WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.779 Imagine opening a nation's official royal ledger, 00:00:04.219 --> 00:00:06.960 and you're expecting to find, you know, a dry, 00:00:07.240 --> 00:00:10.220 boring list of kings and tax record usual historical 00:00:10.220 --> 00:00:13.039 paperwork. Exactly. But instead, you find the 00:00:13.039 --> 00:00:15.599 history of ancient prophets written out in bright 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:19.379 red ink sitting right next to this. This chaotic, 00:00:19.620 --> 00:00:22.300 beautiful mashup of three completely different 00:00:22.300 --> 00:00:25.039 alphabets on a single page. It's just wild to 00:00:25.039 --> 00:00:26.960 think about. It really is. I mean, it's not just 00:00:26.960 --> 00:00:29.579 a list. It is essentially the operating system 00:00:29.579 --> 00:00:32.539 of an entire nation written out by hand. You're 00:00:32.539 --> 00:00:36.000 looking at centuries of power, of deep religious 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:39.460 belief and, you know, massive cultural collisions. 00:00:39.460 --> 00:00:41.560 And all of it anchored to a piece of paper you 00:00:41.560 --> 00:00:43.799 could physically hold in your hand. Yeah. It 00:00:43.799 --> 00:00:46.539 functions as like the ultimate time capsule because, 00:00:46.679 --> 00:00:48.170 you know, we often think of history is these 00:00:48.170 --> 00:00:51.750 massive, sweeping, abstract movements, like empires 00:00:51.750 --> 00:00:53.969 rising and falling, or trade routes shifting 00:00:53.969 --> 00:00:56.310 over centuries. And arrows on a map. Exactly, 00:00:56.469 --> 00:00:59.170 arrows on a map. But the reality is that those 00:00:59.170 --> 00:01:02.869 massive historical shifts almost always leave 00:01:02.869 --> 00:01:04.870 a physical fingerprint. And when you find one 00:01:04.870 --> 00:01:07.790 of those fingerprints, it completely changes 00:01:07.790 --> 00:01:10.329 how you understand an entire civilization. And 00:01:10.329 --> 00:01:12.409 that is exactly the fingerprint we are examining 00:01:12.409 --> 00:01:16.310 today. Welcome to the deep dive. We're so thrilled 00:01:16.310 --> 00:01:18.950 you're here with us today. We're focusing on 00:01:18.950 --> 00:01:22.409 a truly Fascinating piece of source material. 00:01:22.709 --> 00:01:25.409 It's actually a surprisingly brief Wikipedia 00:01:25.409 --> 00:01:27.909 page, which is a whole mystery We will definitely 00:01:27.909 --> 00:01:31.069 get into later about a historical Maldivian text 00:01:31.069 --> 00:01:34.480 called the Radhavai or, depending on the romanization 00:01:34.480 --> 00:01:36.859 you prefer, the Rathavali. And on its surface, 00:01:37.200 --> 00:01:40.359 a casual observer might just see a text documenting 00:01:40.359 --> 00:01:42.959 the lineage of Maldivian monarchs. Right. But 00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:45.079 that surface -level reading completely misses 00:01:45.079 --> 00:01:47.459 the sheer scale of what this document represents. 00:01:47.599 --> 00:01:49.599 Which is why our mission today isn't just to 00:01:49.599 --> 00:01:51.799 read you a summary of an old book. We are going 00:01:51.799 --> 00:01:55.120 to explore how this one specific fragile artifact 00:01:55.120 --> 00:01:58.099 manages to capture the very soul of the Maldives. 00:01:58.260 --> 00:02:00.760 It's a huge story. It is. We are talking about 00:02:00.760 --> 00:02:04.959 1500 years of linguistic evolution, the incredibly 00:02:04.959 --> 00:02:08.680 complex intersection of royal and religious history, 00:02:09.539 --> 00:02:12.539 and the way human beings use something as simple 00:02:12.539 --> 00:02:15.439 and analog as a pot of ink to tell you exactly 00:02:15.439 --> 00:02:17.960 who is important and why. It really stands as 00:02:17.960 --> 00:02:21.139 a brilliant case study of how much a single document 00:02:21.139 --> 00:02:24.000 can reveal. We aren't just analyzing the words 00:02:24.000 --> 00:02:25.860 on the page today, but the physical construction 00:02:25.860 --> 00:02:28.000 of the page itself. Okay, let's unpack this. 00:02:28.419 --> 00:02:31.599 Let's establish the baseline of what the Redava 00:02:31.599 --> 00:02:34.199 actually is, structurally speaking, because our 00:02:34.199 --> 00:02:36.439 source material confirms that this is a historical 00:02:36.439 --> 00:02:39.360 text chronicling information about Maldivian 00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:41.599 monarchs all the way up to the 18th century. 