the uninhabited island to catch some
235
The Maldive Mystery
fish in the lagoon. He was not afraid of jinnis or feretas, but after
a while we heard him shouting wildly for Zakkaria to fetch him
in the rubber dinghy. Zakkaria took some time putting aside his
pots and pans, and when he finally rowed to fetch Hassan the
latter was beside himself with rage and fear. A jinni had come
behind him and thrown sand on his head. Hassan was still
brushing it out of his hair. Perhaps a flying heron, we sug-
gested, or a big bat. But Hassan sneered at these suggestions.
Herons do not throw sand. Jinnis do. Next day in broad daylight
he took Zakkaria to the place to look for footprints. There were
none. Only those of Hassan’s big bare feet. This convinced
Hassan. Only jinnis can move on a beach without leaving
tracks.
Pressed by other duties both Skjélsvold and Loutfi had to
leave before the rest of us, so with Shadas we crossed the
Equatorial Channel to the airport island of Addu-Gan.
On our way south from Gaaf-Gan we made a hasty call once
more at Fua Mulaku. Nilandu and Gaaf-Gan had yielded very
little variety in types of potsherds compared to what we had
seen here. Understandably enough, Fua Mulaku must have
been a favourite call for all foreign ships passing through the
Channel, because of its fertility and its unlimited water supply.
This time we had a rowing boat carried from the beach to the
larger of the two lakes which made Fua Mulaku different from
all other coral atolls I had seen or heard of. Lakes do not form on
coral islands, but this had once been an open atoll with a
passage into an inner lagoon. Local traditions still spoke of a
time when ships and rafts would sail in from the sea to find
shelter where today were marshy taro fields and the lakes.
The lakes were slowly filling up, and gradually turning into
bogs and taro fields. On our first visit Bjorn Bye and I had tried
to swim on the surface of the larger lake, head above water, but
we came out with our swimming trunks full of brown mud. This
time Johansen and | rowed out with two islanders, scaring the
tall cranes and white waterbirds up into the treetops. The lake
was only some 350 metres (380 yards) long but stunningly
beautiful without a ripple in the water, and in all shades of
green mirroring the coconut palms, banana plants and the
dense wall of foliage that closed in on the water from all sides.
But merely dipping the oars to row we turned up patches of
236
fluffy reddish-brown mud. It was so soft that our island com-

panions dived overboard and disappeared as if into chocolate
mousse. They swam right down to the bottom, coming up again
like chocolate covered candy men with fistfuls of a beautiful
white paste of lime.
This bigger of the two lakes, Bodhu Kulhi, was only a stone’s
throw from the seashore and must have been a dream place for
early seafarers, first as an open harbour, then as a bunkering
place for much needed freshwater when nature closed the
entrance and washed away the salt water with the annual
torrents of tropical rain. For centuries, when the freshwater was
clear right down to the then lifeless coral formations, this must
have been the greatest and most beautiful attraction to any
sailor on the long voyage across the two halves of the Indian
Ocean.
No wonder then that BjOrn and I had picked up such an
incredible variety of potsherds when we stepped ashore the
first time. As soon as the children saw me picking up a sherd
they ran about and picked up others. And with some sweets for
reward we soon had them delivering to us so many surface
sherds that we shut up shop and put together a cloth bag full of
samples. This was delivered to our friend Roland Silva in Sri
Lanka.
He wrote back at that time: ‘It is rather interesting to note that
the dates of the specimens reflect the movement of man dating
to the period of the turn of the present era. I am sure this will
give much support to your proposal of an early occupation of
these wonderful islands on the equator.’
In our bag of Fua Mulaku sherds the Sri Lankan experts had
picked out one neck fragment of which the report said: ‘The
ware is similar to that of Rouletted Ware, and it probably has
Hellenistic connections of c. 200 Bc—Ap 200. This sherd is im-
portant.’ Some other sherds were found to be akin to Sri Lankan
ceramics of the third century ap; others had a possible sixth-
century derivation from the Kushan Red Polished Ware of
India. Still others were referred to as, ‘Miscellaneous glazed
wares, most probably imported Islamic and Chinese’.”
East and West had met on Fua Mulaku. We were sure of
finding still more on this visit by sinking several test trenches
near the big hawitta. But no. Near the oldest mosque? No. In the
2of
The Maldive Mystery
field near the village? On the edge of the taro fields? No and no.
Even if we dug right through the upper layer of black humus
and the next of sterile gravel down to the veli-ga bedrock. In
some places there were no potsherds at all, and then we realised
we were digging where the lagoon had been. In the other test
pits we usually found one basic type of simple brick-coloured
ware with little variation except in the flaring of the rim and
the size of the pot. Sometimes this ware was decorated with
grooves. Only occasionally did we scrape up a different, plain
yellow ware, or some of the Chinese type crackle-glazed green
sherds. The spectacular variety showed up only in the coral
sand near the landing places, or on the surface of barren places
near the village with very little soil.
There could be only one interpretation. The local people had
never used such a wide variety of foreign pots. These had been
left over the centuries by ships’ crews who spent short periods
ashore in transit or during barter. The local population, then as
now, had no need of other pots than the large jars at their doors
and the smaller ones used in the kitchen. These, as the early
Arabs wrote and local traditions confirmed, were standard
merchandise brought from ports in south-west India in ex-
change for cowrie shells.
Even in Fua Mulaku and on Addu atoll the weather was
unseasonal, with thunder-storms and violent rain; and our
return trip with Shadas northbound across the Equatorial
Channel proved to be much more difficult than rowing on Fua
Mulaku’s palm-encircled lake. A full storm blew up as soon as
Addu atoll was out of sight, and nowhere in the oceans are the
waves more inclined to jump into a wild maelstrom than where
a major current opposes them, or joins them in chasing through
a channel.
We were heading back for Gan and Gaddu in Gaaf atoll to
continue our excavations. Since Loutfi, together with Skjdlsvold,
had left us in Addu atoll, an experienced sailor from Gaddu,
named Fauzi, joined us fora free ride home while serving as our
pilot. Fauzi confirmed what we knew, that the currents were so
strong and variable in the Maldives that one should never trust
a compass so long as there is a chance of getting a bearing on
visible land.
Maniku Don Maniku, our quiet companion from the Atoll
238
Administration, became much more talkative now that he was

taking on Loutfi’s role as our adviser and guide. In the heavy
rolling seas he tried to make radio contact with the outside
world. The range of our tiny rented transmitter was not much
further than a man could shout, so he was particularly proud
when he made contact with the airport island we had just left
out of sight. It was raining there, he reported happily, for we
had no rain. But then his voice changed. Addu atoll had received
a severe gale warning from Male, and a wind of hurricane force
was raging just north of the archipelago, something very rare in
these waters. 7
The west-south-west storm in the channel rose to a gale.
Asim assured us that no dhoni would leave the lagoons in this
weather. Black storm clouds were rolling over us. Wind and
waves were with us and the Shadas was pitching ahead with
great speed. By 8.45 in the morning, with our eyes burning from
salt water, we were catching glimpses of Fua Mulaku between
the showers of spray. It was a good coast to keep away from in
this kind of weather, but we needed to get close enough to
adjust our course for Gaaf-Gan.
The sea was growing really rough as we crossed the equatorial
line where the current swept at its greatest speed. Everything
loose on deck had long since been carried below and the dinghy
on the cabin roof was_properly secured. Cascades of water
flooded over Shadas from bow to stern — it was like diving
overboard each time the waves hit us. Johansen was a hardy
sailor but he had had stomach pains since yesterday and said he
was going to his bunk. Mikkelsen came up, smiling courageously
before making an offering to Neptune and hurrying down
below again. Zakkaria was hanging over the gunwales whenever
he sampled a spoonful of his own cooking.
A man witha plastic sack over his head and down to his knees
came from the bow and told me: ‘Hassan no like this’, and took
additional shelter by crawling in under the overturned dinghy.
Struggling to keep to his feet with his transmitter set, Maniku
Don Maniku was now unable to make contact with the outside
world and was visibly unhappy with our own one here among
the waves. As he staggered towards his bunk he made it clear
that he did not trust Asim as captain of his ship. Only Fauzi, he
said, a Maldivian grown up on this Channel, could bring us safe
Vie)
The Maldive Mystery
ashore. ‘Only Allah can bring us safe ashore now,’ answered

Asim calmly and clung with all his strength to the tiller, giving
orders to Fauzi who was helping him.
‘The ribs are the weakest part of this ship,’ shouted Asim to
me, who was acting the part of a mere spectator of this impres-
sive show. The little vessel was dancing like a woman respond-
ing with grace to every move of the sea. If she tried to resist she
would break like an eggshell. Occasionally there was a loud
sound of cracking wood as some steep wave got out of step with
the others in the ballet, and Asim and I exchanged faint smiles.
None of us was happy. I kept wishing I was on board a reed
ship. If the ribs yielded or the palm-wood planking cracked
Shadas would sink. With our reed ships we had often danced
over much higher waves than this, but with a pleasant feeling of
security because we rode on a buoyant bundle which could not
be filied by any tumbling breaker since the water simply ran
through the bottom and out again.
I swore at the early Sumerians and Phoenicians who had
abandoned their secure reed ships and taught us to build
sinkable vessels!
While we were in the deep troughs of the waves we saw them
curl like glassy walls with hissing, foaming crests, ready to
topple over and fall down upon us. But before this happened we
rode up the steep slope ourselves so that only the crest hit the
sides of the vessel. It was a comforting distraction to watch the
flying fish. They were unable to take off on their long gliding
flights. As soon as they shot out of one wave they landed in the
next, and merely jumped like frogs between the crests.
But Shadas put ona good performance. Her lines and dimen-
sions made her take to the wild seas like an Arctic trawler.
With an overall length of 14 metres (46 feet) she was just small
enough to roll freely between the waves, or over them as they
lifted her up while the tens of thousands of tons of water swept
on underneath. Had Shadas been any longer she would prob-
ably have broken her back over or between two wave crests.
In the main sweep of the equatorial current the seas around us
grew more confused and rose above our heads as unpredictably
as a team of stallions. Even the wind seemed to whistle and
howl more angrily in the stays. But the wilder it got around us
the clearer it was that Asim’s ship could stand up to it, and once
240
again I began to feel that I had lost my childhood’s vision of an

evil ocean. ‘The friendly ocean,’ I kept on saying to myself. The
sight around us was, in a sense, terrifying; yet it was also a
beautiful display of Mother Nature’s power and of her friendly
treatment of those who lived along with her rhythm and did not
fight against it.
Asim and Fauzi were masters at the tiller. At times the gale
was so strong that they had to change course, slow down and
ride the weather, but in the early afternoon we could see palm
crowns ahead each time we were lifted ona high wave. Normally
from the deck we were able to see the tops of the palms at a
distance of some 10 miles, and the sand from about 3 or 4 miles
away. Fauzi climbed the mast and we then adjusted our course
as Fauzi said it wag Gaaf-Gan. Later we discovered it was
Vadu.
We seemed to be among less violent waves now. The wind
also stopped whistling and howling in the stays and we guessed
we were getting out of the main current, perhaps under the
influence of nearby reefs. As soon as we recognised the hawitta
we realised it was Vadu, so we altered course completely and
coasted along with the changing weather, the reef and islands of
Gaaf atoll close to our port side.
Allah was good to the faithful Asim. Dripping with salt water
Asim wore a smile from ear to ear in gratitude and pride as he
steered us into Gaaf lagoon and we found shelter behind Gan.
When we finally headed northwards from Gan, with three
lions and a bull among our cargo, the Maldive sun was ruling
high in the sky again, and the ocean god was at peace with the
wind, even though the latter kept on blowing in the wrong
direction.
At the prescribed hours Asim checked his watch and called
Hassan to take the tiller. Alone of the five Moslems on board he
knelt on deck and bowed towards Mecca. Zakkaria was cleaning
fish and Maniku Don Maniku fiddling with his radio while
Johansen and Mikkelsen were burning their backs sorting
potsherds on deck. As the islands and reefs floated by like corks
on blue and green ink I sat on the cabin roof checking their
names from Hassan Maniku’s little booklet with the long list.
The last words in his short introduction appealed to my mood at
that moment:
241
The Maldive Mystery
The mystery and suspense that the Maldives hides among the
many islands and the reefs . . . the thrill and the satisfaction
that one derives from the exploration of these cannot be
described. It has to be savoured rather than felt. For it is the
joy of seeing what has hitherto been hidden from broad
view.”
Male again. Were we any closer to the answer to the Maldive

mystery?
242
CHAPTER XI
Whence the Buddhists?

Into the Lion’s Den
IF YOU WANT to go lion hunting you do not go to Sri Lanka, or to

Norway. There are, of course, no lions in those countries, yet in
Sri Lanka you can see lions’ paws sculpted in antiquity which
dwarf those of the Egyptian Sphinx, while the national coat of
arms of Norway shows a lion standing on two legs holding an
axe in its paws. Why did Sri Lanka not choose an elephant, or
Norway a bear?
The answer is that ancient man travelled. He was not locked
up in one area like a prisoner. The national culture he created in
his own homeland was not solely bred there. Some was brought
from a previous abode, some was borrowed from other nations.
was
Indeed, ancient man was as creative as we are today, but he
also able to learn, and he was open to the influence of others.
The Old World lion, and its New World equivalent, the puma,
were the earliest symbols of divine royalty in every part of the
world where pre-European civilisation bloomed in the last
three millennia BC. It is not so strange therefore that it spread to
Sri Lanka with the royal seafarers who established their king-
dom on that island in the last millennium before the Christian
era; nor is it surprising that the travelling Norsemen borroweda
symbol so widespread in their Mediterranean hunting grounds.
The concept of the lion even reached the Maldive atolls before
horse. Indeed, the lion, the bull and the sun were
the Arab
decorating the great hawitta on Gaaf-Gan before it was stripped
of these symbols and covered with white plaster by the last
worshippers to use this legendary Redin mound in pre-Moslem
times. The legends about the visiting cat people could be local
inventions, but the buried lion sculptures testified to contact
the
with the outside world. The lion, the bull, the lotus flower,
243
The Maldive Mystery
long-eared images, the semi-precious beads, the copper spikes,

the fingerprint masonry, and the classical profiles of the hawitta
plinths tied the pre-Moslem Maldive artists to the culture foun-
ders on the continents. One by one, or jointly, these elements
had come to the Maldive atolls with seafarers from some other
lands.
But which lands?
Ever since our first confrontation with Maldive archaeology
we had been looking for pieces that matched those we had
brought to the Male Museum. Between each visit to the islands
all of us travelled far and wide in Asia to consult museum
collections, libraries, and archaeological sites in a joint effort to
fill the gaps in the Maldive puzzle.
Sri Lanka had been our first suspect. It was the nearest land,
and it was from here that Bell had come to argue an early
Singalese epoch in the Maldives. Sri Lanka was one of the most
impressive Buddhist centres; and, of course, it was, from
antiquity, the home of the Lion people.
Some of us would dread to follow early man in his old-time
craft in the open seas, others would hate to enter an untrodden
jungle, crawl down the tunnels to his underground caves, or
follow his ascent up a vertical rock wall.
Height certainly does not seem to have bothered the former
Lion people. When their King Kassapa ruled Sri Lanka in the
fifth century after Christ, he perched his palace on top of the
Sigiryia pinnacle. The ascent to the palace went up the vertical
wall of a rocky mountain that rose like a giant cylindrical hat
above the jungle roof. The 200-metre-high (about 600 feet) cliff
walls were not only vertical, but in many places directly over-
hanging so not even a mountain goat could get a foothold. Yet
the king’s engineers with the means available in their days had
solved the problem of access.
Today Sigiryia is a central tourist site in Sri Lanka’s ‘Cultural
Triangle’. I went there as a tourist, but with the advantage of
having the scholar responsible for the excavations as my guide.
Senake Bandavanayak was himself a descendant of the Lion
people and what he could tell me was the story of his own kin. I
was surprised to learn that even this site was abandoned and
little known until the ever intrepid H. C. P. Bell, in 1894, began
to clear the jungle and started the first dig.
244
Through the remains of a fifth-century pleasure garden with

marble fountains and ponds fed by underground aqueducts, we
reached the foot of the ‘Lion’s Rock’ and began climbing broad
stairs between huge picturesque boulders. An eagle’s nest and
not a lion’s den, I thought, as we next began to climb steep and
narrow stairs which clung to the wall and led us sideways up the
vertical rock face.
High up, where the cliff began to curve out to forma shelter
above our heads, the king’s masons had built a comfortable
gallery. A narrow inclining floor, flanked by an outside parapet
built from bricks and covered with glassy plaster, was as
smooth and solid now as when it was built a millennium and a
half ago.
Here was a well-preserved portrait gallery of the Lion people
from the period. And here real excitement began for one who
had been chasing in the wake of seafaring Long-ears across
three oceans. For here they were, true-to-life portraits of stun-
ningly beautiful women, half natural size. Thanks to the protec-
tion from the overhanging cliff and the high rampart, the lines
and colours were as clear as if painted by a modern artist. As to
elegant design and use of colour, the ancient master had very
little to learn from, and much that he could teach to, his modern
colleagues. Some of the finest masterpieces of decorative and
descriptive art in antiquity were preserved on the plaster-
covered cliff wall in King Kassapa’s natural skyscraper.
No men were represented there. The models were all women,
and women seemingly chosen for their extraordinary beauty.
Naked but for colourful loin cloths tied around the hips well
below the navel, their slim waistlines and prodigious breasts
would certainly qualify them as winners of any sex-bomb
contest. No wonder the rampart forming the opposite wall was
covered by later inscriptions praising the beauty of the bare-
breasted young ladies. Senake translated some of the texts for
me. Most of them had been inscribed in Singalese by sporadic
visitors from the seventh to the eleventh centuries. One man
had wondered how King Kassapa dared to expose his treasured
women to common eyes. Only one woman visitor of the time
was less appreciative: ‘A deer-eyed young woman on the
mountainside arouses my anger. She has a string of pearls in her
hand and in her looks she assumes rivalry with us.’
245
The Maldive Mystery
Two other maidens hold large lotus flowers, Egyptian fashion,

in one hand, gracefully opening or picking the petals with the
other. There are also some holding large trays filled with colour-
ful flower arrangements. Their skin is fair. Their profiles are
almost Greek, but their eyes faintly oriental. Their stately bear-
ing, the graceful pose of their slender arms and hands, their long
fingers with pointed nails, all combine with their jewellery and
majestic headwear to show that they were ladies of the upper
class in their society. Nobility is also indicated by a custom
common to them all: they were Long-ears! They all had pierced
and vastly expanded ear lobes, and filled the slots with huge
discs that made the flesh of their ears dangle almost to their
shoulders. Repulsive to us, but a link in our mystery.
They were richly adorned with elegant necklaces and armlets,
and each wore a majestic jewel-studded head-dress that re-
called the most elaborate in Maya nobility fashion. Bright-
coloured stones like red agate and green jade were worked into
gold frames artistically designed as sun-symbols and lotus
flowers.
As in the Maldives, the solar motif and the lotus flower were
used as favourite symbols by people who extended their own
ears. And higher up the cliff was alion, asymbol so important to
the king that it gave the name to his entire fairy-tale abode, and
even to his own people.
Beyond the gallery of the fair maidens the royal steps have
crumbled away from the cliff side, but a narrow modern iron
bridge took us to where the original flight of stairs still led up to
a broad terrace.
Whichever way I turned I was impressed. When I turned my
back to the rock I gazed upon a panoramic view of rare beauty
over a hilly tropical world rolling on until the jungle was lost like
a green sea against a coast of wild mountains that rose like tall
islands on the horizon. When I turned away from this view I
found myself between the two paws of a lion so gigantic that,
before the head and chest had tumbled from their positions
against the rock wall, it would have been a landmark to friend
and foe from many miles distant. This feline monster was so
colossal that each toe, by itself, was twice the size of a real lion. It
had been built out of solid brick and then sculpted and covered
with stucco with such care for detail that even the hair of the fur
246
showed up right down to the huge sharp claws. A broad flight of

stairs led up between the lion’s paws, and it had once run on up
through the lion’s chest and head. Since this part had crumbled
and laid bare the rock face, a series of iron ladders and guard
rails now led the braver visitors up on to the palace ruins and to
a large rock pond on the summit.
In front of the lion’s paws was a modern netting-screened
iron cage capable of holding a pair of real lions, although not
large enough for a single paw of the man-made one dominating
the terrace.
‘What for?’ I asked surprised.
Senake pointed up.
Up on the cliff face above our heads were some colossal nests
of rock wasps. ‘Sp ie
‘Sometimes they attack visitors up here,’ explained Senake.
‘The cages are for people, not for the wasps! It is quicker to get
into the netted cage than to climb down.’
Senake thanked me for not insisting on climbing to the
summit. The only thing we missed, he assured me, was seeing
the huge size of the limestone building blocks King Kassapa’s
men had brought up on top.
Before we began the climb down I took a last look at the front
legs of the lion which were outstretched. Could it be that this
huge man-made lion had been inspired by the Sphinx in Egypt?
After all, Egyptian papyrus ships used to frequent this island
long before Kassapa built his fort. But Kassapa needed no
outside inspiration for his lion; he believed he was himself
descended from that species.
That story I was to learn the same night from a group of Sri
Lankan scholars. Sri Lanka had a wealth of written records left
by Buddhist monks who were collecting legends and historic
facts more than 1,000 years ago. As in the Maldives, the texts
were bound into regular books, some had pages of copper
sheets hinged together, some had pages of palm leaves bound
between wooden covers. Recent excavations had brought to
light some precious books of thin sheets of pure gold. Apart
from China, no other nation in Asia can pride itself on such a
detailed history recorded meticulously over more than 2,000
years.
247
The Maldive Mystery
These old chronicles show that Sri Lanka was reached in the
late sixth century Bc by Aryan invaders who came by sea from
the Gulf of Cambay on the north-west coast of India. These
seafarers called themselves Singalese, or Lion people, because
their leader, King Vijaya, claimed to have lion blood in his
veins. According to this tradition, his royal grandmother had
wedded a sacred lion. Upon conflict with his father the king,
son of the lion, Prince Vijaya had taken to the sea in two ships
with 700 followers, men, women and children. Vijaya’s ships
called first on some other islands, but finally they ended up on
the north coast of Sri Lanka and established their first settle-
ment near Puttalam on the west coast. The subsequent Sri
Lankan calendar is counted from the year of this landing. While
we, at the time, had reached our year 1982 (after Christ) the
Singalese had reached their year 2525 (after Vijaya’s arrival).
The Lion people accordingly reached Sri Lanka about 543 Bc,
and their language reveals that they are of Aryan stock.
But were these Lion people the first to reach Sri Lanka?
Had nobody else managed to cross from the nearby continent
before the sixth century Bc?
The Singalese archaeologists have admitted there was mount-
ing evidence that at least one earlier civilisation was already
present on the island when the Lion people arrived; but little
has so far been done to unravel its identity. In the Buddhist
period the monks who wrote Sri Lanka’s chronicles did much to
erase any memory of these earlier Sri Lankans. They referred to
them as three classes of ‘demons’: the Yakkha, the Naga, and the
Rakkhasa, who worshipped water, fire and fertility.
As in the Maldives, these people also from religious pride try
to erase their own early history, I thought to myself as I parted
from my Singalese company to go to bed. But today, when
modern science was finding human traces of these presumed
demons, they too had to be taken into account in our search for
Maldive origins. Whoever they were, I thought, they must have
been descendants of boat builders, for this great island had
never been linked to the continent in human times. Thus, in
looking to Sri Lanka for possible pre-Moslem arrivals in the
Maldives we could not concentrate solely on its Buddhist period.
Even the Lion people sailed the seas before they became
Buddhists, and they did not convert to Buddhism until the third
248
century BC, that is, three centuries after their arrival. In this early
period the Lion people must have maintained their ancestral
religion as they brought it from the former Indus Valley civil-
isation, modified, perhaps, through contact and intermarriage
with the Yakkhas and their contemporaries who already pos-
sessed the land.
The Yakkhas, who were they?
‘The Yakkhas were the true engineers behind Sri Lanka’s
hydraulic civilisation,’ I said to myself, repeating what one local
scholar had tried to hammer into my mind a few days earlier
when he insisted I read his publication.
‘A crackpot,’ I thought when I saw the title: “The Ancient
Hydraulic Civilisation of Sri Lanka’.
Never heard of hydraulic civilisations. Neolithic yes. And
even megalithic. But not hydraulic. Yet the scientists who had
that day shown me the impressive dams and waterworks of
the Lion people had also called their culture ‘hydraulic’. So
apparently it was a legitimate term in this region.
If the Yakkhas had been real people like the Lion people, they
must have shared their fate with the Redin of the Maldives. Like
the Redin they had faded away in the memory of later invaders
until they survived only in legends as mythical beings.
If the Yakkhas had left archaeological traces behind them,
then the ‘demons’ of the land referred to in Buddhist records
had very likely suffered the same fate as the American Indians
when they were ‘discovered’ by the Christians: they were not
all killed by the invaders, but through intermarriage and contact
they lost their identity. Their descendants and their culture
were assimilated, to live on as inherent parts of the later
Singalese society. This society was characteristic for the Sri
Lankan nation and for them alone. The Buddhists had done in
Sri Lanka what the Moslems had done in the Maldives. They
had intentionally underplayed the importance of their own
national past. In their eagerness to give credit to the founder of
their own religious faiths, both nations had played down the
cultural level and the impressive age of their own root ancestry.
I grabbed the book from my suitcase to see what the ‘crackpot’
had to say about the Yakkhas. On the first page I read: ‘I
dedicate this book to the Yakkhas, to whom we owe a greater
debt than is still realised’. The author was A. D. N. Fernando. It
249
The Maldive Mystery
was a newly published copy of Journal of the Sri Lanka Branch of

