Merina of the Madagascar Highlands and the Turning of the Bones

High on the central plateau of Madagascar, the great island off the southeast coast of Africa, live the Merina, the people who built the kingdom that came to rule the whole of that vast land. Theirs is a story like no other on the continent, for their ancestors crossed the Indian Ocean from distant Southeast Asia more than a thousand years ago, carrying rice and a far-off tongue to a new island home, where they mingled with African and Arab peoples to become the Malagasy.

This account follows the Merina from their ocean-crossing origins and their settling of the highland realm of Imerina, through their kings and their rigid ranks, their reverence for the ancestors, and the silk, the rice, and the rites of the tomb that mark them, to the rise and fall of their kingdom and the coming of French rule. It ends with the Merina of today, a prominent people of modern Madagascar, keeping the old bond with the razana alive.

The People of the Highland Kingdom
Merina, Ambaniandro, and the Name of the Highlanders
Malagasy, the Tongue from Across the Ocean
The High Plateau of Imerina
Andrianampoinimerina, the Andriana, and the Kingdom
Rank, the Family, and the Bonds of the Razana
The Razana, Andriamanitra, and the Cult of the Ancestors
The Famadihana, the Tomb, and the Turning of the Dead
The Weavers of Silk and the Makers of the Lamba
Rice, the Grain of Life, and the Table of the Highlands
The New Year, the Circumcision, and the Great Rites
From Andrianampoinimerina to the Fall of the Kingdom
The Merina in Modern Madagascar

The People of the Highland Kingdom

High on the central plateau of Madagascar, the great island off the southeast coast of Africa, live the Merina, the people who built the kingdom that came to rule the whole of that vast land. Theirs is a story unlike any other in Africa, for the Malagasy people are not of African stock alone but spring in large part from seafarers who crossed the Indian Ocean from distant Southeast Asia, more than a thousand years ago.

The ancestors of the Merina and their fellow Malagasy came, the evidence of language and of blood alike suggests, from the islands of what is now Indonesia, sailing across the open ocean in outrigger canoes to reach an empty island far to the west. Over the centuries they mingled with African and Arab peoples who also came to the island, so that the Malagasy are a blend of Asian and African roots, plain in their faces and their ways.

The Merina settled the cool high plateau in the centre of the island, a region they called Imerina, the land of the Merina, where the climate recalled the highlands of their distant homeland and where rice could be grown in flooded terraces. There they raised their towns and, in time, built a kingdom that would spread its power outward until it claimed nearly the whole of Madagascar.

To speak of the Merina, then, is to speak of a people who are African by geography and yet Asian in much of their origin, who carried the rice and the customs of a far ocean to a new land and there built a mighty state. As the last of the great peoples of Africa in this account, they stand as a reminder of how far the human story reaches, binding the island to lands beyond the sea.

Merina, Ambaniandro, and the Name of the Highlanders

The name Merina is thought to mean something like those of the high country or those raised up, a fitting title for a people whose home lies on the elevated heart of the island. It came to stand for the inhabitants of Imerina, the central highland realm, and for the kingdom that grew from it, and by that name the people are known to this day.

An older name for the Merina is Hova, though this word is used in more than one sense. Among the Merina themselves Hova came to mean the class of free commoners, set apart from the noble andriana above them and the servile class below. To outsiders, however, Hova often meant the whole Merina people, and in the colonial age it was used loosely for the highland rulers of the island.

The Merina also called themselves, in a poetic phrase, the Ambaniandro, those who dwell beneath the day, or beneath the sun, a name expressing their sense of themselves as a people living under the light of heaven. Such phrases show the love of image and of dignified speech that runs through the Malagasy tongue and through the ceremonies of the highland court.

The wider name Malagasy covers all the peoples of the island, of whom the Merina are but one, though for a time the most powerful. Yet because the Merina kingdom came to rule the whole of Madagascar, and because its language became the basis of the national tongue, the name and the ways of the Merina spread their influence far beyond the highland home in which they began.

Malagasy, the Tongue from Across the Ocean

The Merina speak Malagasy, and here lies one of the great wonders of their story, for Malagasy is not an African language at all in its origin but an Austronesian one, kin to the tongues of Indonesia, the Philippines, and the far Pacific. Its closest relative is a language of Borneo, a fact that traces, in words alone, the ocean voyage that first peopled the island.

Though its roots lie across the sea, Malagasy took in words from the African mainland, from Arabic, and later from French and English, as the peoples and powers of the wider world touched the island. Yet its grammar and its core of everyday words remain plainly Austronesian, so that a speaker of Malagasy and a speaker of a Bornean tongue share, beneath all the changes of a thousand years, a common ancient stock.

