Imagine opening a nation's official royal ledger,
and you're expecting to find, you know, a dry,
boring list of kings and tax record usual historical
paperwork. Exactly. But instead, you find the
history of ancient prophets written out in bright
red ink sitting right next to this. This chaotic,
beautiful mashup of three completely different
alphabets on a single page. It's just wild to
think about. It really is. I mean, it's not just
a list. It is essentially the operating system
of an entire nation written out by hand. You're
looking at centuries of power, of deep religious
belief and, you know, massive cultural collisions.
And all of it anchored to a piece of paper you
could physically hold in your hand. Yeah. It
functions as like the ultimate time capsule because,
you know, we often think of history is these
massive, sweeping, abstract movements, like empires
rising and falling, or trade routes shifting
over centuries. And arrows on a map. Exactly,
arrows on a map. But the reality is that those
massive historical shifts almost always leave
a physical fingerprint. And when you find one
of those fingerprints, it completely changes
how you understand an entire civilization. And
that is exactly the fingerprint we are examining
today. Welcome to the deep dive. We're so thrilled
you're here with us today. We're focusing on
a truly Fascinating piece of source material.
It's actually a surprisingly brief Wikipedia
page, which is a whole mystery We will definitely
get into later about a historical Maldivian text
called the Radhavai or, depending on the romanization
you prefer, the Rathavali. And on its surface,
a casual observer might just see a text documenting
the lineage of Maldivian monarchs. Right. But
that surface -level reading completely misses
the sheer scale of what this document represents.
Which is why our mission today isn't just to
read you a summary of an old book. We are going
to explore how this one specific fragile artifact
manages to capture the very soul of the Maldives.
It's a huge story. It is. We are talking about
1500 years of linguistic evolution, the incredibly
complex intersection of royal and religious history,
and the way human beings use something as simple
and analog as a pot of ink to tell you exactly
who is important and why. It really stands as
a brilliant case study of how much a single document
can reveal. We aren't just analyzing the words
on the page today, but the physical construction
of the page itself. Okay, let's unpack this.
Let's establish the baseline of what the Redava
actually is, structurally speaking, because our
source material confirms that this is a historical
text chronicling information about Maldivian
monarchs all the way up to the 18th century.
Yeah, it operates fundamentally as a record of
continuous leadership. Right, and I was trying
to conceptualize this, and the best way I can
describe it to you listening right now is that
it's like a nation's ultimate family tree. I
like that analogy. Or maybe a royal ledger. It's
the official, bound, written down proof of who
was in charge, who came before them, and ultimately
why the person currently sitting on the throne
has the absolute right to be there. If we connect
this to the bigger picture, that concept of the
royal ledger is really the beating heart of almost
any historic monarchy anywhere in the world.
Sure. Because you have to ask, why bother tracing
a lineage up to the 18th century? Why commission
scribes to spend countless hours drafting these
really extensive chronicles? It's a massive investment
of time huge and it all boils down to the mechanics
of legitimacy Okay, but let me push back on that
for a second. Yeah, let's think about the reality
of the 18th century Maldives, right? If you're
a king and you commission this massive complex
royal ledger to prove your legitimacy who is
actually reading it That's a great point. Right.
Was the average Maldivian citizen getting a copy
of this delivered to their door? Because, I mean,
if the peasants can't read your legitimacy document,
does it actually keep you on the throne? That
is the perfect question to ask because it totally
reframes what this document is. Yeah. You're
right. This wasn't a newspaper printed for the
masses. The audience for a text like the Radavai
is highly exclusive. It's meant for rival noble
families visiting dignitaries, the state bureaucracy.
And of course, the religious elite. So the inner
circle, basically. Exactly. Because a monarch's
power is always precarious and it's usually threatened
by the people closest to them. You know, cousins,
rival lords, wealthy merchants. So it's an internal
flex. It's a way to tell the other elites, don't
even think about overthrowing me. I have the
receipts. It is state building through text by
anchoring their legacy in permanent written form.
the monarchs are actively constructing a national
identity with themselves securely bolted to the
pinnacle of it. Wow. And even though our source
material today is relatively brief, the mere
existence of the Radovi tells us that Maldivian
leadership was deeply invested in historical
continuity. They were actively curating how they
would be remembered by the people who mattered
most to their survival. They wanted to leave
a permanent, unassailable receipt. Which brings
us to the physical reality of this text, because
if you are going to create the ultimate historical
receipt, it has to look the part. History isn't
just about the data point, it's about the visual
drama of how that data is presented on the page.