00:02:41.819 --> 00:02:43.780 Yeah, it operates fundamentally as a record of 00:02:43.780 --> 00:02:45.699 continuous leadership. Right, and I was trying 00:02:45.699 --> 00:02:47.439 to conceptualize this, and the best way I can 00:02:47.439 --> 00:02:49.300 describe it to you listening right now is that 00:02:49.300 --> 00:02:51.960 it's like a nation's ultimate family tree. I 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:54.780 like that analogy. Or maybe a royal ledger. It's 00:02:54.780 --> 00:02:57.699 the official, bound, written down proof of who 00:02:57.699 --> 00:02:59.919 was in charge, who came before them, and ultimately 00:02:59.919 --> 00:03:02.120 why the person currently sitting on the throne 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:05.060 has the absolute right to be there. If we connect 00:03:05.060 --> 00:03:07.819 this to the bigger picture, that concept of the 00:03:07.819 --> 00:03:10.539 royal ledger is really the beating heart of almost 00:03:10.539 --> 00:03:12.699 any historic monarchy anywhere in the world. 00:03:12.699 --> 00:03:16.340 Sure. Because you have to ask, why bother tracing 00:03:16.340 --> 00:03:20.680 a lineage up to the 18th century? Why commission 00:03:20.680 --> 00:03:24.639 scribes to spend countless hours drafting these 00:03:24.639 --> 00:03:27.680 really extensive chronicles? It's a massive investment 00:03:27.680 --> 00:03:30.960 of time huge and it all boils down to the mechanics 00:03:30.960 --> 00:03:33.159 of legitimacy Okay, but let me push back on that 00:03:33.159 --> 00:03:35.780 for a second. Yeah, let's think about the reality 00:03:35.780 --> 00:03:39.560 of the 18th century Maldives, right? If you're 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:42.740 a king and you commission this massive complex 00:03:42.740 --> 00:03:45.539 royal ledger to prove your legitimacy who is 00:03:45.539 --> 00:03:47.729 actually reading it That's a great point. Right. 00:03:47.909 --> 00:03:50.789 Was the average Maldivian citizen getting a copy 00:03:50.789 --> 00:03:52.830 of this delivered to their door? Because, I mean, 00:03:52.870 --> 00:03:55.430 if the peasants can't read your legitimacy document, 00:03:55.810 --> 00:03:57.270 does it actually keep you on the throne? That 00:03:57.270 --> 00:03:59.370 is the perfect question to ask because it totally 00:03:59.370 --> 00:04:01.409 reframes what this document is. Yeah. You're 00:04:01.409 --> 00:04:03.129 right. This wasn't a newspaper printed for the 00:04:03.129 --> 00:04:05.729 masses. The audience for a text like the Radavai 00:04:05.729 --> 00:04:08.889 is highly exclusive. It's meant for rival noble 00:04:08.889 --> 00:04:12.530 families visiting dignitaries, the state bureaucracy. 00:04:12.860 --> 00:04:15.759 And of course, the religious elite. So the inner 00:04:15.759 --> 00:04:19.180 circle, basically. Exactly. Because a monarch's 00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:22.160 power is always precarious and it's usually threatened 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:24.600 by the people closest to them. You know, cousins, 00:04:25.100 --> 00:04:28.019 rival lords, wealthy merchants. So it's an internal 00:04:28.019 --> 00:04:31.180 flex. It's a way to tell the other elites, don't 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:33.079 even think about overthrowing me. I have the 00:04:33.079 --> 00:04:36.920 receipts. It is state building through text by 00:04:36.920 --> 00:04:39.560 anchoring their legacy in permanent written form. 00:04:39.800 --> 00:04:42.579 the monarchs are actively constructing a national 00:04:42.579 --> 00:04:45.920 identity with themselves securely bolted to the 00:04:45.920 --> 00:04:47.959 pinnacle of it. Wow. And even though our source 00:04:47.959 --> 00:04:50.259 material today is relatively brief, the mere 00:04:50.259 --> 00:04:52.639 existence of the Radovi tells us that Maldivian 00:04:52.639 --> 00:04:54.779 leadership was deeply invested in historical 00:04:54.779 --> 00:04:57.959 continuity. They were actively curating how they 00:04:57.959 --> 00:04:59.699 would be remembered by the people who mattered 00:04:59.699 --> 00:05:01.759 most to their survival. They wanted to leave 00:05:01.759 --> 00:05:04.740 a permanent, unassailable receipt. Which brings 00:05:04.740 --> 00:05:07.480 us to the physical reality of this text, because 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:09.560 if you are going to create the ultimate historical 00:05:09.560 --> 00:05:12.519 receipt, it has to look the part. History isn't 00:05:12.519 --> 00:05:14.560 just