the Royal Asiatic Society,” of which the author was Joint Hon-
orary Secretary. Assuredly he was not a crackpot, but a serious
scholar. One sentence in particular caught my eye: ‘Historical
records indicate that three tribes called Rakkhasa, Yakkha and
Naga were living in Sri Lanka when Prince Vijaya, the founder
of the Sinhala nation landed in Sri Lanka in the sixth century Bc.
When he disembarked from his ship, he saw the Yakkha
Princess Kuweni at the spinning wheel, seated beside a tank.’
The author cited the Mahawamsa, the Great Chronicle, the
most important early Buddhist book of Sri Lanka.
The Mahawamsa states that Yakkha kings were given a

respectable place in society by King Pandukabhaya [of the
Lion people] and they sat on the same stage together to
witness the annual celebrations of the populace. It was King
Pandukabhaya who brought the country together into a
single entity, with the appeasement of the Yakkhas. Accord-
ing to the Mahawamsa, the claims of the original Yakkha
chiefs to the land of their birth were equitably settled. The
Yakkhas no doubt were one with Pandukabhaya and
Pandukabhaya was in turn beholden to the Yakkhas for their
help from his early childhood and for their assistance and
total support in unifying Sri Lanka. With the aid of their
Yakkha technology he planned and executed the construction
of Anuradhapura.
The walled city of Anuradhapura was thus built by the Lion

people and the Yakkhas joining forces. This happened in the
fourth century Bc, still a century before the Lion people became
Buddhists. Anuradhapura, with its colossal buildings and
waterworks, became the capital and cultural centre of Sri Lanka
from the moment of its founding, through the lives of 113
Singalese kings and up until the thirteenth century ap; but the
senior partners in the founding of this capital, the Yakkhas,
gradually disappeared into oblivion, and when the Singalese a
century later turned to Buddhism, the Yakkhas became slowly
degraded to demons.
As I read Fernando’s report I was increasingly impressed.
Here, clearly, was a brave Sri Lankan scholar who had tried to
250
penetrate the religious veil which, since mediaeval times, had

shrouded the greatness of the local past. Fernando wrote: ‘One
must not forget that the Mahawamsa, the great chronicle, is
essentially a Buddhist chronicle and is like the Bible to the
Christians. In its writing sometimes a stand is taken to suggest
that everything began with the Buddhist era, just as the
Christians like to think that everything began with the chosen
people.’
Fernando goes on to extract from the Mahawamsa evidence of
an advanced degree of Yakkha civilisation. To show their skill
in metallurgy, reference is made to a temple with ‘gold images
of 4 great kings, 32 maidens, 28 Yakkha chiefs, devas, dancing
devetas playing instruments, devas with mirrors in hand and a
host of other devas with flowers, lotus, swords and pitchers’.
The Yakkhas were city builders even before they helped the
Lion people build Anuradhapura. The chronicles mention that
Lankapura was the ancient city of Sri Lanka before the Lion
people arrived. Pura means ‘city’. Lanka means ‘resplendent’ in
both Sanskrit and Pali, the ancient languages of the Indian
subcontinent.
According to records the city of Lanka was engaged in revelry
and gaiety to mark the marriage of the Yakkha king’s daughter
in his palace, when Vijaya and his lion soldiers struck. After the
conquest of the Yakkha metropolis, Vijaya proceeded to estab-
lish five townships. Some, if not all, were probably in existence
already, as five townships could hardly have been required for
his 700 men. That the Yakkha were neither cave dwellers nor
satisfied with mere makeshift shelters appears from Fernando’s
observations:
If we visit the old Yakkha settlement and fortress of Ariththa

(presently Ritigala) we find large monoliths, but well carved
to perfect rectangular shapes, each single monolith 18 feet x
6 feet X 114 feet [in metres approximately 5.5 x 1.8 x 0.45] like
table tops and well placed as if it were in a conference hall,
with absence of any Buddhist religious remnants. The pres-
ence of numerous Asanagaras with huge monoliths, the
prevalence of Yakkha technology in hydraulic engineering in
the 4th century Bc all point to the advanced state of megalithic
culture of the Yakkha in the pre-Buddhist era.
251
The Maldive Mystery
From an aerial survey in 1979 Fernando discovered the

ancient sixth-century Bc Sri Lankan metropolis of Vijithapura.
It covered 250 acres of ground. But his most important discovery
of Yakkha remains came two years later. Sri Lankan engineers
were then involved in a major hydraulic project to build a dam
that would create a lake many miles long and drown a large
valley. As the bulldozers set to work they began to scrape
against bricks already in the ground, and to everybody’s
amazement it turned out that prehistoric engineers had made
the same calculations and built a dam at the very same spot.
Fernando, who saw the massive prehistoric brick wall appear-
ing, notified the authorities, and further excavations were
conducted under the supervision of Sri Lanka’s Department of
Archaeology.
After reading Fernando’s report I went to Maduru Oya to visit
this discovery myself. Here was indeed the testimony to an
engineering activity that antedated the records of the Buddhist
monks, yet of a magnitude that would impress a Pharaoh. The
grandeur of these waterworks indeed justified the term ‘hy-
draulic civilisation’. But the gigantic size of the stones shows
that it could equally well be called megalithic. If we focus our
attention on their skill with water rather than with stone, or vice
versa, we fail to acknowledge the full dimensions of the tech-
nology known to these people. For the lack of a scholarly
superlative I felt it legitimate to speak of a megacivilisation.
And within this grouping would fall a number of those pre-
historic cultural colossi that had left their ancient remains on the
rivers and coasts of northern Africa and of west and south Asia.
The first objects that caught my eye were the huge blocks
lining a twin gallery that ran right through the 10-metre-high
(about 33 feet) brick wall that once shut off the valley. The
separate openings of these two parallel outlets were formed by
three enormous stones set on end and covered by a single
monolilth of massive dressed granite that weighed over 15 tons.
There was more than ample room for a man to crawl comfortably
through these square tunnels lined with megalithic blocks. To
reduce the pressure on the ceiling the massive brick structure of
the dam wall was built with a gable arch above each gallery, an
ancient technique known, as Fernando points out, from the
Middle East to pre-Columbian America. Like so many other
252
prehistoric dams left by the Lion people or their predecessors in

Sri Lanka, the main achievement was to overcome the problem
of regulating the flow of water from the artificial lakes which
measured 10 kilometres (6 miles) or more in length. Millions of
tons of water had to be controlled in times of flood and drought
to serve the’many miles of irrigation canals in the dry lands
down below. The ability to tame such vast masses of water was a
device described by Fernando as the key to the Yakkha success:
‘This key was the controlling valve or sluice. This was the
master invention that made it possible for the development of
the hydraulic civilisation in our country. In Sri Lanka, it is called
the bisokotuwa, a totally indigenous innovation.’
The bisokotuwa is a vertical shaft with a square cross-section
built into the dam walland enclosing a wooden valve which can
be raised and lowered. It divides the water conduit into an
inflow and an outflow channel that could be regulated. The
recently discovered dam had this shaft faced smoothly with
granite and encased in broad flat bricks bonded with resin.
Outside again was an extra covering of watertight clay mixed
with sand. Describing the complicated system of the twin
inlets, Fernando remarked: ‘The area of cross-section of the inlet
is smaller than the area of cross-section of the outlet conforming
to the well-known principle of hydraulics in the construction of
sluices. In short the ancients were fully aware of the scientific
and technological principles involved in such construction.’
During excavations part of the valve shaft had collapsed and
exposed to view a beautifully sculpted terracotta relief plaque
never meant to be seen by human eyes as it was encased in the
inner chamber. The plaque measured roughly 1 metre by 1.5
metres, and was of a Yakkha cult depicting five figures who
appeared to be dancing devetas. ‘It was as if these dancing
devetas were heralding the waters that rushed past them to the
outer world to feed the rice fields below.’ They were dancing
between two perfectly executed cylindrical columns of classical
form with square plinths. The author finds a similarity to the
relief-moulded animalistic figures on walls in seventh-century
Bc Babylon, but these Sri Lankan terracotta relief figures ‘are
executed on bricks laid together with hardly any spacing
between and held together with natural resin. The small human
figures that are carved are of extremely fine quality. They are
250
The Maldive Mystery
neither plastered nor glazed and appear to be tool cut and

worked on the brick itself by a Master Craftsman’.
According to Fernando, the relief plaques appear to have
been used in a ritual ceremony before being locked up, as the
figures had been slightly defaced by a blunt tool but with no
intention of total destruction. Outside the shaft, and on either
side of it, were found two other terracotta sculptures, smaller
but similarly cut with great skill as high reliefs on tiles. Each
represented an image head of the Yakkha cult. The round face
and rather demonic features were not unlike the pre-Buddhist
demon-gods of the Maldives. The resemblance was even en-
hanced by these Yakkha images having extended ear lobes with
huge plugs.
The absence of any written record or of any Buddhist remains
at the site, together with the very nature of the dam construction
and the actual evidence of Yakkha rituals both within the sluice
and outside it, place the date of construction before the period
of Buddhist influence. The Yakkha, then, were a highly organ-
ised and technologically advanced people.
As will be recalled, the oldest known practice of ear extension
can be traced back to the mariners of Lothal, the port of
Mohenjo-Daro in north-west India. The Yakkha then, like the
subsequent Lion people, were part of the great family of civil-
isations which, in one way or another, had benefited from the
influence of the Indus Valley civilisation.
A question naturally arises. How great was the ethnic and
cultural difference between the Lion people and the Yakkhas,
who preceded them and were apparently so easily absorbed?
Could it be that both represented people of much the same
Indo-Aryan stock that followed each other in successive migra-
tions down the west coast of India?
I was beginning to suspect that the answer to this question
had a bearing also on the Maldive riddle.
I was lucky enough to be taken to Anuradhapura by no less an

authority than Roland Silva, the architect-archaeologist in
charge of excavations and reconstructions of the whole of Sri
Lanka’s Cultural Triangle. We had become friends since we first
met in Bjorn Bye’s home while planning our first visit to the
Maldives. With such a guide the old metropolis seemed to come
254
back to life; walls rose and got back their roofs, and the colourful
crowds of visitors filled the streets and steps of the sanctuaries,
as in olden times. What we could see were enormous vaulted
domes which rose like gigantic igloos above the forest, some
whitewashed and shining in the sun, others conquered by the
jungle growth to resemble grassy hillocks. It was a fairy-tale
world that, with ample reason, drew spectators from all over the
world, although Sri Lankans themselves were now in the
majority. They were all impressed at the almost incredible
dimensions of these structures built by man in bygone cen-
turies when no force other than elephants and combined man-
power was availableto the architects and engineers. Here were
well-preserved stupas, also called dagobas, built in the first
centuries AD yet larger than any of the buildings of the con-
temporary Roman Empire. Each was built as a solid mound of
brick vaulted like a soap bubble with mathematical precision,
yet enshrining nothing larger than some relics of the Buddha.
The bulkiest of them all, the Jetavana stupa, was completed in
the third century AD with a height of almost 120 metres (nearly
400 feet), at which time there were no larger buildings in the
world except the two greatest pyramids of Egypt.
Roland Silva pointed to a group of young girls all in brightly
coloured robes. The people of the past must have dressed much
like that, the women in saris and the men with dhotis wrapped
around their waists. The Mahawamsa chronicle states that
Anuradhapura, in addition to all its colossal shrines, had four
outer suburbs, large monasteries, hospitals, hot baths, a public
cemetery, and the king employed 500 street-sweepers and 200
sewage cleaners. No mean city. I had to agree with my distin-
guished guide that the local sense of aesthetics reached a climax
in an elegant WC where the marble floor itself was an artistic
masterpiece of relief sculpture surrounding two neat pedestals
above a sunken conduit.
The hydraulic system functioned thanks to the Yakkha and
Singalese founders of the city who had dug out a swampy area
and built a dam. From the reservoir water streamed through
clay pipes and open conduits into the city aqueducts and the
irrigation canals of the entire surrounding district. The monks
had even built a swimming pool larger than Olympic dimen-
sions for their own ritual and pleasure bathing.
290
The Maldive Mystery
Page 1: A basketful of money. The Maldive boy shows the local

variety of cowrie shell which was formerly cultivated on palm
leaves in the lagoon and exported by ship loads to serve as
currency and charms among widely scattered nations in Asia
and Africa. Maldive ‘money shells’ have been found hoarded
with burials from 1500 Bc in the Indus Valley harbour city of
Lothal, and through Arab and Finnish-Ugric middlemen a few
specimens had even reached the Atlantic coast of Arctic Norway
by av 600, prior to the Viking voyages.
Page 2: A variety of sculptured stones fallen from the former
facing walls lay on the ground or below the surface around the
pyramidal mound of Gaaf-Gan. Most common was thé sun motif
which appeared in various forms and compositions (a, b, d). A
single stone (c) was carved like a giant shell. The religious decor
on stones found protected underground was often partly or
entirely covered by a thick coat of plaster, as for example the
winged sun shown in (b). The once sacred symbols had been
covered up in a secondary period when voyagers with another
faith had arrived to rebuild and reuse the old structures. This
could have happened when the Buddhists arrived and converted
pre-existing temples into stupa, for when the Moslems arrived
they never used these mounds, but destroyed them.
Page 3: The traditional dhoni was built locally for traffic between
the islands. The square sail (above) was formerly universal in the
Maldives, but now yields to the modern lateen rig, as seen below
where workmen load archaeological material from Nilandu for
transport to the National Museum in Male.
Page 4: The peculiar fitted stone masonry of the walled mounds
and sunken baths was the work of the legendary Redin according
to Maldivian traditions. Whoever the Redin might have been,
they were certainly great architects and master masons. They left
behind colossal structures and evidence of aspecialised masonry
technique otherwise characteristic of some of the world’s earliest
civilisations. The walls the Redin had built around their lofty
temples had been stripped in the Islamic period, but the walls of
the sunken baths had usually been buried complete.
Page 5: Loutfi with the head of a Hindu water god found among
ravaged ruins in the jungle of Kondai island. The limestone head
represents the important Hindu god Makara in its oldest and
least modified form, typical of highland Nepal. Characteristic
features of the head are the curled snout, large molar teeth, a
plumed crown, and a mean expression in the monster’s slanting
eyes.
256
Vie
Nigmeete . AW eo jaan
=
Page 6: A pre-Moslem ancestor gallery excavated in the Maldives.

They all antedate the twelfth century when Islamic law abolished
human portraits. The curly-haired Buddha (lower left) was born
as a Hindu prince and thus inherited the royal Hindu custom of
ear extension, which the Hindu nobles and their ancestor gods
had copied from the original sun-worshippers of the Indus
Valley civilisation. Who were the long-eared gentlemen with
moustaches and feline corner teeth who navigated the Indian
Ocean before Islamic artd even before Buddhistic times?
Page 7, a: Sun symbols were just as common as they were special
for the islands along the Equatorial Channel, whereas the Ox
sculpture (b) was found alone inside the rubble fill of the Gaaf-
Gan temple mound. Like the lion sculptures from the same
temple, the hind part of the ox was shaped as a square block to be
inserted in the wall, leaving only the forepart emerging in high
relief. The horns were carved as on an Indian water buffalo.
c: The spool-shaped earplugs extending the lobes of the ancient
images were like those excavated archaeologically in the pre-
historic Indus Valley port of Lothal.
d: When we discovered the missing fragments of a stone plaque
with rows of pictograms and symbols on the equatorial island of
Vadu, we found one important clue to the complex origins of the
Maldivians. A strikingly similar plaque had been found on the
northern tip of Sri Lanka which had originally been settled from
the Gulf of Cambay -in north-west India. Our discovery thus
confirmed ancient written records in India and Sri Lanka sug-
gesting that the old Indus Valley harbour city of Bharuch had
been the home port of the ‘Lion people’ who landed on the
northern tip of Sri Lanka, as well as one major branch of the
earliest settlers in the Maldives.
Page 8: Farewell to the Maldives. The sun-god of antiquity
follows its eternal path across the equatorial sky. This once
sacred highway led us straight to our first discoveries, just as it
would have guided the first sun- worshipping mariners who had
to pass through the Equatorial Channel of the Maldives when
they spread civilisation around the southern tip of the Indian
subcontinent.
257
The Maldive Mystery
As with so many other prehistoric cities of the same epoch, a

modern visitor could not avoid feeling the unity of mankind
through time and space. The last millennium of technological
progress has changed the world around us more than it has
affected the sentiments which our daily environment imposes
upon us. Inside and outside their city walls, the long-eared Lion
people of Sri Lanka, their nobility and priesthood, their scholars
and scribes, their architects and doctors, their farmers, miners
and sailors, their potters, weavers and painters, their carpen-
ters, smiths and gem makers were all there with their work and
struggle, with their appetities for food and love, with dreams of
health, wealth and security which some possessed, others did
not, then just as now.
‘We have not been able to match this type of architectural and
engineering skill even in modern times,’ said Roland Silva as
we walked up the steps to a platform supporting a huge stupa.
‘This building is about 370 feet high and built 2,200 years ago.
With all our modern aids we are still struggling to get over the
200-foot level in building construction. Our tallest building in
Colombo today is a bank 212 feet high.’
We were walking along the raised platform supporting the
colossal white hemisphere, and everybody around us was look-
ing up to see the giant egg-shaped dome with its stupa tower
against the sky. I began instead to look down at the large slabs
that formed the stone pavement we walked on. They were big,
but they did not all seem to be of the same kind of stone, nor
were they cut to match. Then suddenly I noticed a slab that
made me halt. I called Silva back. We had stepped on an old
stone with a relief clearly visible; the symbol of the sun carved
as concentric rings around a central disc. But Silva could not
explain how that one slab had such a design while the others
had none.
I began nosing around the platform, and soon | detected some
other slabs with the identical motif. In one place there was a
cluster of them haphazardly placed among other slabs, none of
which seemed to have been originally cut to fit together.
‘These are reused slabs,’ I said, and Silva agreed. Surely they
had not originally been carved to serve as pavement. I told him
that I recognised the motif. It was as if these slabs had actually
been removed from the walls of the large hawitta on Gaaf-Gan.
258
There were no such sun-stones in the walls of the stupa, and

none in any of the ruined buildings we had visited here in Sri
Lanka. I had been particularly careful to search for parallels to
the Maldives. And here they were.
‘These slabs are reused,’ I repeated to Silva who was admit-
tedly puzzled at their presence. ‘They have been taken from an
earlier temple by the builders of this Buddhist stupa.’
Silva called a colleague. None of them had previously paid
attention to these stones. They admitted they must have be-
longed to some other building originally, but nobody had
searched for pre-Buddhist remains in this area. Yet they should
be expected, for Anuradhapura had been founded as Sri
Lanka’s capital before it became a Buddhist centre. Nobody
knew where the temptes were which the Yakkha and the Lion
people must have built when they founded the city. The printed
guide to the site merely stated that, before the first stupa was
built, there had been a pre-Buddhist shrine at the site called the
‘House of Great Sacrifice’.
Not a stone was visible in the stupa itself as the entire dome
was covered by a thick coat of shining white plaster. It had cost
100 million rupees for UNESCO to repair and strengthen this
Buddhist structure. In the future there might also be means
enough to search for remains of the earlier temple from the pre-
Buddhist period. Perhaps it could be found in the immediate
vicinity. Perhaps the remains were already locked up as fill
inside the massive stupas; but that latter alternative only came
to my mind later when we found that the original hawitta on
Gaaf-Gan had also been covered by a coat of white plaster on
top of the older sun-stones. Hidden inside lay the lion sculp-
tures as mere fill.
However, on this visit to Sri Lanka, neither we nor anybody
else yet suspected that three small lion sculptures lay buried
inside the Maldive hawitta. For this reason I saw no connection
when I noted a regular stock of lion sculptures on the platform of
the large stupa at Anuradhapura. Together with other sculp-
tured building stones they lay huddled together in the open, as
if for temporary storage more than for exhibit. They apparently
belonged nowhere, as there was no place for them on this plain
unornamented stupa. These left-over or displaced sculptures
included complete lion statues, lion heads, and lion reliefs. One
252
The Maldive Mystery
lion had the concentric rings of the sun-symbol on its chest,