The dialect of the Merina highlands became, through the power of their kingdom and the work of missionaries who wrote it down, the basis of standard Malagasy, the national language of the whole island. It was reduced to writing in the Latin script in the early nineteenth century, and a printed literature, beginning with the scriptures, grew up quickly around the Merina court.

Today Malagasy is the national language of Madagascar, spoken by the whole population in its several dialects, with French serving beside it as a language of government and learning from the colonial past. The highland form remains the standard of print and broadcast, so that the tongue of the Merina, carried once across the ocean, is now the shared speech of a nation of many peoples.

The High Plateau of Imerina

The homeland of the Merina is Imerina, the high central plateau of Madagascar, a region of rolling hills, granite outcrops, and broad valleys lying some four thousand feet and more above the sea. The air here is cool and often misty, a welcome relief from the tropical heat of the coasts, and the seasons turn between a warm, wet summer and a cool, dry winter that can bring frost to the higher ground.

It is a land shaped by rice. In the valleys and on terraces cut into the hillsides, the Merina grow their rice in flooded paddies, and the bright green of the young crop and the gold of the ripening fields are the defining sight of the highland country. This intensive cultivation of irrigated rice, an art brought from across the ocean, let a dense population live upon the plateau.

At the heart of Imerina stands Antananarivo, the city of the thousand, built upon a high ridge and crowned by the royal palace whose walls once looked out over the whole realm. Around it lie the twelve sacred hills of Imerina, each tied to the memory of the kingdom’s founding, and a countryside dotted with towns, villages, rice fields, and the stone tombs of the ancestors.

The plateau falls away on every side to the lower lands and the coasts, where other Malagasy peoples live in a warmer world of forest, savanna, and sea. From their cool high fastness the Merina looked out and, in time, reached down to bring those lands under their rule. The highland home, defensible and fertile, was the seedbed from which the kingdom of Madagascar grew.

Andrianampoinimerina, the Andriana, and the Kingdom

For much of its early history Imerina was divided among petty chiefs and warring principalities, until in the late eighteenth century a single ruler drew it together. Andrianampoinimerina, one of the great figures of Malagasy history, united the highland kingdoms by war and by cunning, organised the irrigation of the rice lands, ordered the markets, and set the realm upon firm foundations. To him is credited the famous ambition that the sea should be the boundary of his rice field.

Society in the kingdom was ordered into rigid classes. At the summit stood the andriana, the nobles, tracing descent from the royal and princely lines and holding rank and privilege by birth. Below them came the hova, the free commoners, the great body of the people, and beneath these the andevo, the servile class, bound to labour. These divisions were deep, hereditary, and marked in dress, in tomb, and in the rules of marriage.

The king ruled from Antananarivo through appointed officials and through the andriana, and his word was law, tempered by custom and by the counsel of the great. Royal proclamations, the kabary, were delivered to the assembled people in the eloquent oratory the Malagasy prize, and the whole realm was bound to the king by oath, by service, and by the labour owed to the crown.

Andrianampoinimerina’s son, Radama the First, took up his father’s design and carried the armies of Imerina outward across the island, bringing much of Madagascar under Merina rule. He welcomed Europeans, their firearms, and their missionaries, and began to fashion a modern state. Thus from a divided highland grew, within a generation or two, a kingdom that claimed the whole of the great island.

The house of King Andrianampoinimerina at Ambohimanga

Rank, the Family, and the Bonds of the Razana

The foundation of Merina society is the family and, beyond it, the descent group bound to a common ancestor and a common ancestral tomb. To know a person’s family and, above all, the tomb in which their forebears lie, is to know who they are, for the razana, the ancestors, are the living root of every family, and belonging is reckoned by descent from them.

Over this web of families lay the old division into classes, the noble andriana, the free hova, and the servile andevo, a hierarchy of birth that governed marriage, dress, and the very tombs in which people might be buried. Though slavery was abolished and the legal privileges of the nobles have long since passed away, the memory of these ranks lingers still in the highlands, colouring how families regard one another.

Descent and inheritance run through both lines, and ties of kin reach widely, binding a person to a great company of relatives who share the ancestral tomb and the duties owed to the dead. The family gathers for the great rites of birth, marriage, and death, and above all for the ceremonies of the tomb, in which the bonds between the living and their forebears are renewed.

Respect for elders and for the ancestors orders the whole of life, and the wisdom of age is honoured in the proverbs and the eloquent speech, the kabary, that mark every solemn occasion. To speak well, weaving proverb and image into dignified oratory, is a prized art, and the man who can address a gathering with grace commands a respect that the Merina have always given to the spoken word.