about the data point, it's about the visual 00:05:14.560 --> 00:05:16.779 drama of how that data is presented on the page. 00:05:17.019 --> 00:05:19.160 Oh, absolutely. The visual curation of information 00:05:19.160 --> 00:05:21.779 is... often just as telling as the vocabulary 00:05:21.779 --> 00:05:24.860 used. Yeah, and our source gives us this incredibly 00:05:24.860 --> 00:05:28.279 vivid description of one specific part of the 00:05:28.279 --> 00:05:31.060 manuscript. It references an image identified 00:05:31.060 --> 00:05:34.439 as Radhavali C, page two. A very specific page. 00:05:34.579 --> 00:05:37.480 Right. And the physical details here are just 00:05:37.480 --> 00:05:40.579 amazing to picture. So it was written in early 00:05:40.579 --> 00:05:43.220 Thana script using black ink, and it features 00:05:43.220 --> 00:05:46.339 old Devehi numerals. But here is the kicker. 00:05:46.540 --> 00:05:49.060 Whenever an Arabic name appears on the page, 00:05:49.579 --> 00:05:52.839 the scribe explicitly wrote it in red ink. It 00:05:52.839 --> 00:05:56.199 creates a jarring yet entirely intentional visual 00:05:56.199 --> 00:05:57.779 distinction. I was reading this and I couldn't 00:05:57.779 --> 00:06:00.019 help but laugh because essentially we are looking 00:06:00.019 --> 00:06:03.120 at a centuries old version of rich text formatting. 00:06:03.360 --> 00:06:06.560 That's hilarious, but so true. Right. Think about 00:06:06.560 --> 00:06:09.410 when you're typing an email today. It's the historical 00:06:09.410 --> 00:06:13.490 equivalent of hitting control B for bold or dragging 00:06:13.490 --> 00:06:16.329 your cursor over a word to use a yellow highlighter 00:06:16.329 --> 00:06:18.110 so your boss doesn't miss it. Yeah, exactly. 00:06:18.269 --> 00:06:20.509 But obviously, doing this in the 18th century 00:06:20.509 --> 00:06:23.470 was way more labor intensive. I mean, put yourself 00:06:23.470 --> 00:06:25.389 in the shoes of that scribe. Oh, it would be 00:06:25.389 --> 00:06:28.129 tedious. Right. You're writing along in black 00:06:28.129 --> 00:06:30.230 ink, getting into a rhythm, and then you have 00:06:30.230 --> 00:06:33.550 to literally stop, put your pen down, pick up 00:06:33.550 --> 00:06:36.149 a different quill, or dip into a totally different 00:06:36.149 --> 00:06:38.370 inkwell just to write a specific... name in red 00:06:38.370 --> 00:06:42.050 and then switch back, why go through that agonizing 00:06:42.050 --> 00:06:45.170 trouble? Well, it is a phenomenal physical detail 00:06:45.170 --> 00:06:49.129 that speaks volumes about their worldview. Because 00:06:49.129 --> 00:06:51.370 the scribes going through that laborious process 00:06:51.370 --> 00:06:54.329 of switching to red ink for Arabic names, that 00:06:54.329 --> 00:06:57.129 wasn't to make the page look pretty or decorative. 00:06:57.850 --> 00:07:00.209 It is a profound physical sign of reverence. 00:07:00.209 --> 00:07:02.290 Wow. Yeah, it's a deliberate act of separating 00:07:02.290 --> 00:07:04.170 categories of human experience. Like drawing 00:07:04.170 --> 00:07:06.110 a visual boundary line between the sacred and 00:07:06.110 --> 00:07:09.050 the everyday. That is the core of it, yes. By 00:07:09.050 --> 00:07:11.930 highlighting Arabic names in red, they are visually 00:07:11.930 --> 00:07:14.189 pulling the cultural and religious influences 00:07:14.189 --> 00:07:17.529 out from the standard black ink Devihi script. 00:07:17.709 --> 00:07:19.970 That's incredible. Imagine being a reader in 00:07:19.970 --> 00:07:22.430 that era, unrolling or opening that manuscript. 00:07:22.769 --> 00:07:25.879 Your eye is instantly drawn to the red ink. before 00:07:25.879 --> 00:07:28.240 your brain even processes the phonetic sounds 00:07:28.240 --> 00:07:31.480 of the words. Whoa, I see. The color itself tells 00:07:31.480 --> 00:07:33.540 you that these specific names carry a different 00:07:33.540 --> 00:07:36.319 weight. They carry authority. It's pure visual 00:07:36.319 --> 00:07:38.839 coding. You don't even need to be fully literate 00:07:38.839 --> 00:07:41.060 to understand that whatever is in red is a big 00:07:41.060 --> 00:07:43.639 deal. It really shows us how sophisticated these 00:07:43.639 --> 00:07:46.500 historical scribes were. Ed directing attention. 00:07:46.920 --> 00:07:49.000 I mean, they weren't just taking dictation. They 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:51.600 were graphic designers of their era, signaling 00:07:51.600 --> 00:07:54.180 the supreme importance of the Islamic influence 00:07:54.180 --> 00:07:56.480 within the broader Maldivian historical narrative. 