Culture of the Maldives
The culture of the Maldives is derived from a number of sources, the most important of which is its proximity to the shores of Sri Lanka and South India.
The Dhivehi language is of Indo-Iranian Sanskritic origin and therefore closely related to Sinhala, which points at a later influence from the north of the subcontinent.
Since the 12th century AD, there have also been influences from Arabia in the language and culture of the Maldives, because of the general conversion to Islam at that time, and its location as a crossroads in the central Indian Ocean.
In the islands' culture, there are a few elements of African origin as well, from slaves brought to the court by the Royal family and nobles from their Hajj journeys to Arabia in the past.
In the early history of Maldives, it was not uncommon to have a woman as a Sultana or ruler and it has been suggested that Maldivian society was once a matriarchy.
A unique feature of Maldivian society is a very high divorce rate, which has been attributed by some as due to early marriage.
Others have seen this extremely high divorce rate as reflecting the combination of liberal Islamic rules about divorce and the relatively loose marital bonds that may be produced by the lack of a history of fully developed agriculture and the accompanying codes of agrarian honor and property relations.
[3] Polygamy is also specifically covered by a 2001 Maldivian law, which orders courts to assess a man's finances before letting him take another wife.
[9] In addition to this, people in the Maldives eat roshi (flatbread) with Kulhi mas (fresh tuna cooked with chili and spices), Mas huni (canned tuna, onion, grated coconut, lime juice and chili), Rihaakuru (tuna-based thick sauce) and different types of curry.
Even though some of the Maldivian myths were already mentioned briefly by British commissioner in Ceylon HCP Bell towards the end of the 19th century,[10] their study and publication were carried out only quite recently by Spanish writer and artist Xavier Romero-Frias, at a time when that ancestral worldview was quickly disappearing.