others had the same symbol on their joints or on a raised paw.
One relief showed the sun-symbol enclosed in a curl formed by
the tail of the lion. They all seemed to have been found out of
context. Were they of Buddhist origin, or from the pre-Buddhist
period of the original Lion people?
‘Remember that Buddha’s family name was Sakyamuni,’ said
Silva, ‘and that family name was traditionally linked with the
lion and the sun, so the sun-symbols could be Buddhist.’
I knew. Silva had shown me the huge sculpture of the sleep-
ing Buddha in nearby Polonnaruva. The long-eared stone giant
rests with his head on a lion-decorated pillow and has concen-
tric circles as sun-symbols on the soles of his feet. Both the lion
and the sun were Buddha’s legendary ancestors, because the
lion and the sun were believed to be the progenitors of the royal
Hindu lines from which Buddha descended.
This complicated our efforts to solve the Maldive mystery in
the months that followed. Who is who among the priestly
descendants of the lion and the sun? Buddhists or Hindu?
Where did one line end and the other begin? Whenever I tried to
find a way through the tangled mystery, the lion and the sun, as
well as the lotus flower and the Long-ears, would reappear
together. Their tracks seemed to run in an enclosed ring like a
knot that had no loose end with which to tie up the pre-Moslem
epoch of the Maldives.
260
CHAPTER XII
Following Footprints
Buddha’s Road from a Hindu Cradle
IN THE SEASONS between our busy digs in the Maldives,

our team of travelling detectives spread out to learn more
about Buddhist, Hindu and early sun-worshippers’ remains in
India, Pakistan, Nepal, Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore,
Indonesia and the Philippines. Gradually it became increas-
ingly apparent that the theory that all pre-Moslem activity in the
Maldives could be ascribed to Buddhist arrivals from Sri Lanka
left many gaps and unexplained facts. The Maldivians them-
selves had never looked upon their Sri Lankan neighbours as
their paternal kin; but, more conclusive, perhaps, there was not
a single reference to the Maldive Islands in the chronicles of Sri
Lanka. Yet these were very detailed and covered all events
of even the least national importance from the time that the
Buddhist monks brought their beliefs to the island. Had Sri
Lankan monks known of the large Maldive hawittas or been
affiliated with the local kings and priesthood this would surely
have been worthy of mention in the rich Singalese literature.
In spite of this silence, the Maldive hawittas, in their final
phase, had been converted to plaster-covered stupas. And
Buddha images in stone and bronze had now been found in
these atolls.
Failing to find a loose end in the tangle I grabbed at a
conspicuous knot in the string of lion descendants — Buddha
himself. In spite of his mythical or symbolic descent, Buddha
was no more a fairy-tale being than were the subsequent
founders of Christianity and Islam. Buddha’s background must
somehow have a bearing on the riddle.
Buddha was born in Nepal or northern India about 563 Bc,
son of a Hindu king of the Sakyamuni line. His childhood name
261
The Maldive Mystery
was Siddhartha. He grew up in luxury and comfort, and among

the ceremonies he had to undergo as a Hindu Prince was having
his ear lobes pierced and extended according to ancestral tradi-
tion. He was married and even had ason by the time he began to
be overtaken by a great sense of compassion for human suffer-
ing. He left his family and for years took up a life of self-denial
and meditation until his life was changed yet again. One day he
was sitting as acommon vagrant under a large bodhi tree when
he felt he became ‘enlightened’ and awoke to the Darma, the
‘Ultimate Truth’. To share this truth with the rest of mankind he
wandered and travelled for the rest of his life with his selected
followers, all living as beggars, teaching reincarnation and
preaching the Eightfold Path to Supreme Enlightenment. Their
moral concerns were, above all, honesty, modesty, right means
of livelihood and right meditation.
He died in 483 Bc. To his followers, who announced him as
the sacred Buddha, he passed into the Nirvana, while they
continued to travel far and wide by land and sea to spread his
teachings.
According to the early Sri Lankan records, written by monks
in the fourth century Ap, either Buddha himself or one of
his associates during Buddha’s lifetime, was believed to have
visited Sri Lanka three times. These three visits were thus
ascribed to a period centuries before the Singalese themselves
were ultimately converted to Buddhism.
But how did the teachings of Buddha reach the Maldives?
This question has a bearing on early international communica-
tion on and around the Indian subcontinent. The various possi-
bilities are revealed when we consider the main cultural
upwellings on the mainland.
The ‘zero year’ of Indian civilisation was experienced by
those who lived in the Indus Valley about 3000 Bc. Give or take a
hundred years that was the time when the world’s three great
river valley civilisations suddenly emerged at a reed ship jour-
ney’s distance from each other: in the Indus Valley, Meso-
potamia and Egypt. They all appeared abruptly, and at the peak
of their cultural evolution. If we accept the Hindu teachings
from their first written records, there were still older civilisations
somewhere else on this planet at an earlier epoch. But until we
can prove differently from archaeological remains, civilised
262
man suddenly appeared 5,000 years ago, when he began to

build cities like Amri, Kot Diji, Mohenjo-Daro, and Harappa in
the Indus Valley. He was already a seafarer too, building ports
along the river banks and along the coasts of the Indian Ocean.
For more than 1,000 years the Indus Valley civilisation grew
and expanded to cover a vast territory, and with its maritime
trade extending down the coasts of India and into the inner
reaches of the Persian Gulf. Then, equally suddenly, this great
civilisation collapsed. From about 1500 Bc onwards all the Indus
Valley cities and ports were abandoned.
We have constantly been told that the Indus Valley civilisation
disappeared without a’trace, but that is not true. A civilisation
that has dominated much of a continent for over a millennium
can neither die nor disappear without leaving an impact on the
surrounding nations. Today we know this to be the case. It is
becoming ever more evident that, when the original Indus
Valley civilisation broke up and disappeared, a series of regional
cultures took over and developed along their own lines.
This new period marked the formative stages of the tradi-
tional Hindu society and, as part of this cultural survival, a
second urban civilisation appeared where the upper reaches of
the Indus river approached the upper reaches of the river
Ganges. And it was to this inland civilisation, in the fertile
valleys between the two sacred rivers, that the royal Sakyamuni
family belonged. In accordance with their ancestral mythology
they claimed descent from the lion and the sun. In the sixth cen-
tury Bc the heirs to that family gave birth to Prince Siddhartha,
the later Buddha. It is tempting to use Buddhist terminology
figuratively and describe the cultural environment of Buddha as
a ‘reincarnation’ of the lost Indus Valley civilisation. There is, at
any rate, a clear geographical and chronological link which
should not be overlooked.
A large gap remains, however, between Buddha’s cultural
environment at the foot of the Himalayas and the puzzling
presence of Buddha statues in the Maldives. But early man
travelled. In the fourth century Bc Alexander the Great marched
from Greece to the Indus Valley and sent his army back by sea
from the river Indus to Mesopotamia without leaving any
permanent impression on Indian culture. But shortly after-
wards a local Indian warlord, King Chandragupta (c. 320-296
263
The Maldive Mystery
BC), rose to power and founded the Mauryan Empire by con-

quering most of the Indian subcontinent. With his grandson,
Ashoka, we come back to the story of Buddha and the knot of
our riddle.
King Ashoka came to the throne in 270 Bc and before his
death ruled over an area from Afghanistan to Bangladesh and
from Mysore in south India to the Himalayas. During his reign
he conquered the country of Kalinga on the west coast of India,
which was an important trading partner of pre-Buddhist Sri
Lanka. According to Sri Lankan chronicles, in this bloody war
100,000 men were slain in battle and many times that number
died. The victorious emperor was so anguished by the horrors
he had caused that be became converted to Buddhism. From
then on the life of King Ashoka was devoted to spreading the
message of Buddha. His son Mahinda became a missionary
monk, converting people to Buddhism throughout south-east
India. In about 250 Bc his travels eventually brought him to Sri
Lanka. He landed in Mihintale, 15 kilometres (9 miles) east of
Anuradhapura, where King Tissa of the Lion people was then
ruling.
King Tissa, in fear of the powerful mainland monarch, wanted
to become a Buddhist, but according to the chronicles the monk
did not care to convert any fool to the new faith and he intended
to put the king to a test:
‘What is the name of this tree, O King?’
‘It is a mango-tree.’
“Are there any other mango-trees beside this?’
‘Yes, there are many mango-trees.’
‘Are there other trees apart from this mango and the other
mango-trees?’
‘There are many trees, but they are not mangoes.’
‘Besides those mango-trees and the trees that are not man-
goes, are there any other trees?’
The king answered this final question correctly and was
converted by the monk. His answer was:
“Yes, there is this mango-tree.’
Whether or not Buddha himself came to Sri Lanka it is believed

that he left his footprints in the rock there. But so did Adam, and
so did the god Shiva of the Hindus. In chronological order the
264
early Hindus, Buddhists and Moslems (who share Adam with

the Jews and the Christians) have laid claim to the same sacred
footprints on Sri Lanka. The fame of these footprints even
reached the Maldives. During his two sojourns in the Sultanate
of the Maldives between 1343 and 1346, Ibn Battuta speaks of
two Moslem fakirs who returned to those islands after ‘visiting
the Foot of Adam in the island of Serendib’ (i.e. Sri Lanka). Ibn
Battuta later went to see the ‘Foot’ himself.”
As if the natural depressions that resembled large and small
footprints did not suffice to fill the needs of early worshippers,
they began to manufacture other sacred footprints that could
conveniently be placed in their temples. When I tried to follow
the spread of such footprints I found that they were even older
and more common among the Hindu worshippers in southern
India. It was as if the last foot was set ready for a jump to Sri
Lanka on the tiny rock island of Sri Pada in the ocean just off the
southernmost tip of India. Here the Hindu worshippers had
built a temple around a slightly oval and rusty coloured depres-
sion in the rock. According to Hindu mythology this was the
footmark left by the goddess Parvati as she attempted to obtain
the hand of the primal god Shiva. Worshippers from far parts
of the country would come to the southern tip of India to
venerate the footprint on this rock. But I could not help wonder-
ing why the goddess, to obtain the hand of Shiva, should step
out on to this rock island off the southern tip of the continent.
Did that first lord of Hindu mythology come from the sea?
Of all these Hindu and Buddhist footprints none pointed
more clearly towards the Maldive Islands than a large and
beautiful pair set neatly side by side ona stone plaque found on
Sri Lanka. The plaque was hanging in the entrance hall of
Sri Lanka’s National Museum, one of the largest and oldest
museums in Asia. It had been found at Kantarodai near Jaffna
on the extreme northern tip of this pear-shaped island, that is,
as far away from the Maldives and as close to the Indian
mainland as it is possible to come. Yet the link to the Maldives
was as clear as any fingerprint. On this plaque were nearly all
the strange signs we had taken for hieroglyphic writing when
we found them on the broken fragments of limestone in the
Male Museum. Here, in Sri Lanka’s National Museum, the
plaque was complete and given a place of honour in the entrance
265
The Maldive Mystery
hall. In the Maldives it was broken, had pieces missing, and was
hidden from sight behind the door of the closet containing
Hindu and Buddhist images.
Here were the same symbols: the fish-hook, the conch, the
fish, the jar, even the sun-wheel and the frame with lotus motif
and row of swastikas. But the signs were scattered about on the
plaque in no order. On the Maldive fragment they were grouped
together in a line, like script. In both cases, however, they were
obviously symbolic and not merely decorative.
On the Sri Lanka specimen they were carved as if to increase
the magic strength of the elegantly carved impression of two
large feet. ‘A double paduka,’ explained the helpful lady Director
of the Museum. ‘A pair of Buddha’s footmarks.’
On the Maldive fragments it was difficult to detect any foot-
prints until we found the missing pieces in Vadu. When all
the pieces were fitted together the outlines of two large feet
appeared. In the same refuse pit we also dug up a chunk of
broken limestone which had a carved depression of a single
footmark but with no decoration or symbols.
But were all these footprints intended to represent those of
Buddha?
Very likely. But not definitely so. Hindu images were also
found in the Maldives. And the Sri Lankan plaque had been
found at the northern tip of the island where the Tamils pre-
dominate. The Tamils have remained Hindu right up to the
present day. And Tamil kings also reigned for a time in Sri
Lanka. After King Tissa was converted to Buddhism in about
250 Bc, his descendants lost the throne, but the official tourist
guide to the former capital of Anuradhapura scarcely acknow-
ledges the interregnum: ‘After King Tissa we pass on quickly to
the reign of Elara. Just as the Singalese arrived in Sri Lanka four
centuries before, now a new wave of invasion from India
arrived, which put Tamil kings on the throne.’
These Tamil kings, in fact, ruled Sri Lanka until 161 Bc when
the throne returned to the Singalese. More than likely, since this
faith survives among their descendants, these Tamils were
Hindu. No fixed date can be assigned to the old plaque on the
wall in the National Museum, however. It carries no informa-
tion but that it predates the period of Buddhist images in Sri
Lanka and must belong to a very early period.
266
There is, indeed, recorded evidence that some kind of sacred

footprints were already found on Sri Lanka by the early Singa-
lese. When King Gajabahu, who reigned from Ap 114-136, built
the 115-metre (380-feet) high stupa of Abhayagiri, he built it over
an existing footprint then assumed to have been left by the
Buddha. This made Fa Hien, a fifth-century visitor to the capital
of Sri Lanka, assume that: ‘The Buddha came to this country and
by his supernatural powers placed one foot in the north of the
royal city, and the other over the top of the mountain.’ This
mountain footprint was that which Ibn Battuta considered had
been left by Adam, and which the Hindus maintained was that
of Shiva. fi
Who had carved the plaques now discovered with the strange
signs on the footprints; er, if they were not carved locally, who
had carried them to such widely separated places as the north-
ern tip of Sri Lanka and the shores of the Equatorial Channel in
the Maldives? The reactions to our finds of the first religious
footprints in the Maldives suggested that we should leave the
answer to others, for Moslem, Singalese and Tamil opinions are
involved, not to mention those of Christian scholars of the
school which is touchy about the subject of ocean travelling
before Columbus. At this point it will suffice to state that on
these occasions pre-European, indeed pre-Islamic, seafarers
had been able literally to carve their footprints in stone, foot-
prints which are covered with signs and symbols that nobody
can ascribe to coincidence or to the similarity of climate or the
human mind.
Seen one by one the symbols on these stone plaques could be
independently devised: the sun-wheel, the swastika, the lotus
motif, the fish, the fish-hook, the conch, the jar, etc. But put
them all together on a pair of footprints carved on a stone
plaque, and coincidence can be excluded. On the Maldive
plaque the small signs are carved in a line like writing, while
only the large central sun-wheel and the lotus petals and
swastika are used as combined symbols and decoration. On the
Sri Lankan specimen the little signs are scattered independently
over the surface as if no concept of script is present and the
symbols have retained only magico-religious significance.
Advanced forms of phonetic script had been developed both in
Sri Lanka and in the Maldives in the epoch when these tablets
267
The Maldive Mystery
were carved. Why did none of them write in their own charac-
ters any sacred phrase or message that they wished to convey?
Clearly these symbols represented the survival of a proto-
script or pictorial way of conveying thoughts to an already
initiated viewer. Were these signs carved by Buddhists or by
Hindus? I have tested them on people of both religions, and
each recognises them as symbols belonging to their own faith.
In that case, the Buddhists must have inherited them from the
Hindus. For Buddha was a Hindu reformist who carried on
much of the tradition in which he was brought up, just as the
later Christians, and after them the Moslems, never totally
abandoned the old Hebrew Testament.
How much the Hindus must have passed on to the Buddhists
began to dawn upon me when the task came to separate the
footprints of the one from those of the other.
The sun-wheel on the plaque was seen by Sri Lankan
Buddhists as the sign of Buddha, for it was the symbol of his
mythical solar descent. But in the provincial museum of Trivan-
drum in southern India I was shown a tall bronze statue of the
Hindu god Vishnu. He was long-eared like Buddha, had a sun-
disc on his back and held in one hand a large sun-wheel with
spokes, just like the one carved on the footprint plaques of Sri
Lanka and the Maldives.
‘This sun-wheel we call a chakra,’ explained the local curator.
‘It is a very common symbol in our Hindu religion.’
Next to this big bronze image was an equally large wooden
statue of the same god, Vishnu, covered with sun-symbols and
with a large sun over his head. In his left hand he carried aconch.
‘The conch is the special symbol of Vishnu. We call it shanka,’
said the curator. ‘All the gods are descended from the sun, but
shanka is the special symbol for the god Vishnu.’
Other visitors joined us and wondered why I was so inter-
ested in Hindu signs. I pulled out a photograph of the slab
fragment from the Maldives, and showed them the carvings of
the sun-wheel and the conch. One of them pointed to the pot
with three arrows.
‘That is a purna ghata, it means a full pot,’ he said. ‘A vase of
plenty,’ another tried to explain.
These people were not scientists. But to them this was not
science. It was their religion.
268
‘And these two fish-hooks?’ I asked.

‘One is a fish-hook, but not the other. That one is the barbed
rod the gods use to catch human spirits.’
‘And the fish?’
‘It is the symbol carried by Shivaite goddesses.’
The visitors commented on the signs one by one. They were
only hesitant about the one that resembled an hour-giass or a
beaker that curved inwards halfway down. But then the curator
called our attention to a bronze dancer surrounded by a ring of
fire. In one hand he held a symbol precisely like the one on the
Maldive plaque. It was a Hindu figure, but nobody knew what
the object was. :
‘And the swastikas all around these signs?’
‘Hindu. You don’t see it much here in the south, but it is
common in northern India.’
‘But this must be Buddhist.’ I tried to provoke a reaction by
pointing out the running band of lotus petals around the plaque.
‘But they got it from us,’ they laughed, and showed me what I
had already seen in the museum: deities on thrones adorned
with bands of lotus petals, and plinths with lotus motifs.
Certain gods in their reincarnation were born out of lotus
flowers.
There seemed to be little more to ask about. The concept of a
double footprint I had already seen in a Hindu temple. The god
Vishnu himself lay as a large sculpture in the middle of a pond
resting on his mythical ocean raft of serpents with a chakra
sun-wheel in his hand. On a pedestal by the pond was a plaque
with his double footprints, to which devout visitors still paid
homage.
I now brought out my pictures of the many-headed stone
demons dug up at the site of the virgin sacrifices in Male. The
museum visitors were hesitant, but all agreed they had seen
something similar. Indeed, all around us in the museum there
was something similar. Several of the wooden Chola statues
from this part of south-west India depicted demonic deities with
the tongue stretched out, long feline corner teeth, bulging eyes
and round discs inserted in expanded ear lobes. We were close,
but not quite there. No closer, in fact, than the wooden masks of
Indonesia and the traditional pre-Buddhist dance masks that are
still copied for sale to tourists in southern Sri Lanka.
269
The Maldive Mystery
But one of the group pointed to a sign carved on the Maldive

stone image. It was the very ancient and well-known symbol of
a thunderbolt shown as a sort of double-ended trident.
‘That's a vagra,’ he said, and the museum curator showed us a
statue of the Hindu god Indra holding just such an object in his
hand. Indra was the chief Vedic god of India, a warlike Aryan
god who vanquished the sun, and his weapon was this thun-
derbolt. But Indra had also been adopted into Buddhist mythol-
ogy. In fact, at Polannaruwa in Sri Lanka, I had seen a large
statue of a seated Buddha where the decoration on his pedestal
was an alternating band of lions and ‘thunderbolts’. So, were it
not for the fact that the Maldive vagra was carved on a non-
Buddhist multiple-headed image, it could be ascribed to either
of the two religions.
On a shelf in this same museum were two tiny seated bronze
figurines which immediately brought to mind their Maldive
counterparts. In the Maldives one of the two images clearly
represented the Buddha, but not the second one. Here were
obvious relatives of that second type. The bronze images were
shown seated on a round pillow with one leg up and one down,
with tall ceremonial headwear, and with necklace, waistband
and rings around the upper arms, all just as in the Maldives.
As a final test Ishowed the interested group my photographs
of these two Maldive specimens. There was no hesitation and
full agreement: ‘One is a Buddha seated with both legs crossed
in the padmasana position. The other with the tall head-dress is
a Hindu deity seated with one leg up and the other down in the
sukhasana position.’
This confirmed what we had concluded ourselves. For the
moment we did not seem to be getting much closer to the real
answers, rather the problem seemed to become more involved
since these symbols and the religions were so entangled. Here,
on the Malabar coast of south-west India, were parallels that
were missing in Sri Lanka but still far from what we were
looking for. It was the continental shore closest to the Maldives,
yet it did not seem to be the missing link to the outside world.
I had expected clearer evidence of contact between southern
India and the Maldives, partly because we knew there had been
trade relations in recent centuries and partly because there was
a reference to the Maldive Islands in the local Chola history.
270
This related that their King, Rajaraja I, in his lifetime between

AD 985 and 1014, conquered the entire mainland coast of south-
west India. He even ‘subdued the many ancient islands, 12,000
[sic] in number’. Also his ‘powerful army crossed the ocean by
ships and burnt up the king of Lanka’. The numerous islands
must have been the Laccadives and the Maldives, since Lanka
was Sri Lanka where he conquered Anuradhapura, built the
new capital at Polonnaruva and erected Hindu temples there.”
But this successful Chola naval raid on the Maldives seemed to
have left no lasting trace.
I visited all the ancient temples and archaeological sites right
down to the southernmost tip of the continent. Everywhere
there was something to see and to learn, beautiful landscapes
and friendly peopie, but little that revealed a relationship with
the Maldives.
My only aid in touring all the temples down to the south cape
was a road map and a taxi driver happy to wait anywhere, as we
did not have a single word in common anyhow. We could only
exchange gesticulations of disgust or content when we shared
our Kerala meals. Once I asked him to stop when I heard the
deep tones of a conch trumpet up in the hills. It lured me to
climb some almost endless mountain steps past a couple of
lingam stones and up to a lofty cave. There I was entertained
by two monks who worshipped the monkey-god Haneman
through his reincarnation as a monstrous ape which appeared
on the cliffs above when they called him. Two stone guardians
with long slit ears flanked the cave entrance. Carved on a
monumental stone lintel between them were red painted con-
centric circles which the monks identified by pointing to the
sun.
One thing was evident. Both in Sri Lanka and here, on the
Malabar coast, Ihad come across sacred sculptures ofthe phalloid
form we had excavated in the Maldives. Here, among the local
Hindus, they were still in ritual use as Shivalingam, the lingam of
Shiva. I saw them, large and small, venerated in the Hindu
temples, even by elegant ladies and young girls who touched
them, put red paint or flowers on them without blushing, while
local scholars tried to convince me that it was wrong to associate
the lingam with sex. It was only the symbol of the god Shiva. I
was shown an ancient wall painting in a palace depicting the
27.
The Maldive Mystery
seafaring Shiva resting on his snake raft with his right arm
stretched out to touch a lingam painted separately at his side. It
was illustrated as a dome on a square-stepped platform, like
a miniature stupa. Here we were again; similar sculptures
excavated in Sri Lanka were considered to be miniature stupas.
The image was the same, the difference was in the interpre-
tation.
Who then had brought this image to the Maldives? I returned
to Sri Lanka and then again to the Maldives with a feeling that
the question was still open.
Aska Maldivian where he believes his own people originated,
and he is likely to leave all possibilities open. Belonging to a
nation of ocean navigators, he knows that a thousand miles
more or less is not the decisive factor for watercraft at sea. It is
the buoyancy of the boat itself, and the weather. For a trained
seafarer, even food and water provisions are far from decisive
factors. So: Sri Lanka? Yes perhaps. But why not the Arab world
where Islam came from? Tangiers in North Africa, or Tabriz in
Iran? Everything is possible.
The only two sources from which we could draw reliable
information on previous opinions about Maldive origins were
Bell and Maloney. The former was an experienced old-time
archaeological commissioner of Sri Lanka while the latter, as a
professional modern anthropologist who ignored Bell’s ruins,
had studied the living people.
It was tempting to suspect that, of the two, Bell would have
the best cards when it came to reconstructing past events on the
islands. He had gone straight to the old ruins left by the
prehistoric population, while Maloney had drawn his indirect
conclusions from a study of the islanders living today. In spite
of the actual observations made by Bell, Maloney shared the
common view that archaeology had no future in the Maldives
due to the sterile sand and low water table. Although he was
wrong in this assumption, the more we learnt from our own
investigations, the more I became inclined to suspect that it was
Maloney who was on the right tack.
Bell, working in a difficult epoch and hampered by the
Moslem monopoly on Maldive history, tried to explain the
original Maldive culture as a direct offspring of the Buddhist
civilisation on Sri Lanka. Maloney did not share Bell’s opinion,
272
and he showed that Bell had personally been the first to admit
the total absence of references to the Maldives in the historic
records of Sri Lanka. In fact, Bell had even written:
As an alternative, though less probable supposition, it may

perhaps not be unduly rash to surmise for the earliest Aryan
colonisation of the Group a date synchronic with that of
Ceylon itself (viz., four or five centuries before the Christian
era), by a distinct but kindred body of the same adventurers,
instead of assuming a subsequent direct immigration from
this Island.”
Although Maloney’s object of study was People of the Maldive