00:07:56.899 --> 00:07:59.480 OK, so that perfectly sets up the actual content 00:07:59.480 --> 00:08:01.959 of that specific page. Because if you let your 00:08:01.959 --> 00:08:04.519 eye follow that red ink, you run head first into 00:08:04.519 --> 00:08:07.629 a massive thematic shift. You really do. We just 00:08:07.629 --> 00:08:09.970 established that the Radhavi is a royal ledger 00:08:09.970 --> 00:08:12.649 detailing Maldivian monarchs up to the 18th century. 00:08:13.230 --> 00:08:15.269 But then the source reveals what is actually 00:08:15.269 --> 00:08:18.230 written on Radhavi C, page two. It introduces 00:08:18.230 --> 00:08:21.629 the story of prophethood. Right. The source explicitly 00:08:21.629 --> 00:08:24.430 states that this page mentions the story of prophethood, 00:08:24.889 --> 00:08:27.649 specifically spanning from prophet Adam to prophet 00:08:27.649 --> 00:08:30.449 David. Yeah. And I have to admit, when I first 00:08:30.449 --> 00:08:32.450 read that, I was completely thrown off. I was 00:08:32.450 --> 00:08:34.830 scratching my head thinking, wait a minute. We 00:08:34.830 --> 00:08:37.070 are talking of a family tree for kings in the 00:08:37.070 --> 00:08:40.350 Indian Ocean in the 1700s. A very localized document. 00:08:40.629 --> 00:08:43.129 Exactly. Why are we suddenly jumping thousands 00:08:43.129 --> 00:08:45.629 of years back in time to ancient prophets like 00:08:45.629 --> 00:08:48.769 Adam and David? What possible business does a 00:08:48.769 --> 00:08:51.909 local island monarch have with the literal dawn 00:08:51.909 --> 00:08:54.970 of humanity? What's fascinating here is how elegantly 00:08:54.970 --> 00:08:57.950 this thematic jump answers your earlier question 00:08:57.950 --> 00:09:00.210 about keeping a king on a throne. Oh, really? 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:02.700 Yeah, this inclusion of prophets isn't a random 00:09:02.700 --> 00:09:05.759 tangent. It is a highly calculated historical 00:09:05.759 --> 00:09:08.620 pattern utilized by empires all over the world. 00:09:08.940 --> 00:09:10.840 I'm trying to picture how that works in practice, 00:09:11.080 --> 00:09:13.419 though. How does putting prophet Adam's name 00:09:13.419 --> 00:09:16.419 in a book calculate to keeping a Maldivian king 00:09:16.419 --> 00:09:20.559 safe from a coup? Royal texts historically do 00:09:20.559 --> 00:09:24.000 exactly this. They weave together divine religious 00:09:24.000 --> 00:09:27.740 lineage with local monarchal history until the 00:09:27.740 --> 00:09:30.899 two are indistinguishable. By placing Maldivian 00:09:30.899 --> 00:09:33.840 kings in the exact same physical and textual 00:09:33.840 --> 00:09:36.480 space as prophets spanning from Adam to David, 00:09:37.179 --> 00:09:40.840 the manuscript bridges cosmic history with local 00:09:40.840 --> 00:09:43.200 secular rule. Oh, I see the play here. Yeah. 00:09:43.320 --> 00:09:46.000 It's not just a king saying, I am in charge because 00:09:46.000 --> 00:09:48.139 my dad was in charge and he had the biggest army. 00:09:48.279 --> 00:09:50.679 It's the king saying, I am in charge and my reign 00:09:50.679 --> 00:09:53.080 is the modern continuation of a divine story 00:09:53.080 --> 00:09:55.580 that started at the beginning of time. Exactly. 00:09:55.820 --> 00:09:58.100 It adds an untouchable gravity to the monarchy. 00:09:58.279 --> 00:10:00.919 Wow. Think about it. If the ledger of your local 00:10:00.919 --> 00:10:03.340 kings is bound in the same book written by the 00:10:03.340 --> 00:10:06.000 same hand and color coded with the same reverence 00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:08.639 as the history of the prophets, it implicitly 00:10:08.639 --> 00:10:10.700 suggests a divine right. Right. It elevates the 00:10:10.700 --> 00:10:13.629 whole thing. or, at the very least, a divine 00:10:13.629 --> 00:10:16.289 blessing upon the current rulership. It takes 00:10:16.289 --> 00:10:18.509 the history of a relatively small archipelago 00:10:18.509 --> 00:10:21.850 and elevates it to a cosmic scale. That is just 00:10:21.850 --> 00:10:24.470 brilliant masterful branding. It really is. But 00:10:24.470 --> 00:10:27.549 to tell a story that The story that tries to 00:10:27.549 --> 00:10:30.149 connect the literal dawn of creation with 18th 00:10:30.149 --> 00:10:33.549 century island politics. You can't just use any 00:10:33.549 --> 00:10:35.710 basic language system. You need a linguistic 00:10:35.710 --> 00:10:38.389 tool set that is incredibly complex and deeply 00:10:38.389 --> 00:10:41.409 layered. Absolutely. You require a medium of 00:10:41.409 --> 00:10:43.929 communication that physically reflects the massive 00:10:43.929 --> 00:10:46.450 depth and diversity of that historical timeline. 