Merina
The highland kingdom-builders of Madagascar — an Austronesian-African people whose rice terraces, royal hill-cities and famadihana ancestor ceremonies unified the great island under Queen Ranavalona's dynasty from Antananarivo.
The Rova of Antananarivo
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Identity
Population: ≈ 7–8 million; the largest of Madagascar's peoples
Location: The central highlands (Imerina) around Antananarivo — rice-terraced valleys between the twelve sacred hills
Language: Malagasy (Merina dialect — the national standard)
Language family: Austronesian → Malayo-Polynesian → Barito (with Bantu, Arabic and Sanskrit strata)
Traditional governance: The historic monarchy: mpanjaka (sovereigns) from Andrianampoinimerina onward with a noble (andriana), commoner (hova) and formerly enslaved (andevo) order — its legacies still socially felt; the fokonolona village assembly, codified royal law, and today's republic centered on the same highlands.
Gallery
12 images
Culture
Clothing: The lamba — the draped cloth worn by all, in silk (lamba akotofahana) for the noble and the dead; white for ritual, wild-silk landibe shrouds for ancestors; straw hats of highland weave.
Food: Rice thrice daily — vary is the meal itself — with laoka sides (romazava beef-and-greens, ravitoto cassava leaf); zebu at ceremonies; ranovola (rice-crust water); koba sweets at markets.
Ceremonies: Famadihana, 'the turning of the bones': every five-seven years families open the tomb, rewrap ancestors in fresh silk, dance them on shoulders with music, and reseal them with news told and blessings asked — the paramount festival of kinship; circumcision feasts; New Year (Alahamady) royal-era rites.
Marriage customs: Vodiondry ('the sheep's rump') betrothal gift and formal speech-contest between families (kabary); historically endogamous within status groups; tomb-membership — where one will be buried — is negotiated as seriously as residence.
Initiation rites: Boys' circumcision (famorana) with all-night songs as the entry to male standing; oratory itself is initiation — mastery of kabary (ceremonial rhetoric dense with proverbs) marks the complete adult.
Greetings, Prayer & the Table
The everyday practices a visitor meets first — how people greet, pray, eat and host. Forms vary by family, region and generation, and many coexist with Islam and Christianity rather than being replaced by them.
Greetings & respect
'Manao ahoana' with polite, indirect and elaborate speech — Malagasy courtesy prizes circumlocution, and blunt directness is rude. Kabary, the formal oratorical art (UNESCO-listed), governs public greeting: a speaker approaches the point slowly through proverbs and apology for daring to speak.
Prayer & devotion
Zanahary the creator stands above the razana — the ancestors — who are the effective sacred. Blessing (tsodrano) flows from elders and the razana to any undertaking, given by sprinkling water and by speech. Vintana, destiny by calendar and compass direction, sets auspicious days and orientations. Christianity is strong and is woven with razana observance.
Eating & feeding
Rice is the meal itself, eaten three times a day with laoka side dishes; elders are served first and blessed. At famadihana — the turning of the bones — the ancestors are brought out, rewrapped in fresh silk and danced with, and the family feasts around them, sharing food in their presence.
Hospitality
Rice is offered to any visitor; fihavanana, the bond of kinship and solidarity, obliges generosity and the avoidance of open conflict.
Avoidances & etiquette
Fady — taboos specific to family, place and lineage — govern foods, days and directions, and vary from village to village; the northeast corner of the house is the ancestors' and is treated accordingly.
Medicine, Divination & the Body
Healing and surgery, oracular systems, and the ordering of courtship and fertility. Historical practice is recorded as heritage; where a practice is harmful or now unlawful, that is stated rather than glossed over.
Medicine & surgery
The ombiasy is healer, diviner and maker of protective charms (ody), working with a large plant pharmacopoeia — Madagascar's flora is highly endemic and its traditional medicine correspondingly distinctive. Royal ombiasy advised the court, and the nineteenth-century monarchy also imported European medicine, training Malagasy physicians.
Divination & fortune-telling
Sikidy is the great Malagasy system: seeds or beans are arranged in a grid of columns generated by repeated halving, and the resulting figures are read against a memorised corpus — a formally mathematical divination related to Arabic geomancy, studied for its combinatorial structure. Vintana, destiny by calendar and compass direction, determines auspicious days and the orientation of houses and tombs.
Courtship, sexuality & fertility
Marriage is preceded by the vodiondry gift and by kabary oratory between the families; fertility and the continuity of the tomb-group are the union's purpose, since a person's ultimate belonging is determined by which tomb will receive them.
Kingdoms, Inheritance & War
Kingdoms, queendoms & councils
Imerina was unified by Andrianampoinimerina, whose declaration 'the sea is the boundary of my rice field' set the ambition his son Radama I largely fulfilled. Four queens then ruled in succession — Ranavalona I, Rasoherina, Ranavalona II and Ranavalona III — making nineteenth-century Madagascar one of the world's more strikingly female-governed monarchies, with the prime minister marrying successive queens to hold power.
Inheritance & succession
Land and tomb rights descend within the lineage, and tomb membership is negotiated as seriously as property; historically the andriana noble, hova commoner and andevo servile orders constrained what could be inherited, and those distinctions still carry social weight.