Islands, he stressed thathalf of his own efforts had been devoted
to the problematical background of their culture history.
Because, he says, ‘this had not been traced, and previous obser-
vers have not seen the great complexity of the historical streams
that evolved into Maldivian culture. This has also been neces-
sary as a corrective to Bell, whose work was meticulous but
sought to trace everything back to Sinhala roots’.”
Maloney gave Bell full credit for the old Maldive texts he had
collected and for having shown that most Divehi words in the
modern Maldive language were etymologically related to old
Singalese. But since these words were clearly of Indo-Aryan
origin, the Maldives could have received them directly from
north-west India instead of secondarily by way of Sri Lanka.
Although Bell did not consider this a likely working hypothesis,
Maloney did. Any major influence from Sri Lanka, Maloney
said, would have taken place in the earlier days of the Naga and
Yakkha, before Sri Lanka had yet been settled by the Singalese.
This suggestion, independent of archaeology, was based
strictly on historical, linguistic and cultural evidence. While the
Sri Lanka records are silent about the Maldives in Buddhist
times, there are hints referring to such oceanic islands in the
brief texts referring to the earlier Yakkhas and Nagas:
According to the Sri Lanka chronicles there were Naga kings

on the coast near Colombo in pre-Buddhist times, of whom
one had a Naga kingdom extending ‘half a thousand yojanas
into the sea’. There is also the legend that Yakkhas and other
2/3
The Maldive Mystery
‘non-humans’ were expelled from Sri Lanka to another island,

by the grace of a previous Buddha, in order to allow Sinhalas to
occupy the land.™
The early Buddhist monks who wrote these Singalese chron-

icles left no clue as to who this previous ‘Buddha’ was. He
helped to facilitate the Lion people’s conquest of the island by
sending most of the previous population away, but this hap-
pened long before Buddhism was finally established on Sri
Lanka, when King Tissa and his Lion people were converted.
Literate monks, who in their day had been bright enough to put
King Tissa to a test like the one about the mango-tree, would not
record the story of the fate of the Nagas and the Yakkhas except
as an allegoric reference to some actual event. The two earliest
Singalese chronicles, the Mahawamsa and the Dipawamsa, both
refer to the same incident.
In the Mahawamsa it is recorded that a Naga king named
Maniakkhika reigned on the west coast of Sri Lanka at Kalyani,
which is just north of the present capital Colombo. He had a big
retinue of Nagas. His sister’s son, King Mahodara, ruled ‘in
a Naga-kingdom in the ocean that covered half a thousand
yojanas’. King Mahodara was quarrelling with his nephew
Culodara about the throne at the time when ‘the Enlightened
One’ interfered. Converted to the ‘true doctrine’ these kings gave
up their thrones to this early Buddha, who then established
eighty Naga territories ‘in the ocean and on the mainland’.
The Dipawamsa chronicle too, also from the fourth century AD,
spoke of this ‘Enlightened One’ who paved the way for the Lion
people:
The Teacher, who was free from passion, saw the most excel-
lent island of Ceylon. At the time the plain of Lanka had big
forests and great horrors: different kinds of Yakkhas ...
Rakkhasas . . . Pisakas . . The assembled army of Yakkhas saw
the Exalted Buddha standing; they did not consider him to be
the Buddha but another Yakkha. The Buddha told them: ‘All
of you ask me for fire; I shall quickly produce great heat as
prayed for by you, big fire and great heat’.
This wording would seem to indicate that, according to the
274
COUGH GECOWIUS san =e pe PS gS
Singalese chronicler, the Yakkha may have been fire worship-

pers now punished by the ‘Enlightened One’ for their paganism.
For the ‘Buddha’ gave the Yakkha the fire they wanted, but in
excess. The heat became ‘unbearable in the islands. The Yakkhas
soon sought for refuge, east, west, south, north, above, below,
and in ten directions’.
Seeing the Yakkhas grieved and frightened, the ‘Enlightened
One’, compassionate and merciful, thought of happiness for
these unworthy creatures, and brought them (or brought them
to) the land of Giri-dipa, Giri island. This was a
low land ... like the plain of Lanka ... in the midst of the
sea... Beautiful, pleasing, green and cool, having lovely and
excellent groves and forests here, trees stand bearing fruits
and flowers, empty and solitary, there is no master. In the
great and deep ocean, in the midst of the water of the sea,
waves always break, surrounded by the inaccessible chain of
mountains, it is difficult to go inside against the wish.
This reference to ‘mountains’ and one more reference to ‘the

island of Giri with rivers, mountains and lakes’ certainly takes
the mind of any hasty reader well away from the Maldive atolls.
But Maloney was no hasty reader. He noticed that in the
Maldives the word giri means ‘reef’, which, of course, is a
mountain under water. He even counted thirty-six reefs in the
Maldives which are named Giri, or have the suffix -giri. Thus it
all makes sense! The calm lagoons are the many lakes, the rivers
are the rapid currents that run in and out of the lagoons, and in
the crystal clear water these islands show up as what they really
are: lofty crater-shaped peaks rising to the surface from the
bottom of the sea. Although the surface of these submerged
mountains is low above the sea and flat like the plain of Lanka, it
is difficult to get inside the surrounding giri because of the
narrow entrances and the constant surf.
According to these descriptive Sri Lankan texts the Singalese,
after their arrival, never left the country again. They were not
the ones to be blessed with the other islands. The ‘Enlightened
One’ gave them to the Yakkhas and their contemporaries among
the unworthies: ‘He let ail Rakkhasas ... live in Giridipa ...notto
return again’, and ‘Well satisfied Yakkhas, well contented
275
The Maldive Mystery
Rakkhasas, having obtained the excellent island as desired, all

being greatly delighted’.”
The chronicles make no clear distinction between the Nagas,
the Yakkhas and the Rakkhasas — they were all more or less
demons. And yet they were very human demons for the first
Singalese king upon arrival married the Yakkha princess
Kuweni.
In Singalese naga literally means ‘snake’. Maloney shows that
there is good reason to assume that the Nagas in the ancient
Singalese chronicles actually were the early Tamils. The main
abode of the Tamils has always been the Jaffna peninsula at the
northern tip of Sri Lanka, which is called Naga-dipa or ‘Naga-
island’ in Pali, Tamil and even in ancient Greek literature. From
the beginning of Singalese history the Tamils were there to
intermix with the Singalese and they repeatedly took their turn
to reign. Maloney found what he termed a very heavy com-
ponent of Tamil in the Singalese language and, despite their
Indo-Aryan background, they have adopted many of the social
features of the Tamil. Assuming that the legendary Naga were
Tamil, Maloney writes: ‘Naga legends are traceable back to the
mythical city of Patala, probably the same as that known to
the Greeks, in Alexander’s time, at the mouth of the Indus,
and might hark back to proto-historic, Dravidian-speaking
seafarers whose commercial interests stemmed from the time of
the Indus Civilization.’”
Whoever the Nagas, the Yakkhas and the Rakkhasas were,
separate tribes of one common stock or altogether different
people, we may draw the conclusion from the written Buddhist
records that they were the ones who contributed to the organised
settling of the Maldives.
All this seemed to tie one loose end of the Maldive tangle to
early Sri Lanka where a similar loose end was left out at sea
by Singalese records. It would seem that Providence, or the
‘Enlightened One’, an early Buddhist, had reserved these beauti-
ful atolls for a branch of the industrious hydraulic civilisation
sailing from the nearest coast. It would thus be tempting to
consider the riddle solved.
But not quite so. There are more loose ends in the Maldive
tangle than those which can be tied up in Sri Lanka.
276
CHAPTER Xill
Whence the Hindu?

To the Harbour of the Long-ears
LANGUAGE IS a useful clue in tracing former contacts. The Divehi

language that is spoken today with slight dialectic variations
throughout the Maldive archipelago is different from any other
known language. Yet, as Bell showed, a root relationship clearly
links the Maldives to Sri Lanka. Divehi is basically an Indo-
Aryan language, and so is the Singalese spoken in Sri Lanka.
The Singalese had spoken an Indo-Aryan language because
they came sailing directly from the north-west Indian coast.
Inasmuch as the Maldivians are found not to descend from the
Singalese, at least some ef their ancestors must have come from
that same north-west Indian coast. This would make the Maldive
islanders cousins of the Singalese, and descendants of people
from north-west India, yet blended with the pre-Singalese from
Sri Lanka who possibly spoke Tamil. And Maloney actually
found that the Divehi language of the Maldives contains many
Tamil words. Most of the terms in the kinship system he shows
to be of Tamil origin, and also most of the Maldive terms
pertaining to the sea, boats and navigation. Dhoni is, for
instance, a Tamil word.
Most important of all, the Maldivians themselves in their
oldest official record, admit to having had Tamil predecessors.
The first recorded king, Koimala, who brought their ancestors to
the Maldives in pre-Moslem times, had to get permission to
settle in Male from an earlier people on Giravaru island in the
same atoll. This pre-Divehi people from Giravaru has survived
until the present day, and believe themselves to be descended
from Tamil people called Tamila.” What is noteworthy is
that the Giravaru believe their Tamil ancestors to have been
Buddhists.
277
The Maldive Mystery
A Tamil-speaking substratum confirms the recorded non-

Singalese early movement out of Sri Lanka. But with an Indo-
Aryan component pointing to continental north-west India, a
new loose end is indicated and also a new lead to follow up.
Straight to the Gulf of Cambay, in fact, the ancestral home of the
Lion people.
So far the archaeologists, historians and linguists, winding in
strands of evidence from all over the Indian subcontinent and
Sri Lanka, have found that the ends converge on the general
area of the Indus Valley civilisation. From this early centre the
forefathers of Hindu royalty and their descendant, Buddha, had
inherited the custom of ear extension and their belief in divine
descent from the lion and the sun.
The former practice of ear extension in the Maldives was
scarcely noticed until, by chance, the Buddhist and Hindu stone
images were shown to us. The first sun-symbols were found
when we stumbled upon the fallen facing stones from the Gaaf-
Gan hawitta. And nobody knew that the lion had ever been a
concept on these islands until we found the lion busts in the
rubble-fill of the same hawitta and an islander found a small
lion figurine by digging a well on Dhigu Ra island.
Legends about large cats with human attributes raiding the
islands from the sea had made us think of the Lion people. And
in Addu atoll on the Equatorial Channel Maloney collected a
legend about a man-beast which caused him to compare the old
beliefs in Sri Lanka with those on the north-west coast of India.
The Maldive version was:
There was a king of India who was a hunter. Once, while out
hunting with a net, he saw a creature like a human, but which
walked on all fours, and which disturbed the people. This
creature would also take hunters’ nets and steal their prey, so
the king couldn’t get any catch. ... One day, the king, with
the help of many men, put the net over the creature, which
could not get out because of the large stone weights. The king
took the creature to the palace and looked after him well, and
because he knew no language, the king taught him language,
which took a long time. The creature started helping the king
by showing him treasures in the forest, and the king came to
respect him. The king had a daughter who fell in love with
278
Whence the Hindu?
this creature [in an alternate version the king forced his

daughter to marry the creature]. The king, being angry, put
the couple on a ship and sent them off into exile. Their ship
came to Laam [Haddumati] Atol, where the exiled pair saw a
crow which cried. They thought the crow was not a good
omen and it was therefore undesirable to land there, so they
went on to Male. They settled in what is now Sultan Park and
started a Kingdom.
Also in Noonu atoll, at the opposite extreme of the archi-

pelago to the far north, Maloney heard a legend about a king
who taught a man-béast to walk in some foreign land, assumed
to be Sri Lanka. The man-beast married the king’s daughter and
caused political trouble, so he was forced to leave. ‘He and the
princess arrived in Rasgetimu and they lived there for some
time. Then the people there asked them to rule.
Rasgetimu is an island in the Ra atoll, next to Noonu atoll
where the legend was collected. It is an island so located that an
arrival from Sri Lanka would be excluded as the voyagers would
have to cross the Noonu reefs or resort to a pilot helping them
through the labyrinth to reach the opposite, outer side of the
Maldives. In contrast, Rasgetimu is ideally located for a landing
by voyagers from north-west India.
Maloney shows that the sultans in Male abhorred this idea of
their own descent from a man-beast, and they suppressed this
version about the progenitor of the first king, as opposed to the
Buddhists in Sri Lanka who proudly preserved the lion as their
totemicsymbol. The only originlegend permitted to be inscribed
on their official copper-sheet books by the Moslem sultans
of Male, was the so-called Koimala record reported by Bell.
According to this official genealogy only a single king ruled in
the Maldives before Islam was introduced:
Once upon a time, when the Maldives were still sparsely

inhabited, a Prince of Royal birth named Koimala Kalo, who
had married the Ceylon King’s daughter, made a voyage with
her in two vessels from Serendib Island. Reaching the Maldives
they were becalmed, and rested awhile at Rasgetimu island in
North Malosmadulu Atol. The Maldive Islanders learning
that the two chief visitors were of Ceylon Royal descent
279
The Maldive Mystery
invited them to remain; and ultimately proclaimed Koimala

their King at Rasgetimu, the original ‘King’s Island’ (M. Rasge
‘king’, timu ‘island’). Subsequently Koimala and his spouse
migrated thence to Male. . .and settled there with the consent
of the aborigines of Giravaru island, then the most important
community of Male Atol.
The Moslem record claims that this first king sent his two
ships back to Sri Lanka to bring over other people of ‘the Lion
Race’, whereupon his son ‘reigned as a Buddhist for 12 years,
and was then converted to Islam, ruling for 13 years more before
finally departing for Mekka’. Then his daughter in turn reigned
as anominal sultana until her son ‘married a lady of the country.
From them the subsequent Rulers of the Maldives were des-
cended’.”
Even Bell concluded that this record boiled down to a mini-
mum what was many centuries of pre-Moslem Maldive history.
The possibility of a twelfth-century prince from Sri Lanka
taking over the Maldive throne cannot be excluded, but if so this
event has totally escaped the Sri Lankan records. Furthermore,
no Sri Lankan prince would first land in Rasgetimu up in the far
north-west, precisely where local records attributed the very
same story to the man-beast and the princess. The interesting
detail in this sultanic version is that it admits that earlier
aborigines lived both in Noonu atoll and Male atoll. And that, in
their effort to claim descent from a prince of the Lion people
rather than a man-beast, they end up with a feline as their royal
progenitor in any case.
It is not surprising that Maloney later collected in Male an oral
version in which Koimala was the son of a prince exiled by a
king in India. ‘The Indian King was angry with his son and sent
him off with his wife in two boats; they had 700 soldiers. They
came to Rasgetimu in Raa Atol, and when he became king there,
people called that island Rasgetimu (King’s Island). Then the
king and queen came to Male, and Koimala was born there of
that Indian couple.’”
Only at the time of my own research in the archives of the
Moslem Cultural Centre was a second copper-plate book from
the twelfth century translated and made public. This was the
earlier cited Loamaafaanu manuscript which made no reference
280
Whence the Hindu?
to any king named Koimalaat all. On the contrary, this early text
lists the names of the five last kings of the Lunar Dynasty who
succeeded each other on the throne in Male from ap 1105 until
Islam was embraced and the first mosque built. None was
named Koimala.
This seems to confirm Maloney’s suspicion that Koi-mala was
a composite term alluding to a whole group of individuals and
not to a single monarch. He showed that Koi was the Divehi
word for ‘Prince’ and Mala could well be derived from Mala-div,
the Male islands. Koi-mala would then be the ‘Princes of Male’,
and thus represent all the pre-Moslem rulers lumped together
until the day when Islam was introduced. He showed that Koya
means ‘Prince’ in southern India, derived from the Dravidian
root Ko, ‘King’. ae
With the arrival of Koimala in Rasgetimu island reduced to an
allegory about the beginning of animmigrant dynasty approved
of by an earlier population, Maloney was justified in accepting
the man-beast version as the genuine origin myth: ‘All image of
a lion got lost in the Maldives because of isolation, so it was
replaced in the myth by the man-beast, while in Sri Lanka some
image of the lion was maintained by contact with north-
western India’.
Could the lion myth have come from Sri Lanka to the
Maldives? In the case of a direct transmission it would have
gone in the opposite direction. The Maldive version has it that
the man-beast came straight from India to become their king.
The Sri Lanka version has it that the one who came there, after
discovering some islands on the way, was the grandson of the
lion. The names of two of these islands were recorded by the
early monks and may have some significance. The seafaring
migrants, not only men but also women and children, sailed in
two large ships. The Dipawamsa chronicle says: ‘The ship in
which the boys ascended, came to an island uncontrolled,
which was then named as Naggadipa. The ship in which the
women ascended, came to an island uncontrolled, which was
then named as Mahila kingdom (Mahilarattham).’
According to the Mahawamsa chronicle, the men landed onan
island called Naggadipa and the women in Mahiladipaka. Both
chronicles concur that the men first raided their own home coast
and there plundered Supparaka (or Suppara) and Bharukaccha
281
The Maldive Mystery
into a family of master-mariners, again in Bharuch. Local mer-

chants wanted him on their ships, believing he brought good
luck. Once he had piloted a ship under the guidance of a ‘Great
Being’ and with 700 passengers on board. He came back after
four months of being tossed about in stormy seas, and reported
having visited the mythical seas of Khuramala, Aggimala,
Dadhimala, Dalamala, and Nilavannakusa, as well as the Valabha-
mukhu Sea ‘where the water was sucked away’. The ‘Great
Being’ with the 700 passengers reminds one of the 700 who
left Bharuch with the exiled prince according to Sri Lankan
chronicles, and such an event may explain why a fragment of
such a story about a blind pilot is found worthy of record in the
Indian religious Jataka. Another hint is found in the names of
the seas. Four of them have the suffix mala. Where else in the
open ocean off Bharuch does one find such a quantity of seas but
in the Mala-dipas, the Male-islands? The last of the seas des-
cribed could well fit the shallow waters in the Bay of Mannar
with the Palk Straits where the 700 voyagers would have to enter
if, as Sri Lankan records state, they landed at Nagadipa on the
north tip of their island. Here the sea is noted for the tidal
currents that suck the reefs and banks bare.
Bharuch had played such a central part in these early written
records, both in the chronicles of Sri Lanka and in the Jatakas of
India, that I had now to visit there.
It was with a great feeling of expectation that I went to a tourist

agency in New Delhi and asked how to get to Bharuch. But they
had no information on it. However, if Idefinitely wanted to go I
had better fly to Ahmedabad and ask there.
I did so. In an excellent local hotel the owner lent me his car
and a most entertaining Indian driver. It was a day’s drive ona
good road through much of the state of Gujarat. There was little
to see, in the flat landscape along the road, of the past grandeur
of the world’s first civilisation, but the colourful country life
with Indians of all castes and physical types, ox-carts and
elephants, made the drive enjoyable.
The first part of the road I knew. I had been to Gujarat twice
before in my previous efforts to make myself familiar with the
maritime aspects of the Indus Valley civilisation. After a couple
of hours we passed the fairy-tale palace of the Maharaja of
284
Whence the Hindu?
Malaysia and the Pacific. The thousand islands so small that

those who left because of quarrels with the King barely found
standing room can only be the Maldives, in the sea off the
coconut island. There is, indeed, a written reference to a king in
the Bharuch area who is said to have sent a major group of his
people in exile to oceanic islands.
Another Jataka (No. 360), referring to the same port, speaks
about a certain Queen Sussondi who got carried off to a Naga
island called Seruma. The King sent an emissary by the name of
Sagga by ship to ‘explore every land and sea’ in search of her.
Sagga embarked with merchants from Bharuch sailing for the
Golden Land (south-east Asia). But a monster caused their
vessel to shipwreck and the royal emissary saved his life by
floating on a plank until he landed on a Naga island where the
Naga king lived who had abducted the royal lady from Bharuch:
‘The queen saw Sagga on shore, and said, ‘Do not be afraid”,
and “embracing him in her arms, she carried him to her abode
and laid him on a couch”, fed and dressed him, and ’’under the
influence of her passion she took her pleasure with him”. After
a month and a half, merchants from Banaras landed there to get
wood and water, and Sagga went with them.’
Very possibly this queen from Bharuch, who was overjoyed
in her island exile at seeing a man of her own people, although
unwilling to return home with him, might be the one who also
left Bharuch according to Sri Lanka’s royal chronicles, when a
ship of ladies ended on a different island and the men came
alone to found the Lion Dynasty.
Maloney’s comment was:
The motif of Sagga being enticed by a queen there fits in with

the matrilinear traditions of the Maldives, which also have
long had a reputation for being sexually permissive. A sub-
sequent ship stopped for firewood and water, and on this
point again the Maldives are suggested; ships in ancient
times would hesitate to get wood and water from mainland
coasts controlled by local kings or pirates, but would stop
over at one of the uninhabited Maldive islands for these
supplies.”
Finally, a third Jataka (No. 463) speaks of a blind seafarer born
283
The Maldive Mystery
into a family of master-mariners, again in Bharuch. Local mer-

chants wanted him on their ships, believing he brought good
luck. Once he had piloted a ship under the guidance of a ‘Great
Being’ and with 700 passengers on board. He came back after
four months of being tossed about in stormy seas, and reported
having visited the mythical seas of Khuramala, Aggimala,
Dadhimala, Dalamala, and Nilavannakusa, as well as the Valabha-
mukhu Sea ‘where the water was sucked away’. The ‘Great
Being’ with the 700 passengers reminds one of the 700 who
left Bharuch with the exiled prince according to Sri Lankan
chronicles, and such an event may explain why a fragment of
such a story about a blind pilot is found worthy of record in the
Indian religious Jataka. Another hint is found in the names of
the seas. Four of them have the suffix mala. Where else in the
open ocean off Bharuch does one find such a quantity of seas but
in the Mala-dipas, the Male-islands? The last of the seas des-
cribed could well fit the shallow waters in the Bay of Mannar
with the Palk Straits where the 700 voyagers would have to enter
if, as Sri Lankan records state, they landed at Nagadipa on the
north tip of their island. Here the sea is noted for the tidal
currents that suck the reefs and banks bare.
Bharuch had played such a central part in these early written
records, both in the chronicles of Sri Lanka and in the Jatakas of
India, that I had now to visit there.
It was with a great feeling of expectation that I went to a tourist

