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Has anyone been to the Maldives and if so what do you think? |
Travel Info Has anyone been to the Maldives and if so what do you think? Travel Tips Maldives, officially the Republic of Maldives, is an island nation consisting of a group of atolls in the Indian Ocean, south of Lakshadweep group of islands of India, about 700 kilometers (435 mi) south-west of Sri Lanka. The 26 atolls encompass a territory featuring 1,192 islets, roughly 200 of which are inhabited by people. The country's name may stand for the "Palace" or "Mountain Islands" (from al-Mahal in Arabic, or malai in Malayalam / mala in Tamil, and dvipa in Sanskrit, respectively), or it might mean "a thousand islands." Following the introduction of Islam in 1153, the islands later became a Portuguese (1558), Dutch (1654), and British (1796) colonial possession. In 1965, Maldives declared its independence from Britain, and in 1968 the Sultanate was replaced by a Republic. History Main article: History of Maldives Western interest in the archaeological remains of early cultures on Maldives began with the work of H.C.P. Bell, a British commissioner of the Ceylon Civil Service. Bell was shipwrecked on the islands in 1879, and returned several times to investigate ancient Buddhist ruins. The early inhabitants of Maldives were from present day Kerala and probably spoke an archaic form of Tamil, a Dravidian language [1]. In fact people in the neighbouring Lakshadweep islands speak a form of Malayalam that is an off shoot of archaic Tamil. But by the fourth century A.D., Theravada Buddhism originating from Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka) became the dominant religion of the people of Maldives. Some scholars believe that the name "Maldives" derives from the Sanskrit maladvipa, meaning "garland of islands". In the mid-1980s, the Maldivian government allowed the noted explorer and expert on early marine navigation, Thor Heyerdahl, to excavate ancient sites. Heyerdahl studied the ancient mounds, called hawitta (Dhivehi: 迉蕈迗蕤迖薨迣蕈) by the Maldivians, found on many of the atolls. Some of his archaeological discoveries of stone figures and carvings from pre-Islamic civilizations are today exhibited in a side room of the small National Museum on Mal茅. Heyerdahl's research indicates that as early as 2000 B.C., Maldives lay on the maritime trading routes of early Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Indus Valley civilizations. Heyerdahl believes that early sun-worshipping seafarers, called the Redin, first settled on the islands. This was evident then in many mosques facing the sun and not Mecca, lending credence to this theory. Because building space and materials were scarce, successive cultures constructed their places of worship on the foundations of previous buildings. Heyerdahl thus surmises that these sun-facing mosques were built on the ancient foundations of the Redin culture temples. Heyerdahl's early mosques have now in large part been converted to face Mecca, as Islam gained solidarity in Maldives, in the earlier half of the modern Republic. According to Maldivian legend, a Sinhalese prince named Koimala was stranded with his bride 鈥?daughter of the king of Sri Lanka 鈥?in a Maldivian lagoon and stayed on to rule as the first sultan from the House of Theemuge. Prior to that Mal茅 had belonged a group of people today called as Giravaaru who claim ancestry from ancient Tamils (Tamilas). According to Clarence Maloney, a noted anthropologist, "There is a clear Tamil substratum in the language, which also appears in place names, kin terms, poetry, dance, and religious beliefs. This is actually Tamil-Malayalam, as, up to about the 10th century when the Malayalam language acquired a separate identity, what is now Kerala was considered to be part of the Tamil area. There are numerous references in the Tamil Sangam (1st鈥?rd century) and medieval literature to kings of Kerala having ships, conducting invasions by sea, and ruling the northern part of Sri Lanka. People of Kerala settled the Lakshadvip Islands, and evidently viewed the Maldives as an extension of them. There is a Maldivian epic about Koimala, who is said to have come from Sri Lanka, bringing with him his royal lineage, landing on a northern atoll, and then making Mal茅 his capital. But the name koi is from Malayalam koya, son of the prince, which is also the name of a high caste group in the Lakshadvip Islands. Koimala has now become a generalized eponymous ancestor of the pre-Muslim Divehis. The medieval settlements from Sri Lanka were strongest in the southern islands, and this gave rise to the Divehi language, Buddhism, and the ideals of kinship." Source(s): http://www.answers.com/maldives... Other Travel Tips |
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