Oh, absolutely. The visual curation of information
is... often just as telling as the vocabulary
used. Yeah, and our source gives us this incredibly
vivid description of one specific part of the
manuscript. It references an image identified
as Radhavali C, page two. A very specific page.
Right. And the physical details here are just
amazing to picture. So it was written in early
Thana script using black ink, and it features
old Devehi numerals. But here is the kicker.
Whenever an Arabic name appears on the page,
the scribe explicitly wrote it in red ink. It
creates a jarring yet entirely intentional visual
distinction. I was reading this and I couldn't
help but laugh because essentially we are looking
at a centuries old version of rich text formatting.
That's hilarious, but so true. Right. Think about
when you're typing an email today. It's the historical
equivalent of hitting control B for bold or dragging
your cursor over a word to use a yellow highlighter
so your boss doesn't miss it. Yeah, exactly.
But obviously, doing this in the 18th century
was way more labor intensive. I mean, put yourself
in the shoes of that scribe. Oh, it would be
tedious. Right. You're writing along in black
ink, getting into a rhythm, and then you have
to literally stop, put your pen down, pick up
a different quill, or dip into a totally different
inkwell just to write a specific... name in red
and then switch back, why go through that agonizing
trouble? Well, it is a phenomenal physical detail
that speaks volumes about their worldview. Because
the scribes going through that laborious process
of switching to red ink for Arabic names, that
wasn't to make the page look pretty or decorative.
It is a profound physical sign of reverence.
Wow. Yeah, it's a deliberate act of separating
categories of human experience. Like drawing
a visual boundary line between the sacred and
the everyday. That is the core of it, yes. By
highlighting Arabic names in red, they are visually
pulling the cultural and religious influences
out from the standard black ink Devihi script.
That's incredible. Imagine being a reader in
that era, unrolling or opening that manuscript.
Your eye is instantly drawn to the red ink. before
your brain even processes the phonetic sounds
of the words. Whoa, I see. The color itself tells
you that these specific names carry a different
weight. They carry authority. It's pure visual
coding. You don't even need to be fully literate
to understand that whatever is in red is a big
deal. It really shows us how sophisticated these
historical scribes were. Ed directing attention.
I mean, they weren't just taking dictation. They
were graphic designers of their era, signaling
the supreme importance of the Islamic influence
within the broader Maldivian historical narrative.
OK, so that perfectly sets up the actual content
of that specific page. Because if you let your
eye follow that red ink, you run head first into
a massive thematic shift. You really do. We just
established that the Radhavi is a royal ledger
detailing Maldivian monarchs up to the 18th century.
But then the source reveals what is actually
written on Radhavi C, page two. It introduces
the story of prophethood. Right. The source explicitly
states that this page mentions the story of prophethood,
specifically spanning from prophet Adam to prophet
David. Yeah. And I have to admit, when I first
read that, I was completely thrown off. I was
scratching my head thinking, wait a minute. We
are talking of a family tree for kings in the
Indian Ocean in the 1700s. A very localized document.
Exactly. Why are we suddenly jumping thousands
of years back in time to ancient prophets like
Adam and David? What possible business does a
local island monarch have with the literal dawn
of humanity? What's fascinating here is how elegantly
this thematic jump answers your earlier question
about keeping a king on a throne. Oh, really?
Yeah, this inclusion of prophets isn't a random
tangent. It is a highly calculated historical
pattern utilized by empires all over the world.
I'm trying to picture how that works in practice,
though. How does putting prophet Adam's name
in a book calculate to keeping a Maldivian king
safe from a coup? Royal texts historically do
exactly this. They weave together divine religious
lineage with local monarchal history until the
two are indistinguishable. By placing Maldivian
kings in the exact same physical and textual
space as prophets spanning from Adam to David,
the manuscript bridges cosmic history with local
secular rule. Oh, I see the play here. Yeah.
It's not just a king saying, I am in charge because
my dad was in charge and he had the biggest army.
It's the king saying, I am in charge and my reign
is the modern continuation of a divine story
that started at the beginning of time. Exactly.
It adds an untouchable gravity to the monarchy.
Wow. Think about it. If the ledger of your local
kings is bound in the same book written by the
same hand and color coded with the same reverence
as the history of the prophets, it implicitly
suggests a divine right. Right. It elevates the
whole thing. or, at the very least, a divine
blessing upon the current rulership. It takes
the history of a relatively small archipelago
and elevates it to a cosmic scale. That is just
brilliant masterful branding. It really is. But
to tell a story that The story that tries to
connect the literal dawn of creation with 18th
century island politics. You can't just use any
basic language system. You need a linguistic
tool set that is incredibly complex and deeply
layered. Absolutely. You require a medium of
communication that physically reflects the massive
depth and diversity of that historical timeline.