agency in New Delhi and asked how to get to Bharuch. But they
had no information on it. However, if I definitely wanted to goI
had better fly to Ahmedabad and ask there.
I did so. In an excellent local hotel the owner lent me his car
and a most entertaining Indian driver. It was a day’s drive ona
good road through much of the state of Gujarat. There was little
to see, in the flat landscape along the road, of the past grandeur
of the world’s first civilisation, but the colourful country life
with Indians of all castes and physical types, ox-carts and
elephants, made the drive enjoyable.
The first part of the road I knew. I had been to Gujarat twice
before in my previous efforts to make myself familiar with the
maritime aspects of the Indus Valley civilisation. After a couple
of hours we passed the fairy-tale palace of the Maharaja of
284
Whence the Hindu?
Baroda. I recognised the spires behind the tropical trees in the

park, for Ihad been a house-guest there of my friend Fatesingh-
rao Gaekwad on my previous visits to Lothal, which is on the
other side of the bay.
Like a fjord, the long Gulf of Cambay runs into the north-
western corner of India and almost splits Gujarat into two.
Lothal is on the west side and Bharuch on the east side of this
navigable fjord. Although the landscape was flat the road never
went close along the shore. The driver said there were terrific
tidal currents and a great difference between the high and the
low water levels, so the fishermen could come in at high tide and
leave their vessels dry on the mud-flats when the tide went out.
One had to be an expert mariner to benefit from the currents and
the tide, and people on_this coast were as much at home in the
waterasonland. —
I knew. This was one of the places where maritime activity
reached an early peak, and this was the harbour area of the
Long-ears.
Everything I saw and heard was absorbed with interest as I
checked the landscape and people for possible clues to the
maritime riddle. The faces, the stone blocks abandoned on the
roadside, the vegetation. The temple images. But we were living
in a different epoch. There were some curly-snouted Makara-
gods on the temple facades, but fairly recent and not so charac-
teristic as the one we had found on Kondai island in the
Maldives, which resembled the more ancient ones of Nepal.
Certainly, there were many individual people who could be
taken for Maldivians. But then again, the Maldive islanders
represented such an obvious blend of physical types that this
was to be expected. Occasionally we saw a man with golden
plugs in his ear lobes, and one had only empty holes left big
enough to put a finger through. These were certainly no Long-
ears, but perhaps their ancestors had been. For after the Baroda
Palace we reached the University where last time Professor
R. N. Mehta had shown me a drawer full of large ear-spools,
excavated from Lothal. This time we drove past with the know-
ledge that at least this piece of the puzzle fitted.
We were heading for a desolate place known as Bhagatrav. It
was near Bharuch and had been a port in the Harappan period,
that is a port of the Indus Valley civilisation. It had been located
285
The Maldive Mystery
and excavated by S. R. Rao, the Indian archaeologist who had

dug Lothal.
I kept an eye out for the ponds and ditches along the road. All
were filled with tall green reeds. Where there were wetlands,
extensive areas were covered with these reeds. We stopped so
that I could check one with a knife. It was the same kind as we
had used for building the reed ship Tigris: Typha angustata, the
reed used by the first ship builders both in Mesopotamia and
the Indus Valley. There was indeed plenty of it. We had floated
for five months on this reed, and there was still a lot of buoyancy
left. Since then I had collaborated with Indian scientists at the
University of Bombay. They had tried to cover bundles of such
reeds with various blends of waterproofing used on the west
coast of India in former times. They mixed pitch from various
trees with shark oil and asphalt. The most interesting part of the
experiment was the conclusion. The best result was obtained
with the blend recorded on the ancient Babylonian tablet about
the Flood: two measures of pitch to one each of oil and asphalt.
From a nineteenth-century Indian botanical work they had also
found out that Typha elephantina, an extra large local species of
the same reed, was formerly used by fishermen for boat build-
ing in this area. Certainly, as on the tidal flats in Bahrain, flat-
bottomed reed bundle vessels would be ideal for security and
smooth beaching in this bay. No wonder ship building and
navigation started in this area long before boat builders learnt
to split planks for ships with ribs and hull.
We reached Bharuch, where there was nothing to see but a
merchant city bustling with activity like all other Indian ports. It
lay away from the gulf, but on the wide estuary of the navigable
river Narmada. We crossed the long bridge over that holy river
at the outskirts of the city. Here excitement began. We left the
road and were lost in a network of dirt tracks between tiny
villages and muddy fields. In passing, I noticed with excitement
the symbol of the winged sun painted on the front of a couple of
the village shops, but the driver was keen only to get out of this
maze of backroads and my attempt to explain that this was what
I had come for was to no avail. Obviously here was a modern
survival of a motif I had failed to find in its ancient version
outside the Maldives.
Soon I found it again. We had stopped in the temple square of
286
Whence the Hindu?
a tiny village called Obha to ask for the ruins of Bhagatrav.

Nobody knew, but when we went to ask the schoolmaster, we
saw the same concentric rings with three horizontal bars on
either side painted on the gate to his little school. Only once
before had I seen this symbol outside the Maldives, and then
again in modern form. It was painted on both sides of the
door to a small farmhouse on Sri Lanka, next to the ruins of
Anuradhapura. When the owner came out and we asked him
where he had copied the motif from, he was evasive and said it
was merely ‘an idea of the painter’. Now, when the Gujarati
teacher came out, we asked him the same question. He had no
answer. Nobody in the village knew what the symbol represen-
ted or why it was there. But below the winged sun was painted
the word WELCOME in Gujarati letters. It was hardly a coinci-
dence that this particular Maldive sun-symbol should have
survived in modern form in the two old homelands of the Lion
people.
On the temple facade across the square there was a large lotus
in relief above the door, and over the lotus was a rising sun with
wings. Beside the sun was a swastika. Nobody knew why the
swastika was there either. An old man believed it was the
symbol of the Hindu god Ganesh, but later, when I asked a
scientist in Bharuch, he said that these people no longer knew
that originally this had been a local symbol for the sun.
The teacher pointed out the whereabouts of Bhagatrav, where
scientists had dug up Harappan remains. It was only two
minutes’ walk across the dry mud-flats outside the village. At
the site there was nothing left to see. Wind erosion had buried
whatever the archaeologists had exposed and only some
exceedingly old and worn potsherds lay scattered in the area.
They were too plain and simple to tell any story, but the red and
the grey ware, and also the rim shapes, concurred well with the
common surface sherds in the Maldives.
With a scant harvest so far — except for the ‘winged sun’, lotus
and swastika found surviving in a village at the spot where
Bhagatrav is buried — we returned across the bridge to Bharuch
and spent that night in a wayside rest-house. I awoke the next
morning to the caws of at least a hundred crows. Never hadIseen
so many crows. Here in these Gujarat villages and towns they
seemed to be protected as part of the old city sanitation system.
287
The Maldive Mystery
I have liked crows ever since I had a tame one as a boy. Now!
looked at them with new eyes. I had just read a report on early
navigation in this part of India written in the first century AD by
the Greek geographer and author of Periplus Maris Erythraei
(‘Circumnavigation of the Erythrean Sea’). He states that crows
served as navigation aids to the early seafarers from Bharuch.
They took them along on their ships and let them loose at sea to
study their flight. If the crow took off without returning they
knew there was land nearby and where it was. This had made
me ponder over the strange fact that the crow was a common
bird in the Maldives, where other birds are extremely rare.
During our meals at the hawitta in Gaaf-Gan crows were sitting
in the trees waiting to clear away the remains. Crows cannot
fly as far over the ocean as to reach the Maldives, and on
Gaaf-Gan we saw no other feathered species but seabirds. Yet
the crow was mentioned in the myth of the discovery of the
Maldives. When the man-beast and the princess reached the
first island they saw a crow. They took this as a bad omen and
continued to the next. Perhaps they figured that the crow was a
sign to the effect that other mariners had come there before
them.
That morning the crows were a good omen. Thanks to a
personal introduction from Indira Gandhi I had a letter to Sri
B. M. Pande, Superintendent Archaeologist of the Archaeolo-
gical Survey of India, with headquarters in Baroda. As one of the
watchmen led me through the patio to his office, I caught sight
of a small group of stone statues of very great age, as evidenced
by the erosion. I could hardly believe my eyes. There was a
squarish stone image, a head about 60 centimetres (2 feet) tall
with a face on each of its four sides, just like the main pre-
Buddhist image dug up in Male. I had barely greeted Sri Pande
in his office before I invited him out on to his own patio and
pointed to the image.
‘That is a Shiva,’ he said. ‘We have just brought it from a site
we are excavating near Goraj on the Deo river. In the area of the
old Bharuch kingdom.’
The faces were so eroded that traces of the corner teeth and
tongue could scarcely be seen in the coarse sandstone, but on
one of the sides a huge disc was clearly visible in an ear lobe.
The size and all the details of the sculpture were so intimately
288
Whence the Hindu?
related to the Maldive counterpart that a close relationship was

obvious.
‘The old name for the site is Maha-Deo-Pura, the City of Shiva,’
said Sri Pande, and a few hours later we were at the spot.
Excavations were going on under the direction of Pande’s
assistant, Narayan Vyas. Right on top of the old ruins lay a
whitewashed ‘modern’ temple built two centuries ago by a
forefather of my friend in the Maharajah’s Palace.
The first thing that hit my eyes were two lion heads which
flanked a lotus over the entrance. I knew I was in lion country. A
less prominent place had been given to three free-standing
statues of bulls that had been dug up at the site, painted white,
and placed outside the walls. Whatever they may have repre-
sented to the prehistofic sculptors, today these hump-backed
oxen were undoubtedly accepted as Shiva’s bull Nandi in this
Hindu temple. Inside was only a huge phallus stone, a Shiva-
lingam, standing in the centre of the floor, and a small niche with
a statuette of a four-armed Shivaite deity holding two fishes by
the tail.
Outside was the deep trench with men down at the bottom
digging and brushing clean the remains of walls buried metres
deep in soil and refuse. The lowest walls were of bricks with
mouldings estimated to date from the pre-Chalukyan period, at
least from the second or third century aD. The rounded shapes
of the mouldings recalled those in the Maldive Islands, but
everywhere at this site and for about a mile around there were
also beautifully shaped and polished building blocks of hard
stone, some reused in the nearby village houses and some merely
scattered about.
I noted straightaway that the whitewashed Shivalingam
temple which stood on top of it all had a foundation built from
such reused blocks, exactly as the Moslems had taken facing
blocks from the earlier hawittas in the Maldives. These fine
stones were shouldered and shaped in masterly fashion as in
the ‘fingerprint’ masonry and, what was more, they had once
been held firmly together with ‘butterfly’ clamps such as in the
sunken wall we had discovered on our first Redin island. Here,
however, most of the stones had been brought together secon-
darily, so that the butterfly ‘wings’ rarely matched. Nonetheless
here they were, each ‘wing’ cut deep into the edge of the stone
289
The Maldive Mystery
as a truncated triangle. Here, then, too, near Bharuch, was the

first and only example of this metal-clamp fitting I had so far
seen in the vast gap between the Phoenician port of Byblos and
the Maldive Islands. The routes of transference could be many
and indirect, but there was an obvious connection.
Good-sized stone statues and images from the prehistoric
cult site had been dragged about everywhere — some lay in the
field, a few were set up in the nearby village and many emerged
from the eroded embankment of the sacred Deo river. As with
the three bulls, a big stone elephant had been found by the
present population to be worthy of respect. It had been brought
to the village, painted white, and set up beside the main temple.
A remarkable discovery was that it possessed a cup-shaped
depression, big enough to put my fist into, centrally placed on
the back. This was the peculiar detail which Maldive and Hittite
lion sculptures had in common. But neither the villagers nor
the scientists had any explanation for its motive or function,
although there could only be acommon magico-religious tradi-
tion behind it.
There were about half a dozen man-made hillocks inside this
vast archaeological site. At the foot of one of them Vyas showed
me how the ploughed soil was full of prehistoric potsherds. In
its slopes were scattered traces of former brick-built terrace
walls, showing that this had been a solid temple mound
measuring about 20 metres (about 65 feet) square, or larger if we
assume that part of itis buried in the ground. Ina depression on
top lay a big overturned stone phallus, and a stone with a square
post-hole of the type so commonly found in the ruined hawittas
of the Maldives.
Indeed, to judge from its appearance, this temple mound
would just have been another hawitta if found in the Maldives.
Further inland in Gujarat, in a dense forest area peopled by
hostile tribes, Vyas had seen a number of similar but better
preserved terraced structures. They were built out of large
bricks into the form of a step pyramid or ziggurat about the size
of these mounds but covered by a thick coat of hard white
plaster.
What a sight this must have been in the days when the kings
of Bharuch reigned in this part of Gujarat and fostered the
maritime branch of the Lion people that sailed away to settle
290
Whence the Hindu?
distant islands. Today, here as in the Maldives, there was

evidence of destruction everywhere, by conquerors who abused
the religious heritage of their predecessors and devastated their
temples.
But in the Maldives a totally new religion had been intro-
duced with Islam. Not so in the harbour area of the Indus Valley
civilisation. Here each new religion was based on the previous
one. While the landscape was littered with demolished
‘hawittas’ and abandoned images of all sorts, at least some
symbols — like the lion, the bull, the lotus, the sun, and the
swastika — had been assimilated into the rites of the victors. In
the Maldives they Kad all been abolished and buried. Perhaps
the four-faced Shiva image from this same site would have been
acceptable too in the mew Shiva temple on top of the ruins, had
it not been carried away as a museum trophy by modern Indian
scholars!
I had no language in common with the workmen down in the
deep trench, but before I left I wanted to demonstrate my
appreciation of their work. Instinctively the same word came
out of my mouth as I had been using constantly during the last
few weeks to our workmen digging in the Maldives. It was just
about the only Maldive word I knew:
‘Bardbaro,’ | said smiling, and pointed at the fine mouldings
they were scraping clean.
‘Bardbaro!’ they all shouted back joyfully, and I do not know
who was more surprised, they or I. Ihad forgotten that barabaro
was the word for ‘good’ or ‘fine’ in the Urdu and Gujarat
languages of this very part of India also, the same as in the
Maldives. It was also one of the many terms that had led
linguists to look to this northern part of India for the roots of the
Divehi tongue.
I returned from Maha-deo-pura, the ‘City of Shiva’, with a
feeling that language and myth had done archaeology a good
service in pointing to this area as a common source for the Sri
Lanka and Maldive royal ancestry.
That night I went to bed thinking about the hawitta, the
stupa, and the ziggurat. Certainly, the ziggurat of Mesopotamia
was the oldest known form of these solid ceremonial mounds.
In its earliest Sumerian period it was a solid stepped and
truncated pyramid with a temple on top, as in ancient Mexico.
291
The Maldive Mystery
Formerly nobody used to think in terms of any of the people in

antiquity moving outside their national boundaries; but now
we know there was extensive long-range contact and trade. A
mini-ziggurat had been discovered on the island of Bahrain,
and another near the prehistoric copper mines of Oman. There
is ample reason to suspect that even the central height
of Mohenjo-Daro had been a terraced temple mound before
Buddhists in later times rebuilt the summit. The prehistoric
mounds I had seen and heard about that day in Gujarat were
shrines built in that same way: as solid terraced elevations.
In Trivandrum the architect-historian D. A. Nair cited words
attributed to Buddha himself. When on his death-bed his
disciples asked him how he wanted to be buried, he replied: ‘In
a stupa, for 1am a Hindu Prince.’
The Encyclopedia Britannica describes the stupa: ‘The hemi-
spherical form of the stupa appears to have been derived from
pre-Buddhist burial mounds in India.’
Indeed, I had seen the variety of the most ancient Hindu
shrines in Nepal. The oldest were best defined as ziggurats: a
sun-oriented, terraced and truncated pyramid with a long flight
of ceremonial stairs up to a small temple on top. The main part of
the structure was thus solid. In later forms the temple itself grew
in size and importance, while the solid base was reduced to two
or three superimposed terraces.
The great hawitta on Gaaf-Gan was remembered as having
formerly possessed a small stone room on top. Accordingly it
had been of the ziggurat or Hindu temple type. The one Bell had
seen in better condition than we on Laamu-Gan was said to
have had a spire shaped like seven superimposed kettles, and
clearly it was a Buddhist dagoba or stupa. But, as we have seen,
perhaps the Buddhists had modified the upper part of a previous
structure, such as Bell had found on the same island. The well-
preserved lower section of that hawitta had nothing to do with
any dagoba or stupa, according to Bell himself.
There was still more to the Maldive story than any of us had
realised.
The next day I drove through endless fields of cotton plantations

to visit the famous sun-temple at Modhera which is a major
tourist attraction in this part of India. As we travelled, we met
202
Whence the Hindu?
long rows of patient oxen in pairs dragging bulky loads of

cotton down to Bharuch and other ports on the coast, and the
driver proudly pointed out that cotton was one of the most
important exports from Gujarat, by land and by sea. The large-
wheeled wooden carts, with an ox on either side of a common
shaft, were precisely as the famous little pottery models made by
the Mohenjo-Daro artists 4,000 or 5,000 years ago. Even loads of
cotton were drawn by the Mohenjo-Daro double ox-span. It was
in these very fields that man had first started cotton cultivation.
Cotton was also one of the main plants of the ancient Maldiv-
ians. From the earliest records it appears that kafa, cotton, was
cultivated, spun and woven on horizontal looms into exceed-
ingly fine texture. The earliest Portuguese wrote that finer
cotton fabrics were not found anywhere else. Maldive cotton
cloth was exported to India for its high quality. On special
islands all the people worked to make cotton textiles. Every
Maldive person who died had to be buried in cotton grown in
his own garden, and every family had two or three cotton trees.
I knew that cotton had long been a major fingerprint in the
tracing of early cultural migrations, indeed no other plant has to
the same extent brought botanists into frontal collision with
anthropological dogma. In 1947, I had barely returned from
landing in Polynesia from Peru on the Kon-Tiki, when I was
confronted with the ‘cotton problem’.
The world’s leading experts on cotton genetics, J. B. Hutchin-
son, R. A. Silow, and S. G. Stephens, had that same year
completed the first chromosome analysis of all wild and cultiva-
ted cotton species, and they had made a revolutionary discovery,
All Old World cotton types had 16 large chromosomes. The New
World cotton types, however, could be separated into two
groups. The wild and unspinnable American cotton had 13
small chromosomes, but the cultivated American cotton had 26
chromosomes, 13 small plus 13 large. This species with long,
spinnable lint had been produced by the pre-Columbian civil-
isations in Mexico and Peru, and did not grow wild. The
predecessors of the Mayas, the Aztecs and the Incas had managed
to cross-breed the useless local wild cotton with one from the
Old World, and thus obtained an excellent spinnable hybrid.
How had the early American Indians in Mexico and Peru
obtained seeds of the large-chromosome Old World species to
233
The Maldive Mystery
cross-breed with a useless local plant? The polemics began. The