00:10:46.629 --> 00:10:48.629 Which brings us to the linguistic mechanics of 00:10:48.629 --> 00:10:52.049 the text and specifically to a British archaeologist 00:10:52.049 --> 00:10:55.250 named HCP Bell who is cited in our source material. 00:10:55.120 --> 00:10:57.320 A very prominent figure in this field. Right. 00:10:57.899 --> 00:11:00.220 Bell was one of the early researchers to really 00:11:00.220 --> 00:11:02.840 dig into Maldivian antiquities. And he noted 00:11:02.840 --> 00:11:05.299 that the ridave wasn't just written in one straight 00:11:05.299 --> 00:11:07.440 language. It was written in a combination of 00:11:07.440 --> 00:11:10.759 distinct scripts. Yeah. Dive Zakuru, Olfayana, 00:11:11.000 --> 00:11:14.700 and Arabic. Exactly. And our source also references 00:11:14.700 --> 00:11:18.320 a 2024 academic paper by a researcher named Jost 00:11:18.320 --> 00:11:22.000 Gippert. The title of Gippert's paper is literally... 00:11:21.870 --> 00:11:25.830 written artifacts from the Maldives, 1 ,500 years 00:11:25.830 --> 00:11:29.110 of mixing languages and scripts. A title that 00:11:29.110 --> 00:11:31.529 perfectly encapsulates the staggering time frame 00:11:31.529 --> 00:11:33.690 we are dealing with. Here's where it gets really 00:11:33.690 --> 00:11:35.909 interesting, because when you look at this text, 00:11:36.169 --> 00:11:38.110 with these three different scripts layered and 00:11:38.110 --> 00:11:40.950 tangled together on the same page, it's basically 00:11:40.950 --> 00:11:43.269 acting like a Rosetta Stone for the Maldives. 00:11:43.409 --> 00:11:45.549 That's a great comparison. Right, except the 00:11:45.549 --> 00:11:47.789 traditional Rosetta Stone was about translating 00:11:47.789 --> 00:11:50.350 one message into three languages so outsiders 00:11:50.350 --> 00:11:53.389 could read it. The Radovi is doing the opposite. 00:11:53.990 --> 00:11:56.889 It's a reflection of how the insiders, the Maldivians 00:11:56.889 --> 00:11:59.830 themselves, absorbed a massive timeline of cultural 00:11:59.830 --> 00:12:02.549 blending and made it their own. That is an excellent 00:12:02.549 --> 00:12:04.570 way to reframe it. What we were discussing here 00:12:04.570 --> 00:12:07.870 is an intense example of the concept of multiscriptism. 00:12:08.309 --> 00:12:10.049 Multiscriptism. Okay, let's break that down for 00:12:10.049 --> 00:12:11.870 the listener. What does it actually mean to have 00:12:11.870 --> 00:12:14.190 multiple scripts functioning together? Well, 00:12:14.610 --> 00:12:17.139 multiscriptism is the phenomenon where a single 00:12:17.139 --> 00:12:20.759 community, or even a single text, actively utilizes 00:12:20.759 --> 00:12:23.759 multiple writing systems simultaneously to communicate. 00:12:24.259 --> 00:12:27.019 Wow. So the Radovi isn't just a container for 00:12:27.019 --> 00:12:31.399 history. It's very makeup. The physical ink on 00:12:31.399 --> 00:12:35.600 paper mixing of Dive Zakuru, Old Tiana, and Arabic 00:12:35.600 --> 00:12:39.059 is the history. Because you don't get three completely 00:12:39.059 --> 00:12:41.980 distinct scripts mingling on one page by accident. 00:12:42.059 --> 00:12:44.799 Far from it. It serves as physical, undeniable 00:12:44.799 --> 00:12:47.440 proof of the Maldives' geographical reality. 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:49.559 Right. Their location. We have to remember where 00:12:49.559 --> 00:12:51.600 the Maldives is located. Right in the middle 00:12:51.600 --> 00:12:54.600 of the Indian Ocean. For 1 ,500 years, it was 00:12:54.600 --> 00:12:56.799 an unavoidable crossroads. Everyone came through 00:12:56.799 --> 00:12:59.799 there. Exactly. Traders, sailors, scholars, and 00:12:59.799 --> 00:13:02.159 empires moving between Africa, Arabia, and Asia 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:04.720 all passed through. and they all left linguistic 00:13:04.720 --> 00:13:06.539 fingerprints. So let's talk about what those 00:13:06.539 --> 00:13:08.500 fingerprints actually look like because the mechanics 00:13:08.500 --> 00:13:11.240 are wild. They really are. You've got Dive Zakuru, 00:13:11.340 --> 00:13:14.139 which represents an older indigenous script tradition, 00:13:14.440 --> 00:13:16.440 historically reading from left to right. Then 00:13:16.440 --> 00:13:19.580 you have Old Thayna, which represents a massive 00:13:19.580 --> 00:13:22.700 evolution in the Maldivian writing system. Thayna 00:13:22.700 --> 00:13:24.860 is fascinating because it reads right to left, 00:13:25.059 --> 00:13:27.580 and it actually incorporated Arabic and local 00:13:27.580 --> 00:13:30.500 numerals to form its alphabet. A true hybrid. 