Which brings us to the linguistic mechanics of
the text and specifically to a British archaeologist
named HCP Bell who is cited in our source material.
A very prominent figure in this field. Right.
Bell was one of the early researchers to really
dig into Maldivian antiquities. And he noted
that the ridave wasn't just written in one straight
language. It was written in a combination of
distinct scripts. Yeah. Dive Zakuru, Olfayana,
and Arabic. Exactly. And our source also references
a 2024 academic paper by a researcher named Jost
Gippert. The title of Gippert's paper is literally...
written artifacts from the Maldives, 1 ,500 years
of mixing languages and scripts. A title that
perfectly encapsulates the staggering time frame
we are dealing with. Here's where it gets really
interesting, because when you look at this text,
with these three different scripts layered and
tangled together on the same page, it's basically
acting like a Rosetta Stone for the Maldives.
That's a great comparison. Right, except the
traditional Rosetta Stone was about translating
one message into three languages so outsiders
could read it. The Radovi is doing the opposite.
It's a reflection of how the insiders, the Maldivians
themselves, absorbed a massive timeline of cultural
blending and made it their own. That is an excellent
way to reframe it. What we were discussing here
is an intense example of the concept of multiscriptism.
Multiscriptism. Okay, let's break that down for
the listener. What does it actually mean to have
multiple scripts functioning together? Well,
multiscriptism is the phenomenon where a single
community, or even a single text, actively utilizes
multiple writing systems simultaneously to communicate.
Wow. So the Radovi isn't just a container for
history. It's very makeup. The physical ink on
paper mixing of Dive Zakuru, Old Tiana, and Arabic
is the history. Because you don't get three completely
distinct scripts mingling on one page by accident.
Far from it. It serves as physical, undeniable
proof of the Maldives' geographical reality.
Right. Their location. We have to remember where
the Maldives is located. Right in the middle
of the Indian Ocean. For 1 ,500 years, it was
an unavoidable crossroads. Everyone came through
there. Exactly. Traders, sailors, scholars, and
empires moving between Africa, Arabia, and Asia
all passed through. and they all left linguistic
fingerprints. So let's talk about what those
fingerprints actually look like because the mechanics
are wild. They really are. You've got Dive Zakuru,
which represents an older indigenous script tradition,
historically reading from left to right. Then
you have Old Thayna, which represents a massive
evolution in the Maldivian writing system. Thayna
is fascinating because it reads right to left,
and it actually incorporated Arabic and local
numerals to form its alphabet. A true hybrid.
Yeah, and then of course you have pure Arabic
script representing the profound religious and
cultural integration of Islam. So just imagine
the mental gymnastics required of the scribe.
I can't even. You are writing in one script.
perhaps moving right to left, then you switch
to an entirely different orthography, perhaps
changing ink colors to invoke an older era or
a sacred name. It's dizzying. To see all of these
combined in one document means that the scribes
and the culture they represented were navigating
all these different global spheres of influence
simultaneously. It's like looking at the geological
layers of a canyon but rendered in ink. That's
beautiful. You can physically see the different
eras of civilizations stacked on top of each
other functioning together to tell one unified
story. And returning to Gippard's specific phrasing,
1 ,500 years of mixing languages and scripts,
it highlights that this wasn't a sudden overnight
change imposed by a conqueror. Right, it wasn't
forced all at once. No, it was a long, slow,
organic synthesis. The Radhavi captures the culmination
of a millennium and a half of people traveling,
trading, believing, and communicating across
the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Which honestly
blows my mind. We are talking about 1 ,500 years
of deep history. Prophets, kings, the physical
labor of red ink and black ink, the mechanical
friction of three different scripts, a literal
cultural crossroads in the middle of the sea.
It is an epic saga. It truly is. And yet, this
brings us to what I think is the most jarring,
almost comedic part of our deep dive today. Let's
move from that grand scale of a millennium and
a half. back to the present day sitting at our
computer screens. Oh, I know where you're going
with this. You are referring to the nature of
the source material itself. I am. The Wikipedia
page for this incredible multi -script centuries
-spanning artifact is officially classified as
a stub. A Wikipedia stub. For those who might
not spend their time editing wikis, a stub is
an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic
coverage of a subject. It's basically a placeholder.