botanists suggested a human crossing of the Atlantic before
Columbus. Impossible! Of course no boat could have sailed
across before European mediaeval times. The cotton seeds must
have drifted across all alone. Or blown with the prevailing trade
winds.
The botanists had, however, demonstrated beyond any
shadow of doubt that the 26-chromosome cotton brought into
existence in America by man, had been carried from America
by prehistoric voyagers to the Galapagos Islands and to the
Marquesas Group in Polynesia. The feud was therefore re-
stricted to the seeds that had crossed the Atlantic. They
could have been wild and not necessarily of the cultivated
species.”
The weakness in the archaeological protest was to infer that a
seed would float more easily over the Atlantic alone than in a
sailing vessel which would benefit from wind and current alike.
In addition, it was hard to visualise American Indians waiting
on the beach to pick up a cotton seed. They would have had to
know that it would yield spinnable lint if crossed with a wild
local bush which so far had served no useful purpose.
The weakness in suggesting a human means of transfer was
that cotton was not cultivated by the Phoenicians, the Norse-
men or other European or African people who sailed the seas.
Not even the Egyptians or the Mesopotamians cultivated cotton
in early antiquity. Cotton as a domestic and mercantile product
was restricted to the Indus Valley civilisation until, suddenly, it
started in Mexico and Peru among every civilised tribe and
nation in pre-Columbian times.
Seeing the Gujarat oxen now drawing their loads towards the
local ports just as they did millennia ago, I began to see implica-
tions behind the early growth of cotton even in the Maldives.
Ibn Battuta had also spoken of the cotton on those islands and
praised the Maldive cotton fabrics as the finest in the world
even before the Europeans’ arrival. Had the seeds of spinnable
cotton floated alone to these oceanic islands in pre-Columbian
time? Hardly. As raft voyagers in tropical currents we have seen
how the surface is full of scavengers; not only the large plankton
eaters, but the tiny fish and minute pelagic crabs that scurry
about everywhere and nibble at the least little crumb floating on
294
Whence the Hindu?
the surface. We shall never know who, but man brought the
cultivated Indus Valley cotton by sea to the Maldives.
The botanist R. A. Silow, basing his conclusions on indisput-
able genetic evidence, had boldly suggested that, at some time
since cotton cultivation began, it must have found its way from
the Indus Valley to America. But how? Neither he nor I nor
anybody else had considered the Maldive Islands. With this
oceanic kingdom having had contact with the Gulf of Cambay at
least a millennium prior to the voyage of Columbus, and prob-
ably long before, the geographical barrier crumbles. Vessels
already able to bring cotton to the Maldives were at a favourable
starting point for clearing the southern tip of Africa and being
carried on by the natural elements to the Gulf of Mexico.
i
The sun-temple at Modhera proved to be worth the visit
although it was several hours drive into the inland of Gujarat
and quite different from what I expected. Built as late as the
eleventhcentury AD, itrepresented acompletely different culture
period from what I had seen near the coast in Bharuch. The
superstructure of the building, known to have consisted of a roof
shaped like a stepped pyramid, had gone, and one was left with
an impression of a multitude of colossal, richly ornamented
columns supporting what remained of the massive pyramid’s
base. But the impressive structure still standing was sufficient
to demonstrate the superb craftsmanship of the early Gujarati
engineers, and it was considered amongst the best of Indian art
and architecture.
A local guide pointed out that the temple faces due east and is
so designed that the rising sun at the equinoxes shines into the
shrine through the doors of the mandapas and makes the entire
structure ‘radiate in the glory of the presiding Sun-god’. That
main solar image was missing, but there were twelve other
huge statues of the sun-god, as well as twelve smaller ones,
carved, as our guide explained, after the idols of Mithra, the
sun-god found in Iran and Middle Asian countries.
By this time I had made an observation of my own which took
me away from the little group of Indians following the guide.
Here were some mortice marks of former ‘butterfly’ joints again,
but displaced and out of order. This ancient sun-temple was
built at the site of an earlier, demolished structure. Some of the
295
The Maldive Mystery
large blocks forming the floor were still in the original position
so the adjoining ‘wings’ of the ‘butterfly’ mortice matched from
stone to stone. A few others had been set in the wall at random
with no regard for the right combination of the old marks. This
meant that, in antiquity, this type of specialised stone fastening
must have had a wide distribution in this part of India. It also
showed that this fancy eleventh-century sun-temple was not
the original form in this area.
The concept of a stepped pyramid as a religious structure was
known to the builders of this temple, as was shown not only by
the roof but also by the dominant motif outside. At the east
entrance I caught up with the guide again who had finished
explaining the myriad large and miniature figures in combat
and love that filled the walls and columns. In front of the temple,
on its east side, he showed us an enormous ceremonial bath. Its
dimensions matched the temple itself. Known as the Surya
Kunda, or ‘The Sun’s Tank’, it was a water-filled rectangular
basin with walls rising in steps and terraces up to the surface of
the ground, touching the base of the sun-temple. Not only was
this bath of the sun built like the mirror image of a ziggurat,
upside down, but, as if to make the recurring motif clear, a
multitude of tiny step pyramids were built as decoration, one
next to the other, along every terrace.
In the central position on the west wall was a sculpture of
Vishnu resting at sea on board his eternal serpent raft. It was a
rather unlikely vessel. I could not avoid thinking of Con-Tici,
the pre-Incaic sun-god of Peru, and Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec sun-
god of Mexico. They also travelled on this peculiar type of
watercraft. In the legends of both areas they were bearded white
foreigners who had come to bring to their forefathers sun-
worship and the arts of civilisation. Even cotton cultivation. In
Aztec tradition Quetzalcoatl travelled the ocean on a raft of
snakes. In the iconographic art of the pre-Incas on the coast of
North Peru Con-Tiki is also shown travelling with his entourage _
on a serpent raft. A coincidence? Those of us who crossed the
Atlantic on the bundles of the reed ship Ra had felt as if we were
travelling on a bunch of undulating serpents.
Did these people share their legend because they had a
common watercraft, or did they have a common watercraft
because they shared their legend?
296
Whence the Hindu?
On the road back to the Gulf area the driver stopped to show me
some of the oao (vav) — enormous underground waterworks —
for which Gujarat is renowned. Basically they are wells built as
temples, artistically decorated and accessible by ceremonial
stairways. Sometimes the well is huge and the water so far
down that the stairways go from one level to the next like
the access to a modern underground station. These amazing
engineering feats are extremely ancient, and some go back to
prehistoric times. Gujarat was clearly within the expansion
area of the interrelated hydraulic civilisations that flourished
throughout western Asia from the third millennium Bc.
Sumerian texts are full of references to the great navigation
channels and complex irrigation systems which their kings
built and continuously dredged with enormous effort. On the
island of Bahrain, Danish archaeologists had already discovered
amazing underground aqueducts of a most ingenious sort
otherwise famous from Persian archaeology. And on the other
side of the Hormuz Strait I had been stupefied by the prehistoric
falaj of Oman. Built as stone-lined tunnels they ran for many
kilometres under barren deserts at the depth of 10 metres (over
30 feet), with shafts for maintenance running at intervals up to
the surface. To get the required pressure one falaj started way
up a canyon and came down on one side higher than the river,
then dipped in a tunnel under the river bed and came up to
continue as high up as before but on the opposite side. These
early people knew how to manipulate water. No wonder the
voyagers to Sri Lanka arrived as hydraulic experts and those
who ended on the Maldive Islands at least excelled in building
elegant baths, regulating freshwater at their will through bottom
vents. Most modern castaways would perish at the beach of the
salt lagoon before they could figure out how to draw fresh water
from the solid limestone bedrock of a coral atoll.
Filled with admiration for all this evidence of early human
intelligence, taste and dexterity which I had seen in Gujarat, I
stood the following day in the baking sun and stared down into
the stagnant water in a huge prehistoric tank built from baked
bricks. According to a local poster it was 218 metres long, 37
wide and 4.15 deep (in feet, 715 x 121 x 13%), with vertical
walls on all sides. There was no stairway into this unusual
basin, but one short wall was interrupted with an open gate
pieSf
The Maldive Mystery
with traces of the locks of a former spillway. This was no

ceremonial bath. There were no benches along the sides. This
was the prehistoric port of Lothal, the vertical walls of which
had been built from oven-fired bricks to resist salt action. Rao,
who made this discovery in 1954 and led the excavations, wrote:
The largest structure of baked bricks ever constructed by the

Harappans is the one laid bare at Lothal on the eastern margin
of the township to serve as a dock for berthing ships and
handling cargo. .. . Inno other port of the Bronze Age, early
or late, has an artificial dock with water-locking arrangements
been found. In fact, in India itself, hydraulic engineering
made no further progress in post-Harappan times.”
When I last came to see this port I was struck by the narrow
entrance which could admit no vessel larger than could easily be
drawn up on the beach. Puzzled, I told Professor Mehta who
had brought me to the site that there must have been another
way in, another canal entrance.
‘That is what Rao concluded also,’ said Mehta laughing, ‘but
we have dug test pits outside the other walls and found the
same hard, sterile ground everywhere. There cannot have been
another way in. That’s why some of us now wonder if it was
only built to collect rain water.’
‘Impossible,’ I exclaimed. “You have just shown me the large
anchor-stones Rao found inside, and the old well a few steps
away. Nobody would dig a well next to a water basin. And if
they cared to collect rain or flood water it was simpler and more
efficient to dig a catchment with sloping sides, like a pond
where man and beast could get at the water as the level sank.
They would not build high vertical walls where the water had to
be hoisted up in buckets!’
Everybody around agreed. And yet no ship could have got
through sucha narrow entrance into this splendid harbour. Still,
there was the large mud-brick wharf at the dockside with all the
warehouses beside it. It seemed so obvious from all that Rao
had found and demonstrated that this was a dock, that I asked
for permission to dig an additional test pit. Two men came with
shovels and dug a hole in the ground outside the wall where the
narrow entrance was and a few feet to the side of the present
298
Whence the Hindu?
channel. Up came old potsherds and disturbed earth. Secondary

fill. The entrance canal had once been much wider. This obser-
vation prompted us to make a close check on the well-preserved
masonry inside the entrance wall. Like modern bricklayers the
early Lothal masons had placed their bricks precisely to make
the midpoint of each lie across the join of the two below. But a
few steps to each side of the present opening in the wall was
evidence of joins that did not match so well, as if sections had
been added as an afterthought. The purpose could only have
been to reduce the width of an entrance that had originally been
much larger.
The outside test pit and the brick alignments inside the
adjoining basin wall gave dimensions to the original entrance
which permitted the passage of full-size reed ships into the
Lothal port in its early phase. In a second phase, however, the
gate into the large harbour had been reduced to a modest
spillway narrow enough to allow closure by wooden lock gates.
Why?
Lothal today lies some distance from the Gulf of Cambay
across large dry mud-flats. Even the local river is too far away to
send flood water into the basin. We know that the sea level in
this area has gone down since Harappan and Sumerian times,
as witness the Sumerian port of Ur now lying buried in desert
sand far from the river and the gulf. We also know that the
extreme difference between high and low tide in the Gulf of
Cambay is 10.5 metres (34% feet). Even today the local vessels
are built with shallow keels and bulky bottoms so that they do
not roll over when they are beached as the tide goes out. Ancient
Lothal was ideal for twin-bundle reed ships which could float
right into the docks at high tide, when their decks would be
high above the wharf. As the water disappeared during low tide
the ship would rest firmly on the dry bottom with the deck now
level with the wharf. The thickness of the bundles of our little
reed ship Tigris was 3 metres (just under 10 feet).
This third visit to Lothal came after we had been digging in
the Maldives and found a variety of imported prehistoric beads.
One was the incredibly tiny type of bead for which Lothal is
renowned among scholars. Here, a few short steps from the
wharf and the ruins of the warehouses, lay the remains of the
prehistoric bead factory where Rao had encountered hoards of
299
The Maldive Mystery
such beads, 1 to 1.3 millimetres in diameter. Inside the small

local field museum there was more Lothal jewellery to which I
had paid little attention on my previous visits. This time I stared
in amazement. There was one glass case containing a necklace
made of globular brownish agate beads interspaced with
whitish stone or shell beads shaped like oblong barrels perfora-
ted lengthwise. Precisely the two types of bead we had found in
the Maldives. And the special shape and size given to each of
the two materials was also consistently the same as in the
Maldives. The description said: ‘Indus beads of semi-precious
stones, which were in great demand in Sumer, Bahrain, Elam
and Egypt, were processed at Lothal and exported to distant
lands. The raw material, namely agate, chert, jasper, etc., was
obtained from the Ratanpura mines in South Gujarat through
the Harappan ports of Mehgam and Bhagatrav.’ Embedded in
the courtyard of the bead factory Rao had found jars containing
800 cornelian and agate beads in various stages of manufacture.
Directly, or through later middlemen, these were the kinds of
beads that had reached the Maldives. According to local archae-
ologists, the dock area of Lothal city fell into disuse when an
abnormal flood sealed up the basin possibly as early as 1900 Bc,
thus bringing an end also to Lothal’s prosperity. Before that
time, however, Lothal had managed to obtain the hoard of
Maldive cowrie shells which I noticed on exhibition in another
case next to the beads.
Import and export. That is what the ships permitted and how
civilisation began.
300
CHAPTER XIV
The Verdict
WE WERE Sitting in an upstairs room in the Kon-Tiki Museum in

Oslo — Skjélsvold, Johansen, Mikkelsen and I. Downstairs were
the balsa raft Kon-Tiki and the papyrus ship Ra IJ, both ina sense
responsible for bringing all of us together with a common
interest: island archaeology.
With us also was Knut Haugland, Curator of the museum and
my closest collaborator ever since we waded ashore together in
Polynesia after the voyage on the balsa raft. He was an indis-
pensable member of the team. He had worked the museum up
from being a makeshift shed for the raft to a scientific centre
with revenue from a stream of visitors that subsidised scholarly
research. Abbas Ibrahim, the Maldive Minister for Presidential
Affairs, had just been visiting us. The museum was going to
exhibit samples of the stone carvings we had excavated, some of
the many which were duplicated.
Now our team was meeting to discuss how to proceed, for
Skjélsvold, Johansen and Mikkelsen were to write up the scien-
tific details about their excavations, and the Kon-Tiki Museum
would publish their drawings and reports.
‘So, who discovered the Maldives? Have you found the
answers?’ asked Knut jokingly.
‘We have one answer,’ said Skjélsvold. ‘And it may surprise
many people. These islands were not just found by primitive
drift voyagers. They were settled by civilised people who were
already sailing the open sea in antiquity.’
‘They were already great artists and architects before they
sailed to the Maldives. And that was earlier than the Viking Age
in Europe,’ added Mikkelsen.
‘Maybe even as early as the Late Stone Age in Europe.’
301
The Maldive Mystery
Johansen nodded witha smile at an unopened bag of potsherds

he had placed on the table between us.
‘Perhaps. But at least we now have the first proof that the
Maldivians were building with classic designs 1,000 years before
the time of Columbus. I have just got our first carbon datings
from the laboratory,’ continued Skjélsvold. ‘Somewhere around
AD 550 a temple complex was. built on Nilandu. Maybe even
rebuilt, since it contained worked stones from another con-
struction.’
We recalled the buried walls of the Nilandu hawitta with
mouldings worthy of a European cathedral. We also recalled the
fine large shell found right at the bottom of the sand-filled
interior. That, and another large shell, as well as a good charcoal
sample found by trenching the buried wall around the temple
area, had now been carbon analysed. The results of all three
came out roughly within the same centuries. However, together
with the buried shell Skjdlsvold had also found the fine reddish
limestone blocks tossed in with the fill. They came from an
earlier building.
‘How old that building was we have no means of telling. But it
certainly shows that something was going on in Nilandu long
before the Moslem period,’ concluded Skjélsvold.
We had found no datable material inside the Gaaf-Gan
hawitta, which we did not trench. Only the sculptures. Some
bones which we dug up outside that hawitta were from Moslem
times, about Ap 1500, that is from the days of Columbus, 1,000
years later than the rebuilding of the Nilandu hawitta.
‘AD 550. That is six centuries before the official settling of the
Maldives according to their own historical records.’ The archae-
ologists had good reason to be satisfied with their first test digs,
but Haugland was puzzled.
‘Where could people have sailed from with experience in
architecture 1,000 years before European caravels even ventured
beyond sight of land?’
Asia, Africa, America. It was my turn to report on what I had
seen in the maritime centre of north-west India. In Lothal and
around Bharuch. In the original home of the Lion people who
built seaworthy ships and sailed away from their home ports in
the sixth century Bc. The memories of their marine adventures
had long since turned into legend when put on written record
302
The Verdict
about ap 500, at the time of Nilandu building activity. The

people of Bharuch were master architects long before the royal
expeditionary force with men and women was sent into exile
in search of other land. That happened 2,000 years before
Columbus. They were already used to making mouldings like
those of Nilandu. They were experts in carving solid rock into
beautifully shaped blocks fitted to perfection. Joined with
‘butterfly’ clamps. Used to organising mass labour for building
large sacred mounds. They kept up their ancestral tradition of
sculpting lions and bulls, and used the sun, the lotus and the
swastika as religious decoration. Quarried chert and agate and
made beads like those we had found, for export. They even
shared a strange word like bardbaro with the people on the
Maldives. I had found just about all we were looking for, even
the four-faced Shiva. But not the footprint tablet with the
pictographs. That pointed to Naga-dipa, the Tamil territory on
the northern tip of Sri Lanka where the Singalese Lion people
had first landed.
‘Do you still believe the pictographs you found on the broken
footprint tablet derived from the Indus Valley script?’ asked
Knut.
Not directly. But indirectly, yes. All those signs had a symbolic
meaning. They were pictographs. And they were all borrowed
from symbols that had spread from the first civilisations in
north-west India. From the ports of Lothal, Bhagatrav, Bharuch
and the many subsequent Hindu kingdoms in the same area.
This maritime centre in north-west India was known to be the
cradle of all the cultures and kingdoms that gradually grew
down to the southern tip of India and eastwards to Java and
other distant lands. The Maldive Islands, clearly, were basically
another branch of that great and early cultural expansion.
‘Do you know,’ inserted Mikkelsen, ‘that phalloid stones date
back to the Indus Valley civilisation?’
‘We saw a perfect phallus stone from Mohenjo-Daro in the
National Museum in Karachi,’ added Johansen enthusiastically.
Whether our phalloid Maldive stone images derived from
mini-stupas or from Shivalingams, they had an early progenitor
in the Indus Valley cult. Even Encyclopedia Britannica has an
entry on Siva (Shiva) suggesting that an Indus Valley seal
representing an ithy-phallic (erect phallus) figure seated in a
303
The Maldive Mystery
yogic posture may be a prototype of this important Hindu deity,

‘or at least represent an early association between the ascetic
and the phallic that has persisted in the mythology of Siva up to
the present day’.
‘We had them in Norway once,’ laughed Johansen. ‘The Holy
White Stones from pre-Viking times were just like the Asiatic
ones. They are dated to around ap 500.’ This was his speciality
and he showed us pictures of Nordic phallus stones resembling
what we had found in the Maldives, probably from the same
period. We all, agreed, of course, that this was a good example of
independent origins.
But then came the riddle of the cowrie shells. People in
Scandinavia could, of course, have hit upon the idea of carving
sacred phailus stones, even with the stupa-like form. But how
could they get hold of cowrie shells?
I had hardly notified my friends about the cowries found as
funeral gifts in Lothal, when I received a letter from a reader in
Finland. She wrote that she had seen Maldive cowrie shells in
the National Museum of Helsinki, excavated by archaeologists
from prehistoric tombs in Finnish Karelia! Asked to provide
more information, she contacted the responsible authorities at
the Helsinki Museum and came back with a surprising reply:
cowrie shells were commonly found archaeologically all over
the Finnish-Ugric area. They had been used in ancient Finland
mainly as ornaments on the harnesses of horses. They were
known as ‘serpent-heads’ by the Mari-people of the Upper
Volga river, and historical records show they were obtained as
payment for furs they brought to the mercantile state of Bolgaria
which occupied the coast of the Caspian Sea around the Lower
Volga about ap 600-1250. These merchants obtained the cowries
from Arab traders. Their routes from the Indian Ocean via the
Persian Gulf continued overland to the markets of Tabriz and to
the Caspian Sea. It was merely an extension of the early Maldive
trade in entire shiploads of cowries to which the early Arab
sources referred centuries before the Maldive kingdom became
Moslem. Among the Arab writers was Ibn Fadlan who visited
Bolgaria in ap 922.
The Estonian historian L. Meri wrote about this amazing
trade route: ‘A violent wave of cowrie-shell fashion washed
over the Finnish-Ugric nations, which could not have any
304
The Verdict
notion of these “serpent-heads” coming from the Maldives,

from the distant Indian Ocean, from the place of origin of these
shells.’
Reading this information to my friends I thought we had
reached the outer limits of the cowrie shell trade in time and
space. But no.
‘We can add to this that Norwegian archaeologists have
excavated cowrie shells on the Atlantic coast north of the Arctic
Circle. Eleven of them were found at Lodingen in northern
Norway ina tomb dating from the sixth century AD!’
It was Mikkelsen who made this incredible report. Then
Johansen added: ‘And in 1975 a number of cowrie shells were
also found in a woman’s tomb from about Ap 600 at Luroy, an
island off the coast of northern Norway, exactly on the Arctic
Circle!’
Mikkelsen waited for me to digest this surprising informa-
tion from our own home country. Then he quietly produced a
publication by a Swedish archaeologist, B. Nerman, who had
excavated pre-Viking tombs on the island of Gotland off the east
coast of Sweden. He had found cowrie shells from the Indian
Ocean in three different women’s tombs dating from Ap 550-800.
One was perforated for suspension and seemed to have been
worn ona belt. It had caused much surprise in Sweden that the
island of Gotland could have had contact, even though indirect,
with people in the Indian Ocean at that early time. But then
another Swedish tomb from that same period was found to
contain a beautiful bronze Buddha sitting on a lotus flower.
We all agreed that people travelled long before everybody’s
journey was put on written record. But Knut asked: ‘Couldn’t
the cowrie shells have come from the Atlantic?’
‘No!’ I could answer. ‘The money-cowrie, Cypraea moneta,” is
a strictly Indo-Pacific mollusc. You don’t find it anywhere else.’
‘Maybe they came from East Africa?’
‘Ibn Battuta showed that East Africa imported cowries from
the Maldives, and he himself exported shiploads to Asia. Only
in the Maldives were they cultivated for mass export. The Arabs
called the Maldives the Money-islands even before they intro-
duced Islam there. Three centuries before Ibn Battuta, Al-Biruni
wrote that cowrie shells were the monopoly of the Maldives.’
From the northernmost corner of Europe our review of
305
The Maldive Mystery
Maldive trade quickly turned to the Far East at the opposite end
of the Old World.
‘Ancient Chinese ware,’ said Johansen and sorted out a pile of
familiar green potsherds. ‘This is what we dug up in Nilandu,
Gaaf-Gan and Fua Mulaku. I showed it to oriental archaeolo-
gists on my tour of south-east Asia. They all identified it as
Chinese from about the eighth century, when the ancient trade
with China increased and ceramic was the principal export.’
Johansen had also learnt that J. Carswell of Chicago’s Oriental
Institute had visited Male where he had picked up hundreds of
surface sherds from the Chinese Sung and Ming dynasties (AD
960-1279 and 1368-1644). Carswell had been surprised to find all
this evidence of traffic from the Far East in the Arab period,
since he had hardly found any Islamic pottery. Also a certain
J. V. Allen had found some surface pottery on an island just
south of Male, which the oriental experts believed might be
Sassanidian, that is from the innermost part of the Persian Gulf.
The rest of Allen’s sherds had been identified as south-east
Asiatic and Chinese.
We heard of nobody else who had picked up Maldive pot-
sherds except Ivar, the 6-year-old son of our Male friends Eva
Jonsson and Mohamed Hameed, who might have found the
prize specimen. Playing with his parents he had dug in the sand
of another Vadu island, Kaaf-Vadu, just south-west of Male,
when he pulled up an ancient sherd of fine hand-pressed and
painted grey ware, with a very special leaf ornamentation. This
ware and its decoration recalled the particular pottery of the
ancient Indus Valley civilisation. The tiny islet of Vadu seemed
to hide many secrets of the past in its deep sand. I had briefly
visited the local tourist resort to see a little bronze Buddha
somebody had found when digging sanitary installations.
We were still admiring little Ivar’s sherd when Johansen
pulled out a small box to show us his trump card. He had now
also visited Vadu island, and hetold us his story while unwrap-
ping the pieces in his box.
As part of our joint programme, Johansen had just been back
alone to the Maldives, hoping to visit the island of Maalhos in
Alifu atoll, west of Male. The reason was that a Swedish tourist
had gone to that island the same year because he had heard
rumours of a stone head said to have been found there seven-
306
The Verdict
teen years ago. The Swedish visitor told us that when he arrived
the islanders first denied the existence of any sculpture. But in
the end they showed him a stone mask which lay upside down
on top of a refuse mound. It had been dug up from an ancient
well. He insisted that the head be sent to Male. And there we
were shown the limestone mask, about 30 centimetres (1 foot)
tall, just as we were leaving. Beautiful. The realistic face had the
symbol of the ‘third eye’ on the forehead, and above its ornate
headband rose a tall ridged cap.
The sole purpose of Johansen’s return to the Maldives had
been to dig test pits in the area where the stone mask had been
found. But for some reason our friends on the Council did not
allow him to go to Maalhos, and he ended up on the islet of Vadu
instead, where the boy-had found the precious sherd we now
had in front of us. Everywhere in the sand of Vadu Johansen had
been able to pick up ancient potsherds. The island must once
have been important. He knew the tradition that it had once
been much larger, so he waded into the lagoon. Just with his
hands he had been able to scoop up potsherds from the sand at
the bottom. These were some of them.
He showed us some ancient sherds of fine hand-pressed,
unpainted pots of grey ware with a very specific surface decora-
tion of so-called cord-stamp impressions.
‘Ishowed these to the archaeologists in the National Museums
of Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Manila. I did not say where I
had found them. But this is what I found in the Vadu lagoon.
Independent of each other they all said it was neolithic pottery,
of a type that ceased to exist about 2000 Bc.’
In silence we all looked at our wide variety of sherds one by
one as they were passed around. Some such Maldive sherds
may one day perhaps tell the story of how prehistoric Madagas-
car had been peopled from Indonesia.
Then came my turn to tell what I had learnt from our Moslem
friends on the National Council. They had finally confided to me
the full story behind the large Buddha stone head that had
brought me to the Maldives in the first place. It was correct that
it had been part of a complete statue smashed up by religious
fanatics. And it had been found on Toddu island just west of
Male, off the northern tip of Alifu atoll. But there was more to
the story than that.
307
The Maldive Mystery
The head had been discovered inside a small stupa. That