00:13:30.740 --> 00:13:34.169 Yeah, and then of course you have pure Arabic 00:13:34.169 --> 00:13:37.210 script representing the profound religious and 00:13:37.210 --> 00:13:39.970 cultural integration of Islam. So just imagine 00:13:39.970 --> 00:13:42.230 the mental gymnastics required of the scribe. 00:13:42.230 --> 00:13:44.929 I can't even. You are writing in one script. 00:13:45.039 --> 00:13:47.120 perhaps moving right to left, then you switch 00:13:47.120 --> 00:13:49.460 to an entirely different orthography, perhaps 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:52.799 changing ink colors to invoke an older era or 00:13:52.799 --> 00:13:55.639 a sacred name. It's dizzying. To see all of these 00:13:55.639 --> 00:13:58.740 combined in one document means that the scribes 00:13:58.740 --> 00:14:00.700 and the culture they represented were navigating 00:14:00.700 --> 00:14:02.860 all these different global spheres of influence 00:14:02.860 --> 00:14:05.500 simultaneously. It's like looking at the geological 00:14:05.500 --> 00:14:08.179 layers of a canyon but rendered in ink. That's 00:14:08.179 --> 00:14:10.320 beautiful. You can physically see the different 00:14:10.320 --> 00:14:12.440 eras of civilizations stacked on top of each 00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:14.840 other functioning together to tell one unified 00:14:14.840 --> 00:14:18.559 story. And returning to Gippard's specific phrasing, 00:14:18.899 --> 00:14:21.419 1 ,500 years of mixing languages and scripts, 00:14:21.840 --> 00:14:24.419 it highlights that this wasn't a sudden overnight 00:14:24.419 --> 00:14:26.980 change imposed by a conqueror. Right, it wasn't 00:14:26.980 --> 00:14:29.879 forced all at once. No, it was a long, slow, 00:14:30.039 --> 00:14:33.720 organic synthesis. The Radhavi captures the culmination 00:14:33.720 --> 00:14:36.279 of a millennium and a half of people traveling, 00:14:36.620 --> 00:14:39.279 trading, believing, and communicating across 00:14:39.279 --> 00:14:41.639 the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Which honestly 00:14:41.639 --> 00:14:45.120 blows my mind. We are talking about 1 ,500 years 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:48.580 of deep history. Prophets, kings, the physical 00:14:48.580 --> 00:14:51.120 labor of red ink and black ink, the mechanical 00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:53.779 friction of three different scripts, a literal 00:14:53.779 --> 00:14:56.120 cultural crossroads in the middle of the sea. 00:14:56.440 --> 00:14:59.480 It is an epic saga. It truly is. And yet, this 00:14:59.480 --> 00:15:01.460 brings us to what I think is the most jarring, 00:15:01.539 --> 00:15:04.559 almost comedic part of our deep dive today. Let's 00:15:04.559 --> 00:15:06.539 move from that grand scale of a millennium and 00:15:06.539 --> 00:15:09.159 a half. back to the present day sitting at our 00:15:09.159 --> 00:15:10.720 computer screens. Oh, I know where you're going 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:12.740 with this. You are referring to the nature of 00:15:12.740 --> 00:15:15.299 the source material itself. I am. The Wikipedia 00:15:15.299 --> 00:15:18.519 page for this incredible multi -script centuries 00:15:18.519 --> 00:15:21.179 -spanning artifact is officially classified as 00:15:21.179 --> 00:15:24.519 a stub. A Wikipedia stub. For those who might 00:15:24.519 --> 00:15:27.360 not spend their time editing wikis, a stub is 00:15:27.360 --> 00:15:30.340 an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic 00:15:30.340 --> 00:15:33.110 coverage of a subject. It's basically a placeholder. 