The Razana, Andriamanitra, and the Cult of the Ancestors

At the centre of the older Merina faith stood the razana, the ancestors, whose place in life can hardly be overstated. The dead were held to watch over their descendants, to bless those who honoured them and to bring misfortune on those who neglected them, and the bond between the living and the dead was the deepest of all bonds. Much of Merina religion is, in truth, the honouring of the ancestors.

Above the ancestors was acknowledged a supreme being, Andriamanitra, the fragrant lord, and Zanahary, the creator, remote makers of the world approached less often than the nearer razana. Governing much of life was the idea of vintana, destiny bound to time and to the day of one’s birth, and of fady, the taboos that hedged about places, foods, and actions, and that varied from family to family and place to place.

The tomb held a central place in this faith, for it was the house of the ancestors and the focus of the family’s devotion, often finer and more solidly built than the houses of the living. To be buried in the ancestral tomb, among one’s own razana, was the deepest wish of every Merina, and much of the wealth and care of a family went into the building and the honouring of the tomb.

Christianity came with the missionaries in the nineteenth century and was in time embraced by the court itself, so that today most Merina are Christian, and the highlands are dotted with churches. Yet the cult of the ancestors did not pass away but lived on beside the new faith, and the great rites of the tomb continue, so that among the Merina Christianity and the honouring of the razana are woven closely together.

The Famadihana, the reburial of ancestors

The Famadihana, the Tomb, and the Turning of the Dead

The most striking of all Merina customs is the famadihana, the turning of the bones, a rite in which the remains of the ancestors are taken from the tomb, wrapped in fresh silk shrouds, and carried in joyful procession before being returned to rest. Far from a mournful occasion, it is a festival of love and reunion with the dead, held every few years by families who can afford it, and marked by music, dancing, and feasting.

In the famadihana the living dance with the wrapped bodies of their forebears, speak to them, share with them the news of the family, and honour them with the finest silk shroud they can provide, before laying them once more in the tomb. The rite renews the bond between the living and the razana, secures the goodwill of the ancestors, and gathers the scattered family back to the ancestral ground.

The tomb itself is the focus of the deepest care, built of stone to endure, and often grander than the homes of the living, for it is the eternal house of the family. To share a tomb is to share an identity, and the wish to be buried among one’s own ancestors is so strong that families will go to great lengths and expense to bring home the bodies of those who die far away.

Around these rites of the dead cluster the other customs of Merina life, the eloquent oratory of the kabary that marks every solemn gathering, the taboos of fady that guide daily conduct, and the ceremonies of birth, circumcision, and marriage. Through all of them runs the presence of the ancestors, so that the traditions of the Merina bind every stage of life to the razana who went before.

The Weavers of Silk and the Makers of the Lamba

The great craft of the Merina is the weaving of silk, and above all of the lamba, the length of cloth that is the traditional dress of the highlands. Draped about the shoulders and body, the lamba clothes the living for every occasion and, in its finest form, the silk lamba mena, wraps the dead for the tomb. To weave a fine silk shroud for one’s ancestors is among the most honoured of works.

The silk itself is drawn both from the introduced silkworm and from the cocoons of a wild native moth, spun and woven on simple looms by the women of the highlands. The cloth is dyed and patterned in bands and borders, and the best of it, soft, strong, and lustrous, is treasured, kept for great occasions, and passed down or laid up against the day when it will wrap a beloved forebear.

Beyond weaving, the Merina and their fellow highlanders are skilled in many crafts. They work wood into the fine carved balconies and pillars of their houses, and shape the hard stone of the plateau into the enduring tombs of the ancestors. They fashion iron tools, plait straw and reed into hats, mats, and baskets, and in later times took up the crafts of the town.

The building of houses and tombs is itself a highland art, marked by tall, narrow forms with steep roofs and, in the noble houses of old, by carved wooden verandas and central pillars laden with meaning. In silk and stone and timber alike, the crafts of the Merina serve both the living and, above all, the honoured dead, in whose service the finest work is always given.

Rice, the Grain of Life, and the Table of the Highlands

If any one thing stands at the centre of Merina life, it is rice. Rice is not merely the staple food but the very stuff of existence, eaten at every meal, morning, noon, and night, and in such quantity that the Malagasy are among the greatest eaters of rice in the world. To the Merina a meal without rice is scarcely a meal at all, and the word for eating is bound up with the eating of rice.

The rice is grown in the flooded terraces of the highlands and boiled plain, to be eaten with a relish called laoka that gives it savour. This may be a little meat, fish, beans, or greens, or a dish of vegetables, but it is always secondary to the rice itself, which fills the bowl and the belly. The water in which the rice has cooked, browned at the bottom of the pot, is drunk as a common beverage.