stupa had also been in good shape, hidden for eight centuries
inside a mound covered by palms and dense vegetation. The
people knew the mound as Bodu gafusi, ‘the big stone pile’. But
in 1958 a noted Male official, Mohamed Ismail Didi, sailed for
Toddu with the full approval of the authorities and the Moslem
Council. Under his direction, untrained villagers cleared and
excavated the mound. The dome of the small stupa, a couple of
metres (6 feet) high, was still preserved, and so was the fine
stone enclosure carved in imitation of a log fence. Didi had
personally written a report on his discovery, in Divehi language
and with Divehi letters, which Shadas had helped me to trans-
late. The well-preserved Buddha was found hidden inachamber
under a large stone slab. They also found a relic casket, like a
stone pot, and inside was a silver bowl surrounded by black
powder, possibly ash. There were also two inscribed silver
sheets, about 30 x 5 centimetres (12 x 2 inches) and a small gold
cylinder, like a charm container, some gold fragments and
pieces of gold wire, besides three rings, two coins, and a
substance like native medicine. They had cleaned and polished
the coins to see what they represented. ‘There was a figure of a
deer or a horse, we could not be certain... . on the other side of
the coin was the head of somebody. The other coin was not clear
enough. We took photographs of these coins.’
Nobody knew what had happened to the contents of the relic
casket. The coins had disappeared with the rest. Vandals had
systematically effaced the little stupa. But the photographs of
the coins had been saved by our friend Hassan Maniku, and one
showed the laureate head of Apollo on one side and Minerva
driving her chariot with four galloping horses on the other. This
coin had been perforated, probably to be worn as an amulet. In
1980, A. D. W. Forbes of Aberdeen University had done research
in the Maldives and obtained prints which he sent to Dr N. M.
Lowick of the British Museum Department of Coins and Medals.
In the archives of Loutfi’s office I had just been shown the
typescript of Forbes’ detailed report: ‘Dr Lowick promptly
identified the coin as a Roman Republican denarius of Caius
Vibius Pansa, minted at Rome in 90 Bc . . . The coin could have
circulated in the Roman Empire at any time up to ap 100.”
‘A coin from 90 Bc. Of course it could have been worn as an
308
The Verdict
amulet for some time,’ commented Skjélsvold. ‘Yet we know

there was direct contact between the Maldives and ancient
Rome.’
He was referring to the reign of the Roman Emperor Flavius
Claudius Julianus who died in ap 363. His comrade-in-arms,
Ammianus Marcellinus, listed the most distant envoys that
came to pay homage, as he saw them seated at either side of the
court: ‘On one side the people from across the Tigris and the
Armenians invoked peace, on the other the nations from India
and even the Divi and the Serendivi sent their nobles with gifts
in competition to come first.”
Serendivi was Sri Lanka, Divi the islands in front.
‘The Romans learned how to sail to these islands from the
Egyptians,’ I added, repeating my favourite quote from Pliny
the Elder. We had a copy of Pliny’s Historia Naturalis on the
bookshelf which I reached for to read a well-marked page. Pliny
wrote this work before he died at the eruption of Vesuvius in AD
79, and Roman ships were already visiting Sri Lanka and the
opposite coast of India then, that is, at the time when Roman
coins like the Maldive one from 90 Bc were still in circulation. To
get to Sri Lanka Roman ships had to pass through the Maldives.
But what I was looking for was Pliny’s mention of sailings to
the Prasii, a trading people of the river Ganges on the far side of
India. After a description of Sri Lanka with all its towns and
products, Pliny goes on: ‘This island was formerly believed to
be a distance of twenty days’ sail from the nation of the Prasii,
inasmuch as the voyage to it used to be made with vessels
constructed of reeds and with the rigging used on the Nile, but
at later times its distance was fixed with reference to the speeds
made by our ships as seven days’ sail.’
Those who insist that Egyptian reed ships never left the Nile
must have overlooked this record; and without it I would have
been much less keen on testing reed ships in the oceans. Apart
from the estimated distances in sailing time, the Egyptians had
taught the Romans the secrets of crossing the Indian Ocean in
accordance with the seasonal variations of the monsoon. Pliny
was campaigning for the Romans to take over the Indian Ocean
trade, instead ofgiving the profits to middlemen in Egypt: ‘And
it will not be amiss to set out the whole of the voyage from
Egypt, now that reliable knowledge of it is for the first time
309
The Maldive Mystery
accessible. It is an important subject, in view of the fact that in

no one year does India absorb less than fifty million sesterces of
our empire’s wealth, sending back merchandise to be sold with
us at a hundred times its prime cost.’
He instructs the Roman merchants to sail about twelve days
up the Nile to Keft, where camel caravans are organised for
another twelve days’ journey to Berenise on the Red Sea. There
were organised watering posts at intervals and apparently a
vivid traffic with caravan stations capable of accommodating
2,000 travellers.
Travelling by sea begins at midsummer before the dogstar

rises or immediately after its rising, and it takes about thirty
days to reach the Arabian port of Cella. . . from that portitisa
forty days’ voyage, if the Hippalus is blowing, to the first
trading-station in India... Travellers set sail from India on
the return voyage at the beginning of the Egyptian month
Tybis, which is our December, or at all events before the
sixth day of the Egyptian Mechir, which works out at before
January 13 in our calendar, so making it possible to return
home in the same year.”
‘We are told that Vasco da Gama learned about monsoon

sailing from the Arabs,’ I added. ‘It is true. But we must not
forget that the Romans had learned monsoon sailing in the
Indian Ocean from the Egyptians 1,500 years earlier.’
‘What a sight for the Maldivians,’ said Johansen, ‘to see the
proud Egyptian papyrus ships with colourful square sails stand
through the Equatorial Channel along the highway of their
sun.’
No doubt they did not simply pass through. We all agreed that
no mariner would cross the full span of the Indian Ocean without
stopping for fresh provisions and water. Perhaps the Maldive
women copied the beautiful collar pieces of their dresses and the
men the elegant bows of their dhonis from Egyptians in transit.
‘Who said the Maldivians lived isolated in the ocean?’ asked
Mikkeisen. ‘They had settled at a crossroad of all the main
maritime nations.’
If reed ships from the Red Sea came here, those from the
Persian Gulf had still easier access. And those from the Gulf of
310
The Verdict
Cambay would seem like next-door neighbours.

Were it not for the practical! sailing directions of Pliny recorded
in the interests of Rome, written sources would have ignored
Egyptian sailings to Sri Lanka and beyond. Had not Queen
Hatshepsut’s fleet sailed down the Red Sea to the legendary
‘Punt’, or the Pharaoh Necho despatched an exploring expedi-
tion around the continent of Africa, neither the Egyptians nor
their neighbours would have considered a merchant sailor
worthy of inscriptions or record. The short texts of the Indus
Valley civilisation have not been deciphered and are only
known from seals, but the one seal showing a large reed ship
and the many seals with Indus Valley script excavated all over
Mesopotamia tell a story by their mere presence. The Meso-
potamian clay tablets,in contrast, abound in references to large
ships and to distant lands months away in sailing time. But the
geographical names given are not those we use today, and only
those constantly mentioned like Dilmun (Bahrain), Makan
(Oman) and Meluhha (the Indus Valley) have been tentatively
identified. Some others were much further away and we can
only guess at their identity. Certainly, by the sixth century,
ships were not noticeably improved from Sumerian or Babylon-
ian times, and yet by then the Arabs had taken over the trade in
Maldive cowries up the Tigris river and to the caravan routes
beyond.
Maloney, a man with wide horizons, observed that the Mal-
divians had the strange traditional habit of counting with
twelve as the base number. A provocative system of problematic
origins, he says, and, asking where this duodecimal system
could have come from, he discounts Sri Lanka and India and
proposes: ‘We probably have to look ultimately to Mesopotamia,
from which the use of the numbers 6 and 12 spread in several
directions.”
He suggests that perhaps this feature of Sumerian and Baby-
lonian civilisation was transmitted through prehistoric Gujarat
by way of Persia and Sindh, and thence by sea to the Maldive
Islands.
I told the others that, after my visit to Bharuch and Lothal in
Gujarat, I was convinced that at least the Hindu element in the
Maldives had come from that north-western corner of India.
And probably, the Hindus were not even the first to have made
311
The Maldive Mystery
that journey straight south from the Gulf of Cambay to the

Maldives. Perhaps earlier sailors in the days of Mesopotamian
and Indus Valley seafaring had been led by the sun to the
Equatorial Channel, and survived in legend as the Redin. Maybe
they were the ones who had broken the pots in the Maldives
prior to 2000 Bc and brought cowrie shells to the port of Lothal
in that same period?
Skjolsvold stressed, and we all agreed, that Buddhism must
have had a firm footing in the Maldives before Islam was
introduced. These Buddhists could have come directly from
Burma, like the bamboo raft we had seen. There is indeed ample
evidence to show that the Maldives had contact with Buddhist
nations as far east as south-east Asia and China in early pre-
Islamic times.
Yet Sri Lanka seems the more likely source. There they have
written records of a major migration to coral atolls in the ocean.
And it was caused by a powerful visiting Buddhist about 500 Bc.
Even though the Maldives had never been under Sri Lankan
dominance in the Singalese period, neither politically nor
religiously, these two independent nations must have known
about each other and even have had some unofficial commercial
contact. As Mikkelsen pointed out, this was shown by some of
the potsherds he and Johansen had excavated at the Nilandu
temple complex. They were identified as of Sri Lankan origin,
and datable to the period from ap 700 onwards.
Buddhists from Sri Lanka and Hindus from north-west India
thus seemed to have had an equal share in the peopling of the
Maldive archipelago, and even roughly in the same century,
some two and a half millennia ago. Whoever might have been
on the islands before them was expelled or absorbed.
The Maldive Islands, which most of us around the table had
hardly heard of before, now began to appear like a barrier reef
from which octopus tentacles spread to remote corners of the
Old World. Into the Red Sea and the Mediterranean as far as
Rome. Into the Persian Gulf and beyond as far as Finland and
the Arctic coast of Norway. Into the Gulf of Cambay, and around
India in the opposite direction past the straits of Indonesia to
distant China. Directly and indirectly the prehistoric Maldives
had been involved in global trade.
But where did the very first Maldivians come from?
312
The Verdict
‘Let us leave all possibilities open,’ concluded Skjélsvold. ‘We

know that Sri Lanka and the ports in the Gulf of Cambay have
played important parts in the prehistory and even the history of
the Maldives. But too many others have come here or sailed
through before European history began, so .. .’
‘So, the best conclusion therefore,’ said I, ‘is that the ocean is
and always was an open road since man began to build ships.’
‘So you can’t give us the name and address of the first man to
reach the Maldives,’ said Knut.
‘Who was the first sailor to cross the English Channel!’ asked
Johansen.
Knut smiled: ‘But’ the first one to reach a tiny atoll in the
Maldives really deserves a place in maritime history.’
~
aD ad
S13
Notes
Bell (1940).
Maloney (1980) pp. x, 48.
Maniku (1983).
Bell (1940) p. 119.
Ibid, p. 122.
Ibid, p. 104.
Ibid, pp. 126-7.
TF Ibid, pp. 105, 106.
OANA
WNR
\o Heyerdahl (1958).
10 Bibby (1969).
11 Heyerdahl (1980) chap. 5.
12 Heyerdahl (1980).
13. Maloney (1980) p. 172.
14. Maniku (1983) p. 33.
15 Bell (1940) p. 116.
16 Ibid, p. 125.
Vem lbid pati.
18 Ibid, p. 131.
19 Ibid, p. 151.
20 Ibid, p. 105.
21. Ibid, p. 112.
22 Ibid, p.95.
23 Maloney (1980) p. 417.
24 Bell (1940) pp. 17, 76.
25 Gray (1888) p. 444.
26 Maloney (1980) pp. 420-1.
27 Gray (1888) p. 478.
28 Ibid, pp. 484-5.
29 Ibid, pp. 236-7.
30 Bell (1925) pp. 132-42.
31 Maloney (1980) p. 155.
32 Gray (1888) pp. 434-6.
33 Battuta (1354) vol. II, p. 344.
34 Forbes (1983) p. 71 footnote.
35 Bell (1940) pp. 18-19.
36 Ibid, p. 203 and Hassan Maniku in an unpublished manuscript on ‘Islam
in Maldives’ (Male, Dec. 1982, ref. no. MOE/82/CISSEA/12, p. 3) quotes
the old Maldivian chronicler Hassan Thaajuddeen (d. 1727) who also uses
the wrong name, Shamshuddeen al Thabreezi, but adds the interesting
information that he left Thabreezi in the eleventh year of Khaleefa
Mugthafee Li-Amrillah’s reign, which would be Ap 1147. If this was
314
Notes
correct, the traveller from Tabriz must have made various calls on his
journey from Tabriz to arrive in the Maldives as late as 1153.
37 Gray (1888) pp. 446-8.
38 Loamaafaanu manuscript, English translation by National Council for
Linguistic and Historical Research, with foreword by His Excellency
Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, President of the Republic of Maldives, Male
1982.
Gray (1888) pp. 439-50.
Ibid, pp. 468-71.
Ibid, pp. 472-3.
Bell (1940) pp. 26-7.
Maniku (1977) p. 3.
Rasge-timu means ‘King’s Island’. The Maldive legend referring to this
island as the first settlement of Maldive rulers is discussed in Chapter XI.
Maloney (1980) pp. 165-6.
Ibid, pp. 146-7. a
Letter from Sri LankaMinistry of Cultural Affairs, 29 August 1983. Signed
Roland Silva and S. U. Deraniyagala.
Maniku (1983) p. 3.
Fernando (1982).
Gray (1888) pp. 454-7.
Sastri (1955) p. 183.
Bell (1940) p. 16.
Maloney (1980) pp. ix, 48.
Ibid, p. 57.
Ibid, pp. 41-9.
Ibid, p. 57.
Ibid, pp. 54-67.
Ibid, pp. 31-2.
Bell (1940) p. 16.
Maloney (1980) p. 30.
Ibid, pp. 33-6.
Ibid, pp. 38-41.
Hutchinson et al. (1947, 1949); Silow (1949); Heyerdahl (1952) pp. 446-53.
Rao (1965) pp. 30-7.
Letter of 31.10.84 from Esa Anttonen based on information from IIdiko
Lehtinen; L. Meri (1984) p. 174.
Burgess (1970) p. 343.
‘A Roman Republican Denarius of c. 90 Bc from the Maldive Islands,
Indian Ocean.’ Manuscript by Andrew D. W. Forbes. National Centre for
Linguistic and Historical Research, Male.
Ammianus Marcellinus, Book XXII, 7.10.
Plinius, Book VI, pp. 398-401, 416-19.
Maloney (1980) p. 53.
315
Bibliography
Battuta, Ibn (c.1354) The Travels of Ibn Battuta. Trans. with revisions
and notes from the Arabic text, edited by C. Defrémery and B. R.
Sangvinetti, by H. A. R. Gibb, Vol. II (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society,
1962).
Bellekia Ge P25(1925)i 7A Description of the Maldive Islands: c.1683’,
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Ceylon Branch (Colombo) no. 78.
Bell, H. C. P. (1940) The Maldive Islands. Monograph on the History,
Archeology, and Epigraphy. Published posthumously (Colombo:
Ceylon Government Press).
Bibby, G. (1969) Looking for Dilmun (New York).
Burgess, C. M. (1970) The Living Cowries (New York, London).
Fernando, A. D. N. (1982) ‘The Ancient Hydraulic Civilization of Sri
Lanka in Relation to its Natural Resources’, Journal of the Sri Lanka
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Colombo) N.S., vol. XXVIIL,
special no.
Forbes, A. D. W. (1983) ‘The Mosque in the Maldive Islands. A
preliminary historical survey’, in Etudes Interdiciplinaires sur le
monde insulindien (Paris) Archipel 26, Archéologie Musulmane.
Gray, A. (1888) The Voyage of Francois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies,
the Maldives, the Moluccas, and Brazil. Trans. and annotated by
Albert Gray assisted by H. C. P. Bell (London: Hakluyt Society)
2 vols.
Heyerdahl, T. (1952) American Indians in the Pacific. The Theory Behind
the Kon-Tiki Expedition (London, Chicago).
Heyerdahl, T. (1958) Aku-Aku. The Secret of Easter Island (London:
Allen & Unwin).
Heyerdahl, T. (1980) The Tigris Expedition (London: Allen & Unwin).
Hutchinson, J. B., Silow, R. A. & Stephens, S. G. (1947) The Evolution of
Gossypium and the Differentiation of the Cultivated Cottons (London,
New York and Toronto).
Hutchinson, J. B., Silow, R. A. & Stephens, S. G. (1949) ‘The Problems
of Trans-Pacific Migration Involved in the Origin of the Cultivated
Cottons of the New World.’ Abstract from the Seventh Pacific
Science Congress, New Zealand, Feb. 1949.
Maloney, C. (1980) People of the Maldive Islands (Madras).
Maniku, H. A. (1977) The Maldive Islands, a Profile (Male).
Maniku, H. A. (1983) The Islands of Maldives (Male).
316
Bibliography
Meri, L. (1984) Hobevalgem (Tallin).

Plinius Secundus, Gaius (1944-62) Historia Naturalis. The Loeb
Classical Library (London: Heinemann).
Pliny the Elder —see Plinius Secundus, Gaius.
Rao, S. R. (1965) ‘Shipping and Maritime Trade of the Indus People’,
Expedition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania) vol. 7, no. 3.
Sastri, K. A. N. (1955) The Colas (Madras: University of Madras).
Silow, R. A. (1949) ‘The Evolution and Domestication of a Crop Plant’
(Melbourne) Austral. Inst. Agricult. Sci. vol. XV, no. 2.
317
Index
Abbas Ibrahim 103-6, 111, 219, 301 Babylon 253, 286, 311
Abdul 21-2, 25, 34, 36-7, 42-4, 48-9, 54, 56, Baghdad 199, 213
59, 75, 77, 79, 104, 117-18, 124-5, 129, Bahrain 63, 67-70, 75, 82, 187-8, 200, 286,
155, 176 292, 297, 300, 311
Abu al Barakat Yusuf 198-204 bamboo raft, see raft
Adam 94, 264-5, 267 Bangladesh 41, 195-6, 264
Addu atoll 31-3, 35, 37, 39, 76, 92-3, 95, 97, barabaro 230, 291, 303
~ 137, 140, 142-3, 149, 187, 222, 238-9, Baroda 73, 285, 288
278 bat 78, 85, 102, 167, 236
Addu-Gan 30-7, 44-5, 59, 97, 112, 142-3, bath, ceremonial 34, 48, 61-2, 68-71, 74-5,
149, 186, 191, 222, 236 95, 102, 120, 151, 187-9, 193, 228-9,
Adiri Adiri, see Andreas Andre 233, 256-7, 296-7
Africa 12, 27, 63-4, 70-2, 82, 93-4, 120, 124, Battuta, see Ibn
199, 220, 225, 252, 256, 272, 294, 302, Bay of Bengal 196
305, 311 bead 33, 183-4, 230, 233-4, 244, 299-300,
agate 183, 233, 246, 300, 303 303
Ake, see Karlson Bell, H. C. P. 18-19, 26, 28, 32-3, 35, 38-9,
Al-Biruni 157, 305 41, 45-6, 49-50, 53-5, 76, 79, 93-4, 149,
Alexander the Great 197, 263, 276 151-4, 156, 166, 201, 205-6, 221, 244-5,
Al-Idrisi 157 272-3, 277, 279-80, 292
Allen,J.V. 306 Bengal 157-8, 209, 212-14
Ambola Keola (Ambola Keu) 51, 56-7 Bengt, see Jonson
Ammianus Marcellinus 309 Berber 27, 198-200, 2034
Andreas Andre 215-16 betel nut 39, 48, 50, 96
Anuradhapura 250-1, 254-60, 264, 266, Bhagatrav 285, 287, 300, 303
271, 287 Bharuch (Bharukaccha) 257, 281-9, 293,
Arab 12-13, 94, 96-8, 100, 107, 109, 123-4, 295, 302-3, 311
144, 148, 152, 156-7, 160, 196-202, Bibby, G. 67-8
205, 207-8, 214, 217, 238, 256, 304, Bjorn, see Bye
310-11 boats 12, 15-16, 21, 29, 63, 93, 159, 186-7,
Arabian Sea 94 211, 214, 236, 248, 272, 277, 294, 298—
areca 135 300, 309, 313; see also reed boat
Ari atoll 118, 140, 142 Bolgaria 304
Ariyaddu (Ariyadu) 119-22, 125, 140, 142, Brazil 72
226 bronze 25-6, 28, 79, 87, 96, 120, 152, 155,
Arne, see Skjdlsvold 261, 268-70, 298, 305-6
Aryan 248 Buddha 15-16, 23-9, 32, 45-6, 49, 53, 73,79,
Ashoka (As6ka) 46, 264 84, 87, 96, 123, 145, 147, 150, 166, 173,
Asia 14-16, 18-19, 29-30, 35, 58, 71-3, 82, 183, 193, 196, 206, 234-5, 255, 260-8,
84,96, 124, 127, 146, 159, 170, 172, 197, 270, 274-5, 278, 282, 292, 305-8
200, 212, 220, 223, 244, 247, 252, 256, Buddhism 17-19, 24, 26-7, 32, 46, 50, 54,
283, 297, 302, 305-6, 312 79, 82, 85-7, 91, 96-7, 124-5, 127,
Asia Minor 63, 65-6, 124 134-5, 143, 147-53, 166, 170, 175, 180,
Asim 226, 231, 239-41 183, 189-90, 193, 195-6, 204-8, 223,
asphalt 70, 286 244, 247-52, 254, 256, 259-70, 272-4,
astrology 224 276-80, 292, 312
Atlantic Ocean 64-5, 71-3, 120, 199, 212, budkhana 26-7, 203
294, 305 bull, stone 235, 243, 289-91, 303
Azékara 92-3, 135 burial 67, 81, 85, 135-6, 141, 144, 160, 179,
Aztec 72, 93, 212, 293, 296 231, 292
318
Index
Burma 97, 195-6, 213, 261, 312 Dilmun 66-8, 75, 187, 311
Bye, B. R. 11, 15, 17, 20-2, 25, 29-30, 34, Dipawamsa 274, 281
37-9, 44, 48, 54, 57, 59, 80-2, 84, 86, 96, Divehi 11, 13, 19, 57, 76, 109, 114, 155, 179,
98-9, 101-3, 106, 112, 114, 128-9, 140, 200, 205, 208, 217, 226, 230, 273, 277,
149, 166-8, 182, 191, 195, 236-7, 254 291, 308
Djibouti 70
calendar 223-4, 248 Doppler, Dave 221-2
Calicut 94, 212-14 Dravidian 281
Cambay, Gulf of 158-60, 198, 202, 212,
214-15, 248, 257, 278, 282, 285, 295, ear extension, also ear plug 14-16, 23-5,
299, 310-13 71-4, 96, 145, 193, 254, 257, 262, 269,
cannibalism 91-3, 135 278, 285, 288
carbon dating 169, 176, 228, 231-2, 257,302 Easter Island 14, 16, 58, 63-4, 67, 72-3, 117
Carswell, J. 306 Ecuador 29
Caspian Sea 304 Egil, see Mikkelsen
cat 77-9, 85-6, 233, 278 es Egypt 9-10, 16, 29-30, 65-7, 69, 73, 83-4, 98,
cat people 86-8, 180, 208, 243; see also Lion 103, 120, 179, 192, 197, 199, 213, 224,
people 247, 255, 262, 294, 300, 309-11
caury, see cowrie elephantiasis 190-1
ceramic, see pottery oe equator 29, 31, 38, 82, 98, 170
Ceylon, see Sri Lanka Equatorial Channel 29-31, 33, 35-9, 47, 59,
chakra, see sun-symbol 61, 70-1, 74-5, 77-8, 92-5, 97, 102, 116,
Chichen Itza 72, 172 137, 140, 142-3, 149, 162-3, 167-8, 170,
China 198, 211-13, 220, 247, 306, 312 178, 186, 194, 222, 236, 238, 257, 267,
Chinese 157, 230, 237-8, 306 278, 310, 312
Chola 269-31 Ethiopia 124
climate 217, 219, 225, 238 Euphrates, river 65-6, 94
cock, gold 123, 126-7 Europe 58, 63, 84, 94, 96, 109, 128, 157-8,
coin, Roman 308-9 170, 200, 212-13, 220, 226, 294, 301,
Colombo 15, 17, 103, 258, 273-4 304-5
Columbus, Christopher 12, 66, 71, 94, 155,
192, 212, 267, 294-5, 302-3 Faaf (Faafu) atoll, see Nilandu
conch 98, 231, 266-8 fereta 85-6, 95, 102, 236
Cook, Captain 72 Fernando, A. D. N. 249-54
Con-Tici-Viracocha 72, 296 Finland 256, 304, 312
copper 12, 120, 200, 203, 205-6, 208, 211, fire worship 87-8, 248, 275
233, 244, 247, 279-80 Flavius Claudius Julianus 309
coral 18, 20, 28, 33-6, 39-42, 46, 61, 78, 80, footprint, stone 264-9, 303
89, 119, 143, 150-1, 169-70, 185, 230-1 Forbes, A. D. W. 200, 308
cotton 211, 293-6 Fua Mulaku 37-63, 70-1, 74-5, 79, 82, 84,
cowrie shells 135, 156-60, 170, 178, 210-13, 91, 94-5, 100, 104, 117, 128, 142-3, 152,
238, 256, 300, 304-5, 311-12 186-93, 229, 236-9, 306
Crete 73
crow 279, 287-8 Gaadu (Gadu) 77, 85-9, 91, 94, 143, 155,
crystal ball 173 167, 169, 178, 180, 208, 230-3, 238
Cuzco 141 Gaaf (Huvadu or Suvadiva) atoll 75-6, 95,
Cypraea moneta, see cowrie 142-3, 149, 162-3, 238
Cyprus 66, 73 Gaaf-Gan 76-90, 97, 130, 142-3, 149, 154,
162-3, 167-78, 180-2, 184, 186, 190,
dagoba, see stupa 192-3, 205, 208, 230-2, 236, 238-9, 241,
Deluge 67 243, 256-9, 278, 288, 292, 302, 306
demon 24-8, 77, 84, 96, 106, 138, 145, 152, Galapagos Islands 117, 294
165-6, 202-4, 208, 248-50, 254, 269, 276 Gan, see Addu-Gan; Gaaf-Gan; Laamu-
deo 223 Gan
Dhall atoll 141 Gandhi, Indira 288
dhoni 11, 16, 21, 30, 41, 109, 154, 187, 192, Ganges 97, 195-6, 263, 309
221, 224, 256, 277 Garden of Eden 94
O19
The Maldive Mystery
Gautama 15 193, 197-9, 211-12, 237, 263, 304-5,