00:15:33.370 --> 00:15:35.809 Yeah, essentially a digital placeholder, a polite 00:15:35.809 --> 00:15:38.169 cry for help asking for more information. It 00:15:38.169 --> 00:15:41.330 is incredibly brief. It relies on just a couple 00:15:41.330 --> 00:15:44.950 of niche academic references. There's the 2024 00:15:44.950 --> 00:15:48.090 paper by Dippert that we just mentioned and a 00:15:48.090 --> 00:15:51.269 1985 work by a researcher named Habiba Hussein 00:15:51.269 --> 00:15:54.129 Habib published by the National Center for Linguistic 00:15:54.129 --> 00:15:56.250 and Historical Research. And that's pretty much 00:15:56.250 --> 00:15:58.610 it. That's all you get on the main page. I want 00:15:58.610 --> 00:16:00.450 you, the listener, to think about that for a 00:16:00.450 --> 00:16:03.899 second. We live in an age of absolute suffocating 00:16:03.899 --> 00:16:06.700 information overload. We really do. You can easily 00:16:06.700 --> 00:16:10.159 find a 20 ,000 word wiki page detailing the biography 00:16:10.159 --> 00:16:12.840 of every single background character in a fantasy 00:16:12.840 --> 00:16:14.759 television show. All the way out of doubt. But 00:16:14.759 --> 00:16:18.600 this text, a physical manuscript tracking 18th 00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:20.840 century kings, linking them to prophets from 00:16:20.840 --> 00:16:23.759 Adam to David, color coded in red and black ink 00:16:23.759 --> 00:16:27.019 to denote reverence, representing a 1 ,500 year 00:16:27.019 --> 00:16:30.529 linguistic evolution of an entire nation. barely 00:16:30.529 --> 00:16:33.250 documented on the world's biggest digital encyclopedia. 00:16:33.629 --> 00:16:36.429 This raises an important question though about 00:16:36.429 --> 00:16:39.470 the extreme fragility of human knowledge, even 00:16:39.470 --> 00:16:42.450 or perhaps especially in the modern era. Fragility? 00:16:42.590 --> 00:16:44.830 How so? Because it feels like if it's not on 00:16:44.830 --> 00:16:47.070 the internet today it effectively doesn't exist, 00:16:47.230 --> 00:16:49.210 which is a terrifying thought. Well that assumption 00:16:49.210 --> 00:16:52.210 is the exact danger. We tend to operate under 00:16:52.210 --> 00:16:54.769 the collective illusion that in the digital age, 00:16:55.169 --> 00:16:56.789 everything is known, everything is digitized, 00:16:56.889 --> 00:16:59.269 and everything is instantly accessible via a 00:16:59.269 --> 00:17:02.090 search bar. Right. We think we have it all. Exactly. 00:17:02.690 --> 00:17:05.089 But the stub status of the right of eye completely 00:17:05.089 --> 00:17:07.829 shatters that illusion. It reminds us how much 00:17:07.829 --> 00:17:10.789 of the world's history, deep, complex, vital 00:17:10.789 --> 00:17:13.670 history, is still locked away. Locked in physical 00:17:13.670 --> 00:17:16.390 artifacts sitting in archives or vaults or library 00:17:16.390 --> 00:17:19.390 basements? Yeah, waiting to be freely translated, 00:17:19.849 --> 00:17:22.250 waiting to be digitized, and most importantly, 00:17:22.650 --> 00:17:25.569 waiting to be contextualized for a broader global 00:17:25.569 --> 00:17:27.549 audience. Because the knowledge is out there. 00:17:27.849 --> 00:17:30.200 The knowledge exists. obviously, in the minds 00:17:30.200 --> 00:17:33.400 of specialized scholars and within specific national 00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:36.880 archives. We see that in Habib's 1985 work. Yeah. 00:17:37.099 --> 00:17:39.940 But it hasn't fully made the leap to the global 00:17:39.940 --> 00:17:42.400 digital commons. It hasn't been democratized 00:17:42.400 --> 00:17:45.480 yet. It is such a humbling reminder. It makes 00:17:45.480 --> 00:17:48.339 you realize that historical research is not a 00:17:48.339 --> 00:17:50.660 finished, polished project wrapped up with a 00:17:50.660 --> 00:17:53.700 bow. Not at all. It's an active, ongoing, desperate 00:17:53.700 --> 00:17:56.180 effort to save things from being forgotten. And 00:17:56.180 --> 00:17:59.099 it requires champions. History requires people 00:17:59.099 --> 00:18:01.539 to care enough to seek out these niche academic 00:18:01.539 --> 00:18:04.559 papers, to learn these complex scripts, to translate 00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:06.539 them, and to bring them into the light. That's 00:18:06.539 --> 00:18:09.200 a huge undertaking. It is. Physical artifacts 00:18:09.200 --> 00:18:11.960 like the radaba have to survive decay, humidity, 00:18:12.079 --> 00:18:14.819 and time, but they also have to survive modern 00:18:14.819 --> 00:18:17.720 obscurity. So what does this all mean? We started 00:18:17.720 --> 00:18:20.000 this journey with a dusty piece of paper holding 00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:22.779 the operating system of a nation, and we've traveled 00:18:22.779 --> 00:18:24.920 through quite a bit of conceptual territory to 00:18:24.920 --> 00:18:27.059 figure out what that really looks like in practice. 