Yeah, essentially a digital placeholder, a polite
cry for help asking for more information. It
is incredibly brief. It relies on just a couple
of niche academic references. There's the 2024
paper by Dippert that we just mentioned and a
1985 work by a researcher named Habiba Hussein
Habib published by the National Center for Linguistic
and Historical Research. And that's pretty much
it. That's all you get on the main page. I want
you, the listener, to think about that for a
second. We live in an age of absolute suffocating
information overload. We really do. You can easily
find a 20 ,000 word wiki page detailing the biography
of every single background character in a fantasy
television show. All the way out of doubt. But
this text, a physical manuscript tracking 18th
century kings, linking them to prophets from
Adam to David, color coded in red and black ink
to denote reverence, representing a 1 ,500 year
linguistic evolution of an entire nation. barely
documented on the world's biggest digital encyclopedia.
This raises an important question though about
the extreme fragility of human knowledge, even
or perhaps especially in the modern era. Fragility?
How so? Because it feels like if it's not on
the internet today it effectively doesn't exist,
which is a terrifying thought. Well that assumption
is the exact danger. We tend to operate under
the collective illusion that in the digital age,
everything is known, everything is digitized,
and everything is instantly accessible via a
search bar. Right. We think we have it all. Exactly.
But the stub status of the right of eye completely
shatters that illusion. It reminds us how much
of the world's history, deep, complex, vital
history, is still locked away. Locked in physical
artifacts sitting in archives or vaults or library
basements? Yeah, waiting to be freely translated,
waiting to be digitized, and most importantly,
waiting to be contextualized for a broader global
audience. Because the knowledge is out there.
The knowledge exists. obviously, in the minds
of specialized scholars and within specific national
archives. We see that in Habib's 1985 work. Yeah.
But it hasn't fully made the leap to the global
digital commons. It hasn't been democratized
yet. It is such a humbling reminder. It makes
you realize that historical research is not a
finished, polished project wrapped up with a
bow. Not at all. It's an active, ongoing, desperate
effort to save things from being forgotten. And
it requires champions. History requires people
to care enough to seek out these niche academic
papers, to learn these complex scripts, to translate
them, and to bring them into the light. That's
a huge undertaking. It is. Physical artifacts
like the radaba have to survive decay, humidity,
and time, but they also have to survive modern
obscurity. So what does this all mean? We started
this journey with a dusty piece of paper holding
the operating system of a nation, and we've traveled
through quite a bit of conceptual territory to
figure out what that really looks like in practice.
We've covered a vast amount of ground based on
a very focused yet profound set of facts. We
looked at the Radhavi as a royal ledger, a political
tool for 18th century Maldivian monarchs to establish
their legitimacy to rival elites. And we explored
the visual masterpiece of Radhavali's seat, page
two. Right. scribes deliberately took on the
labor of switching to red ink just to write Arabic
names, proving that formatting is a centuries
-old way of showing deep cultural reverence.
We saw how those same scribes conceptually linked
the secular local power of island kings to the
divine cosmic lineage of prophets from Adam to
David, creating a unified unassailable narrative
of authority. And we marveled at the linguistic
mechanics. The observation that scripts like
Dive Zakuru, Tha 'ana, and Arabic were all mingling
together on one page. It serves as undeniable
physical evidence of a 1 ,500 -year timeline
of mixing languages at the crossroads of the
Indian Ocean. All of this contained in a historical
artifact that the modern digital world currently
barely acknowledges beyond a stub. It is a remarkable
synthesis of history, geography, language, and
power. And before we go, I want to connect this
directly back to you listening to this right
now. Because it's so easy to think of the scribes
writing the Radhavi as doing something ancient,
academic, and totally disconnected from our daily
lives. But it's really not. No. Think about your
own modern communication. Every time you mix
languages or slang in a text message to a friend,
or you drop in a specific emoji to convey the
exact right tone that words can't capture, or
you bold a specific font in an email to make
sure your point lands. You're doing the same
thing. Exactly. You are doing exactly what they
did. You are partaking in the same deeply human
desire to communicate complex identities, to
establish visual hierarchies, and to make sure
your message is understood exactly how you intended.
We are always trying to find the best script,
the right ink, to tell our specific story to
the world. Which leaves us with the final thought
to mull over. Let's hear it. If historians, centuries
from now, were to find a single document, a single
physical page, or a recovered digital file that
represented your life, or our current cultural
moment, what would it look like? Oh, wow. What
chaotic mix of languages, what visual codes,
what modern version of red ink would tell the
hidden story of our influences? What would be
our Ritavai? That is a brilliant question to
end on, because ultimately, whether we are 18th
century kings or modern people navigating a digital
world, we are all just trying to make sure our
history is remembered as more than just a stub.
Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
dive. It's been a fascinating journey through
the ink, the oceans, and the ages, and we loved
sharing it with you. Take care and keep exploring.