Gayoom, President Maumoon Abdul 9- 309-10
11, 13, 21, 99-100, 103-6, 111, 113-14, Indo-Aryan 76, 230, 254, 273, 276-8
151, 205, 216-17, 219-20 Indonesia 92-4, 212, 261, 269, 307, 312
Giravaru 142-3, 277, 280 Indus, river 12, 14, 263, 276
Giri-dipa 275 Indus Valley Civilisation 14, 16, 29, 69-70,
gold 49, 53-4, 73, 123, 126-7, 211, 233, 247, 73, 76, 92, 98-9, 148, 159, 170, 184, 193,
251, 308 197-8, 202, 212-13, 224, 249, 254,
Golden Ray 112-16, 123, 137-8, 140, 154, 262-3, 276, 278, 284-6, 291, 294-5, 303,
166, 186-7, 191, 193-4, 218 306, 311-12
Gray, A. 212-14 Isdu 142-3, 147-50, 154, 156, 206
Greek 37, 47, 66, 84, 130, 172, 230, 246, 263, Islam 10, 12, 16-17, 19-21, 24-5, 27, 37, 50,
276 56, 60-2, 79, 85, 87, 91, 93, 95-8, 100,
Gujarat 282, 284-5, 287, 290-7, 311 107, 113, 124-5, 127, 132-8, 141, 143-5,
148, 150, 152, 155-7, 160, 164, 166,
Hadaramot 105
170-1, 174, 179-82, 184-5, 190, 193,
Haddummati atoll, see Laam 196-208, 216, 223, 235, 237, 241, 249,
Harappa 263, 285, 287, 298-300
256, 261, 265, 267-8, 272, 279-81, 289,
291, 302, 305-6, 312
Haugland, K. 225, 301-3, 305, 313
hawitta 46-62, 74, 76-7, 79-84, 86-7, 90,
Jameel, Abdulla 1046
100, 102, 114, 120-1, 129, 137, 141,
147-55, 160-1, 163-4, 167-78, 185-7, Jameel, Mohamed 113
jangada 41
189-93, 202, 206, 220, 222, 232-3, 237,
Japanese 51, 191, 227-8, 231-2
241, 243-4, 258-9, 261, 278, 288-92
Jataka 282-4
Hellenistic 237
hieroglyphs, see script Java 213, 303
Jidda 68
Hindu 15, 25-4, 29, 58, 73, 84, 86-7, 96, 120,
125-7, 134, 143, 166, 170, 193, 204-5,
jinni 26-7, 51, 58, 110, 201-5, 207, 221-2,
236
208, 223, 234, 256, 260-71, 278, 287,
289, 292, 303, 311-12 Johansen, O. 97, 117, 124-5, 128-31, 139-
Hitadu 33-6, 48, 142-3, 155, 160-1, 222-3 40, 168-70, 173-6, 178, 181, 183, 192,
Hittite 65-9, 234, 290 225, 228-30, 234-6, 239, 241, 301-7,
Holin 135, 137-8 310, 312-13
Jonson, B. 117-18, 146, 168, 198
Hormuz Strait 68-9, 94, 212-14, 297
Hutchinson, J. B. 293
Huvadu, see Gaaf
Kalinga 264
hydraulic civilisation 249-55, 276, 297-8 Karachi 92, 303
Karlson, A. 117-18, 146, 168, 191-2, 195
Kassapa, King 244-7
Ibn Battuta 38, 157, 198-200, 202-4, 208-12, Khanzi 86-8, 179-81
265, 267, 294, 305 Kimbidu 142, 146
Thavandu 140, 142, 220 kite 202
image 14-17, 20, 22-8, 32, 46, 48-54, 57-9, Knut, see Haugland
79,82, 84,87-8, 96-7, 104, 125-8, 136-7, Koimala 277, 279-81
145, 147, 150, 152, 155, 165-6, 204, 206, Kondai 142-3, 163-7, 194, 256, 285
234, 244, 251, 256, 261, 266, 269-70, Kon-Tiki 63, 195, 225, 293, 301
288-91, 295, 306-8; see also stone Kon-Tiki Museum 219, 225, 301
image Kuda Huvadu 140-6
Inca 15-16, 29, 63, 72-3, 141, 212, 293 Kulumadulu (Thaa) atoll 146-7
India 10, 12, 15, 18-19, 70-1, 79, 86, 93-4,
124, 154, 156, 158, 160, 177, 192, 196, Laam (Laamu or Haddumati) atoll 55, 142,
198, 211-12, 214-15, 224-5, 235, 237-8, 147-8, 154-5, 206, 279
248, 254, 257, 261-6, 269-71, 273, 277- Laamu-Gan 76, 142, 149-54, 206, 292
300, 302-3, 309-12 Laccadives 271
Indian Ocean 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 25, 29, 31, lake 55-6, 236-8, 252-3, 275
35, 58, 63, 65, 68-9, 73, 78, 92-3, 97, Landu 142, 220-2
101-2, 111, 139, 148, 157-9, 178, 187, Lankapura 251
320
wt
Index
Lebanon 64-6, 120 82-4, 94, 130, 170, 197, 200, 202, 213,
lime 39, 48, 220-1 218, 224, 235, 262-3, 286, 291, 294
lingam 121, 125, 127-8, 271-2, 289, 303 Mexico 25, 58, 72-3, 93, 171-2, 234, 291,
lion 79, 243, 245, 261, 263, 278-9, 281; see 293-6, 311-12
also stone lion Midu 36-7, 39, 47, 93, 95, 143
Lion people 79, 86, 206, 244-5, 248-51, Midu 37-8, 40, 59, 75-6, 97
253-4, 257-60, 264, 274, 278, 280, 283, Mikkelsen, E. 192, 225, 228-30, 234-5, 239,
287, 290, 302-3 241, 301, 303, 305, 310, 312
Lixus 64, 67,73 Ming Dynasty 306
loamaafaanu 205-6, 208, 280-1 Modhera 292, 295-6
Long-ears 16, 24, 63, 72-5, 244-6, 258, 260, Mohenjo-Daro 69-70, 73, 159, 187-8, 254,
268, 271, 285; see also ear extension 263, 292-3, 303
Lothal 16, 70, 73-5, 159-60, 184, 233, 254, monsoon sailing 71, 101, 309-10
256-7, 285-6, 298-300, 302-4, 311-12 Morocco 64
lotus 10, 84, 98, 155, 172, 181, 187, 243, 246, Moslem, see Islam
260, 266-7, 269, 287, 289, 291, 303, 305 mosque 28, 33, 37,50, 54, 60-2, 96, 102, 107,
Loutfi, Mohamed 97, 104-5, 113-16, 118- 119-20, 123, 127-8, 132-3, 137-8,
20, 122-8, 131-7, 139-41, 144-51, 154, 140-1, 144, 152, 155, 163, 169, 179-80,
159-60, 163-5, 175, 178-81, 184-8, 190, 182-3, 187, 193, 198-201, 218, 228,
192-5, 199, 201, 205-6, 209, 217-20, 230-1, 237, 281
222-39, 256 Muna Fushi 142, 147
Lowick, N. M. 308
Lunar Dynasty 205, 208, 281 Naga 248, 250, 273-4, 276, 282-3
Naggadipa 276, 281-2, 284, 303
Nair, D. A. 292
Maadeli 140 Nandi 289
Maalhos 306-7 Narayan Vyas 289-90
Madagascar 93, 307 Necho, Pharaoh 120, 311
Mahafoti Kalege 49-53, 57 Nepal 97, 166, 196, 256, 261, 285, 292
Mahawamsa 250-1, 255, 274, 281-2 Nilandu (Nilandhoo), Faaf atoll 97, 122—
Makan 311 38, 139-40, 142, 144-5, 152-3, 170,
Makara 163, 165-7, 256, 285 183-4, 188, 192, 226-31, 234, 236, 257,
Malabar 214-16, 271 302-3, 306, 312
Male 10-11, 13, 20-1, 26, 28, 44-5, 52-3, Noonu (Milandu) atoll 142, 279-80
58-60, 84, 87, 90, 92-3, 95, 103, 106-9, Norway 105, 111, 115, 128, 243, 256, 304-5,
123-4, 127, 133, 142-3, 178-9, 203, 312
207-8, 215-16, 218, 225, 227, 277, 279- numerical system 83-4, 311
80, 306
Maloney, C. 19-20, 74, 156, 2234, 272-3,
Olmec 72, 234
275-83, 311
Oman 69, 82, 292, 297, 311
Malta 73
Ormus, see Hormuz
Maniku, Hassan 22-3, 26-8, 30, 76, 103-4,
Oslo University 117, 219, 225
106, 122, 205-7, 216-17, 241, 308
Oystein, see Johansen
marble 218, 255
Mari 304
Marquesas 294 Pacific Ocean 29, 63, 71, 195, 283
Martin, see Mehren Pakistan 69, 92, 261
masonry, see stone masonry Palk Straits 284
Mauryan Empire 264 Pande, Sri B. M. 288-9
Maya 10, 25, 72, 83-4, 170, 172, 246, 293 Parmentier, Jean and Raoul 38-9, 94
Mecca 132-3, 198, 241, 280 Persia 94, 199, 223, 297, 311
Mediterranean 64-6, 120, 199, 243, 312 Persian Gulf 63, 65-7, 69, 94, 148, 199-200,
Mehren, M. 102, 117-19, 160-1, 179, 189-94 213, 263, 304, 306, 310, 312
Mehta, R. N. 285, 298 Peru 14-15, 58, 63-4, 67, 71-3, 141, 154, 172,
Meluhha 311 293-4, 296
Meri, L. 304-5 phalloid sculpture 97, 120-1, 125-9, 136-7,
Mesopotamia 9-10, 12, 29, 65-7, 69-70, 73, 145, 173-4, 227-9, 271, 289-90, 303-4
a2
The Maldive Mystery
plaster 23, 47, 166, 172, 174-5, 182-5, 190, 255, 261-2, 266-7, 273-7, 303, 312; see
229, 234, 243, 245, 256, 259, 261, 290 also Lion people
Pliny 309-11 Skjolsvold, A. 97, 117, 122, 127, 129, 136,
Polonnaruva 260, 270-1 151, 166, 168, 173-6, 178, 180, 182-3,
Portuguese 109, 157-8, 160, 197, 214-16, 185, 187, 190, 192, 225, 228, 230-1, 236,
293 238, 301-2, 309, 312-13
pottery 48, 66, 71-2, 135, 176-7, 192, 211, Somalia 93
229-30, 232, 236-8, 287, 290, 293, 299, South America 25, 63, 71-2, 82-3, 212, 252,
302, 306-7, 312 293-5, 302
President of Maldives, see Gayoom Spaniards 72
pyramid 65-9, 71, 73, 81-2, 93, 97, 130-1, Sri Lanka 13-21, 45, 49, 52, 54, 78-9, 86,
170-2, 174, 192, 232-4, 255-7, 290-2, 92-3, 102-3, 112, 127, 147, 153-4, 173,
295-6 175, 195-6, 205-8, 212, 215, 237, 243
Pyrard, Francois 158 60, 261-2, 264-82, 284, 287, 291, 297,
303, 309, 311-13
statue, see stone image
Ra (land II) 64-5, 72, 296, 301
Stephens, S. G. 293
Ra atoll 142, 220-1, 279-80
stone:
raft 12, 41, 63, 97, 154, 194-6, 236, 294, 296,
box 49-50, 53-4, 58, 123, 126, 134, 308
301, 312
bull 235, 243, 289-91, 303
Rajaraja I, King 271
image 14~-17, 19-20, 22-9, 32, 45, 48-54,
Rakkhasa 248, 250, 274-6
57-9, 63, 65-6, 72, 74, 79, 82, 84, 96-7,
Rao, S. R. 286, 298-300
100, 104, 125-7, 135, 144-5, 150, 163,
Rasgetimu 142-3, 221, 279-81, 315n
Redin 54-61, 77, 79, 86-8, 95, 100, 102, 165-6, 2534, 261, 264-71, 278, 288-91,
307-8
119-22, 135, 140-1, 143, 145-9, 152,
lion 79, 177, 193, 218-19, 234-5, 243,
155, 160, 162-3, 169, 178, 220-3, 243,
249, 256, 289, 312 246-7, 257, 259-60, 270, 278, 289-91,
Red Sea 148, 197, 199, 212, 215, 310-12 303
mask 26, 96, 307
reed boat 12, 63-7, 69-72, 74, 224, 240, 262,
299, 309-11 masonry 36-7, 46-8, 60-75, 82-5, 90-1,
relic casket, see stone box 98-9, 110, 119-21, 127-38, 141, 148-51,
rope 126, 135, 187 153, 155, 160-1, 170-5, 181, 218, 232-4,
244, 251-2, 256-9, 289-90, 295-6
skull 172, 174
sacrifice 93, 223 turtle 25, 84
sails 30, 109, 220, 224, 256, 310 stupa (sthupa) 19, 32, 45-6, 54, 79, 82, 97,
Sanskrit 19, 76, 224, 251 127-9, 137, 149-50, 152-4, 166, 170,
script 10-13, 21, 25, 28, 48-9, 52, 65, 69, 173-5, 189-90, 196, 206, 228, 255-6,
83-4, 96, 98-9, 123-4, 134, 144, 178-80, 258-9, 261, 267, 272, 291-2, 303, 308
183-5, 195, 198-200, 205, 208, 245, Sumatra 94, 157
247-8, 265-8, 303, 311 Sumerians 65-70, 240, 291, 297, 299-300,
Senake Bandavanayak 244-5, 247 311
Shadas 218, 225-6, 231, 236, 238-40 sun-symbol 9-10, 82-4, 91, 96, 98, 103,
Shams-ud-din 201 170-1, 174, 182-5, 233, 235, 243, 246,
shanka 268 256-61, 266-9, 278, 286-7, 291, 303
Shiva 26, 152, 173, 264-5, 267, 269, 271-2, sun-worship 9-10, 12, 29, 67, 70-3, 82,
288-9, 291, 303-4 97-8, 162, 170, 173-4, 193, 197, 257, 296
shivalingam, see lingam Suvadiva, see Gaaf
Siam 157, 261 swastika 98, 185, 266-7, 269, 287, 291, 303
Sigiryia 244
Silow, R. A. 293, 295 Tabriz (Tabrizi) 199-202, 207, 272, 304,
Silva, Roland 17-18, 20, 22, 237, 254-5, 315n
258-60 Takur 86-7
silver 211, 214, 308 Tamil 52, 266-7, 276-8, 303
Sindh 311 Tangiers 198, 200, 272
Singalese 49, 52, 54-5, 57, 79, 86-7, 124, taro 177, 236, 238
152, 180, 195, 206, 208, 244-5, 248-50, Thailand 157, 261
322
Index
Tigris, reed boat 12, 14-15, 66-7, 69-70, 73, Vasco da Gama 94, 157, 198, 212, 214, 310
195, 199, 202, 286, 299 Vijaya, King 248, 250-1, 282
Tigris, river 65-6, 94, 199-200, 309, 311 Vilufushi 146
Tissa, King 264, 266, 274 Viringili, Viligili 28, 97, 142-3, 163, 194-6
Toddu 28, 142, 307-8 Vishnu 268-9, 296
topknot 14, 23 Volga 304
Tree of Life 218
Trivandrum 268, 292 Wahid 163, 183, 189, 191, 194
turtle 79, 84, 89-90, 141; see also stone Worldview _ International Foundation
turtle (WIF) 15-17, 103, 112
writing, see script
Ur 67, 69, 299
Urdu 230, 291 Yakkha 248-55, 259, 273-6
Yemen 93, 105, 209, 211-13
Vadu 142-3, 178-86, 228, 241, 257, 306-7
vagra 270 ziggurat, see pyramid
323
THOR HEYERDAHL
The Maldive Mystery
Thor Heyerdahl investigates the mystery of the early history of the
Maldive islands which lie ‘like twelve hundred tiny dots on the map of the
Indian Ocean’. The islands have been Moslem since AD 1153 and,
officially, all archaeological evidence prior to that date has been ignored.
Heyerdahl’s expedition turns into a fascinating detective story ashe
penetrates the Maldive past, discovering mounds of ‘lost’ temples in the
jungles and sophisticated sculptures indicating strong links with other |
ancient civilizations.
The Maldive Mystery is an exciting, eye-opening book, absorbing inits _
detail and in its broader scheme of ideas. It offers in itself both a voyage of
discovery and a discovery of voyages.
Thor Heyerdahl is the author of several books

including The Kon-Tiki Expedition (with worldwide
J sales of over 20 million), The Ra Expedition and The
Tigris Expedition. Aku-Akzu, his investigation of
Easter Island is published this year in paperback.
SBN 0-04-440194-9
00695
UNWIN PAPERBACKS |
TRAVEL/HISTORY
£6.95 netU.K. 9 "780044"401940

The Maldive Mystery

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Maldive Mystery

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Maldive Mystery

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Ih

WILBERFORCE SIXTH FORM COLLEGE

The Maldive Mystery

© Thor Heyerdahl 1986, 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

Unwin Hyman Limited

Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd

Cover photo: Sebra Film, Sweden

Printed in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

Between pages 192 and 193

Between pages 256 and 257

wings added on each side of the sun, resulting in a design that

Ilay down on the bed in my roomat the little public guest-house

call it gabuli tana, or thana akuru, and it is written from right to

The President was right. The Maldive archipelago may have

from Sri Lanka to see colourful pictures of palms and beaches,

Peru where it represented a characteristic custom of the Incas.

Another bearded man was waiting for us as we landed in

Archaeologists from Sri Lanka would have liked to dig in the

through a shipwreck in 1879. It said in the Preface that he later

of the islands, which would be difficult in any case because of

literate with its own special script. Today a developing nation of

The greatest surprise, however, awaited us behind a closed

ately dressed Oriental dignitary. Aithough of considerable age,

the mighty antiquity of these objects. ‘Buddu’, the guards called

idol temple. Each month, when landing there, he demanded the

leave without searching personally for other traces that might

least the position of the islands could immediately be seen from

tempt the earliest of all navigators to build a temple to the sun.

The Great Mound o

AS OUR PLANE dréned southwards over the archipelago from

The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku

house, but today we were the only guests. A lunch of fresh,

growth with our barefooted pathfinder ahead, and myself, seen

The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku

barely visible under the foundation of the former British house.

We had found nothing, but one observation could be drawn

officers’ mess told us about ruins still standing on another

The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku

community, believed to be more than 90 years old. He staggered

at least four generations of Noah’s own distant descendants.

How real is the isolation of Fua Mulaku is borne out by the

who likewise chanced to pay merely a passing visit to Fua

We were so close to the island that we could hear the thundering

from outdoor kitchen shelters. Most of the huts were white-

around us. I expected them all naturally to be master swimmers.

The owner of the house we had rented, a big husky islander

Whilst the evidence so far available is both quite insufficient,

far from improbable that ... Buddhist Missionaries, in the

The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku

doubt razed to the ground, were probably hidden in this

The Great Mound of Fua Mulaku

The stories of Mahafoti Kalege were reconfirmed as we went

‘This is what Mahafoti Kalege looked like, around stone witha

Redin taneke hedi ihao

Abdul translated with help from those versed in the local

The reference to a possibly hidden statue seemed clear enough,

They also took us inland to a beautiful freshwater lake, some

When the grandfather of our informant had heard this story,

the hawitta when it was dug. The foreman himself confirmed