00:18:27.220 --> 00:18:29.259 We've covered a vast amount of ground based on 00:18:29.259 --> 00:18:33.880 a very focused yet profound set of facts. We 00:18:33.880 --> 00:18:37.240 looked at the Radhavi as a royal ledger, a political 00:18:37.240 --> 00:18:40.240 tool for 18th century Maldivian monarchs to establish 00:18:40.240 --> 00:18:42.920 their legitimacy to rival elites. And we explored 00:18:42.920 --> 00:18:45.559 the visual masterpiece of Radhavali's seat, page 00:18:45.559 --> 00:18:48.329 two. Right. scribes deliberately took on the 00:18:48.329 --> 00:18:50.829 labor of switching to red ink just to write Arabic 00:18:50.829 --> 00:18:53.549 names, proving that formatting is a centuries 00:18:53.549 --> 00:18:56.069 -old way of showing deep cultural reverence. 00:18:56.490 --> 00:18:59.210 We saw how those same scribes conceptually linked 00:18:59.210 --> 00:19:02.509 the secular local power of island kings to the 00:19:02.509 --> 00:19:05.490 divine cosmic lineage of prophets from Adam to 00:19:05.490 --> 00:19:08.430 David, creating a unified unassailable narrative 00:19:08.430 --> 00:19:10.779 of authority. And we marveled at the linguistic 00:19:10.779 --> 00:19:13.359 mechanics. The observation that scripts like 00:19:13.359 --> 00:19:16.660 Dive Zakuru, Tha 'ana, and Arabic were all mingling 00:19:16.660 --> 00:19:20.039 together on one page. It serves as undeniable 00:19:20.039 --> 00:19:23.759 physical evidence of a 1 ,500 -year timeline 00:19:23.759 --> 00:19:27.019 of mixing languages at the crossroads of the 00:19:27.019 --> 00:19:30.319 Indian Ocean. All of this contained in a historical 00:19:30.319 --> 00:19:33.000 artifact that the modern digital world currently 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:36.339 barely acknowledges beyond a stub. It is a remarkable 00:19:36.339 --> 00:19:39.769 synthesis of history, geography, language, and 00:19:39.769 --> 00:19:42.369 power. And before we go, I want to connect this 00:19:42.369 --> 00:19:44.349 directly back to you listening to this right 00:19:44.349 --> 00:19:47.349 now. Because it's so easy to think of the scribes 00:19:47.349 --> 00:19:50.309 writing the Radhavi as doing something ancient, 00:19:50.650 --> 00:19:53.230 academic, and totally disconnected from our daily 00:19:53.230 --> 00:19:55.789 lives. But it's really not. No. Think about your 00:19:55.789 --> 00:19:58.420 own modern communication. Every time you mix 00:19:58.420 --> 00:20:01.019 languages or slang in a text message to a friend, 00:20:01.220 --> 00:20:03.740 or you drop in a specific emoji to convey the 00:20:03.740 --> 00:20:06.259 exact right tone that words can't capture, or 00:20:06.259 --> 00:20:08.700 you bold a specific font in an email to make 00:20:08.700 --> 00:20:10.680 sure your point lands. You're doing the same 00:20:10.680 --> 00:20:12.880 thing. Exactly. You are doing exactly what they 00:20:12.880 --> 00:20:15.460 did. You are partaking in the same deeply human 00:20:15.460 --> 00:20:18.259 desire to communicate complex identities, to 00:20:18.259 --> 00:20:20.819 establish visual hierarchies, and to make sure 00:20:20.819 --> 00:20:23.539 your message is understood exactly how you intended. 00:20:23.819 --> 00:20:26.720 We are always trying to find the best script, 00:20:26.960 --> 00:20:29.700 the right ink, to tell our specific story to 00:20:29.700 --> 00:20:32.960 the world. Which leaves us with the final thought 00:20:32.960 --> 00:20:36.099 to mull over. Let's hear it. If historians, centuries 00:20:36.099 --> 00:20:40.019 from now, were to find a single document, a single 00:20:40.019 --> 00:20:42.819 physical page, or a recovered digital file that 00:20:42.819 --> 00:20:45.519 represented your life, or our current cultural 00:20:45.519 --> 00:20:49.289 moment, what would it look like? Oh, wow. What 00:20:49.289 --> 00:20:52.269 chaotic mix of languages, what visual codes, 00:20:52.410 --> 00:20:54.730 what modern version of red ink would tell the 00:20:54.730 --> 00:20:57.230 hidden story of our influences? What would be 00:20:57.230 --> 00:20:59.730 our Ritavai? That is a brilliant question to 00:20:59.730 --> 00:21:02.150 end on, because ultimately, whether we are 18th 00:21:02.150 --> 00:21:04.789 century kings or modern people navigating a digital 00:21:04.789 --> 00:21:06.630 world, we are all just trying to make sure our 00:21:06.630 --> 00:21:08.750 history is remembered as more than just a stub. 00:21:09.309 --> 00:21:10.990 Thank you so much for joining us on this deep 00:21:10.990 --> 00:21:12.710 dive. It's been a fascinating journey through 00:21:12.710 --> 00:21:14.829 the ink, the oceans, and the ages, and we loved 00:21:14.829 --> 00:21:17.750 sharing it with you. Take care and keep exploring.