Meat, chiefly beef from the humped zebu cattle that are a mark of wealth across Madagascar, and pork and poultry, is the food of feasts and of welcome rather than of every day. The zebu holds a place of honour, sacrificed at the great rites of the tomb and the passages of life, and its meat shared among the gathered kin binds the family and honours the ancestors.

Around the rice and its relish cluster the fruits and vegetables of a fertile land, and the foods brought by trade and by the many peoples who have touched the island. Yet rice remains the heart of it all, the grain carried across the ocean by the first settlers and grown ever since in the terraced valleys, the daily bread and the enduring symbol of highland life.

The New Year, the Circumcision, and the Great Rites

The great festivals of the Merina turn, like so much of their life, on the ancestors and on the rhythms of the rice year. The famadihana, the turning of the bones, is the grandest of family occasions, a joyful gathering that may draw hundreds of kin from near and far to honour the dead, wrap them in fresh silk, and feast and dance in their presence over several days.

In the days of the kingdom the greatest public festival was the fandroana, the royal bath, held at the new year, when the sovereign bathed in sacred water and the whole realm renewed itself for the year to come. It was a time of cleansing, of feasting on zebu meat, of the making of ceremonial rice cakes, and of the renewal of loyalty to the crown, and something of its spirit survives in the celebration of the Malagasy new year.

The passages of life bring their own celebrations, above all the circumcision of young boys, a great family occasion marked by ritual, feasting, and the gathering of kin, and the joyful ceremonies of marriage that join two families and their ancestors. Each is an occasion for the eloquent oratory of the kabary and for the sharing of rice and meat among the assembled relatives.

Music and dance run through all these gatherings, from the stately dances of the highland new year to the joyful movement of the famadihana. Song led by a strong voice and answered by the crowd, the sound of drums and, in later times, of imported instruments, and the graceful figures of the dance bring the community together, so that the great moments of Merina life are met with rejoicing and with the honouring of the dead.

The afindrafindrao dance at the Malagasy new year

From Andrianampoinimerina to the Fall of the Kingdom

The Merina kingdom rose to greatness in the early nineteenth century. Andrianampoinimerina united the highlands, and his son Radama the First carried Merina arms across much of the island, welcomed British friendship, firearms, and missionaries, and began to build a modern state with a written language and a trained army. In a few decades the kingdom grew from a highland realm into the ruling power of Madagascar.

After Radama came the long and severe reign of Queen Ranavalona the First, who turned against the Europeans, expelled the missionaries, and persecuted the Christian converts, seeking to preserve the old ways and the independence of the realm against the encroaching outside world. Her reign was harsh, yet it kept the kingdom free at a time when foreign powers pressed ever closer.

Later sovereigns opened the kingdom again to Christianity and to European ways, and the court itself embraced the new faith, while power came to rest in the hands of powerful prime ministers who ruled in the name of a line of queens. The state modernised, but it could not withstand the ambitions of France, which coveted the great island and pressed its claims by force.

In the 1890s France invaded, overthrew the monarchy, sent the last queen, Ranavalona the Third, into exile, and made Madagascar a colony. The Merina kingdom, which had risen so swiftly, fell to a foreign power, and the island endured colonial rule until it won its independence in 1960. The memory of the kingdom, and of the sovereigns who built it, remains a source of pride to the Merina and to the nation.

The Merina in Modern Madagascar

Today the Merina are among the largest of the many peoples of Madagascar, numbering several millions and forming the bulk of the population of the central highlands around Antananarivo, the national capital. Their language, in its highland form, became the standard Malagasy of the whole island, and their long history at the centre of power has given them a prominent place in the life of the modern nation.

Antananarivo, the old royal city, is now the bustling capital of the republic, a highland metropolis of steep streets, red-brick houses, and the ruins and rebuildings of the royal palace that crowns its central ridge. From here the Merina have long been prominent in government, in commerce, in the professions, and in the church, a role that has at times bred tension with the peoples of the coast.

Modern life has brought all the changes of a developing nation, the growth of the city, the pull of migration, the pressures of poverty in one of the world’s poorer countries, and the reach of a wider world. Yet the ties of family and of the ancestral tomb remain strong, and the famadihana still draws the scattered kin back to the highlands to honour their dead in the old way.

Through all of this the Merina hold to their distinctive heritage, the rice at the centre of life, the silk lamba, the eloquent kabary, and above all the reverence for the razana that shapes their world. Sprung from seafarers who crossed an ocean, builders of a kingdom that ruled a great island, they carry their long and singular story into the modern age, the last and not the least of the peoples in this long account of the folk of Africa.