War, weapons & war chants
Radama I built a European-trained standing army that conquered most of the island; Ranavalona I resisted French and British pressure for thirty-three years. The kingdom's coercive apparatus included the tangena ordeal, in which the accused swallowed a poisonous nut and guilt was inferred from the outcome — a practice that killed very large numbers before its abolition.
Sculpture & the Epic Tradition
Sculpture & carving
Funerary art dominates: carved wooden tomb posts and, among neighbours of the Merina, the aloalo of the south; the Zafimaniry of the highland forest are UNESCO-recognised for their geometric joinery and carved panels. Silverwork and the great silk lamba complete the material canon.
Epics & oral literature
Ibonia, the epic of the hero who names himself from the womb and wins back his betrothed, is Madagascar's great oral work. Around it stand the tantara royal histories, the hainteny — dense allusive love poetry — and kabary, the formal oratory inscribed by UNESCO.
Stories & Oral Literature
Andrianampoinimerina's Dream of the SeaRoyal history
From Ambohimanga's blue hill the unifier-king declared: 'Ny ranomasina no valapariako' — the sea is the boundary of my rice field. From twelve quarreling hill-states he forged one kingdom with law, dike-building corvées and market peace — the charter of the Malagasy state his heirs completed.
The Origin of FamadihanaCustom legend
A soldier's mother, buried far from home in cold earth, appeared in dreams complaining of the chill. When her bones were carried home, wrapped in warm silk and danced into the family tomb, blessings rained on the household. The dead, Merina say, are not gone — they are cold, and love warms them.
Ibonia, the Giant Who Named HimselfEpic
The hero Ibonia, conceived by a grasshopper-swallowing queen, spoke from the womb to choose his own name and quest: to win back his betrothed from the man-stealing lord. His riddling boasts and duel of destinies form Madagascar's great oral epic, recited across the island in many tongues.
Proverbs
“Ny fihavanana no taloha, ny vola no aoriana.”
“Kinship first, money after.”
Fihavanana — the bond of relatedness — outranks all profit.
“Izay mitambatra vato, izay misaraka fasika.”
“United we are rock, divided we are sand.”
The classic kabary proverb of solidarity.
“The house faces west, but the ancestors face us always.”
Orientation of life around the watching dead (tombs and houses follow cosmological compass points).
Mythology & Spiritual Beliefs
Creation: Zanahary, the creator, and Andriamanitra — 'the Fragrant Lord' — made earth and people in concert with the earth-being; the dead were entrusted to earth, the living to God, and razana (ancestors) became the bridge. Vintana — destiny by calendar and compass — orders days, directions and house-plans.
Beliefs: Razana at the center: tombs outlast houses because eternity outlasts residence; fady (taboos) tailor conduct to place and lineage; astrologer-diviners (mpanandro) set dates for weddings and famadihana; Christianity — embraced by the crown in 1869 — now interweaves: hymns at the turning of bones.
Ancestors: The tomb is the lineage's true address: stone vaults into which generations are gathered; famadihana refreshes the bond; blessings (tsodrano) flow from elders and razana to every undertaking.
Gods, Goddesses & Spirits
Zanahary / Andriamanitra
The creator — God, named 'Fragrant Lord' in daily speech
Razana
The ancestors — the effective sacred presence in every family
Vazimba
The first inhabitants — spirit-owners of springs and hills, honored at shrines
Andriamanelo's royal dead
Deified sovereigns of the twelve hills, once given royal bath rites
Architecture
Traditional settlements: Hilltop rova (royal compounds) ringed by moats and hadivory ditches — Ambohimanga, the sacred blue city (UNESCO), and Antananarivo's queen's palace crowning the ridge; tall narrow brick houses with steep roofs and west-facing doors; the drystone and earthen tombs standing whiter and stronger than any house.
Building techniques: Rammed earth and sun-brick (the highlands' red architecture), carved wood aristocratic houses (tranomanara), stone tomb masonry; rice-terrace hydraulics sculpting whole valleys; the royal palace rebuilt in stone by Jean Laborde's forges.
Village layout: Vintana compass rules all: northeast the ancestors' honored corner, doors west; villages below tombs; the twelve sacred hills of Imerina a royal ritual landscape circumambulated by sovereigns.
Artifacts
Lamba akotofahana
Textiles
Brocaded silk lambas of the highland looms — worn by nobles, gifted diplomatically, and wrapping ancestors at famadihana.
Royal talismans (sampy)
Ritual objects
The kingdom's guardian palladia — kept by designated lineages until the 1869 conversion burned many.
Valiha
Musical instruments
The bamboo tube-zither — Madagascar's national instrument, Austronesian cousin of Borneo's zithers.
Ambohimanga's gates and stones
Monuments
The sacred city's disc-stone gates, royal baths and justice stones — the monarchy's ritual machinery in situ (UNESCO).
Historical Timeline
c. 400–900
Austronesian voyagers settle Madagascar, meeting and merging with Bantu arrivals — one of humanity's great sea migrations.
c. 1500–1710
Merina states form among the highlands' hills; King Andriamasinavalona divides then the realm splinters.
1787–1810
Andrianampoinimerina reunifies Imerina from Ambohimanga; law, markets and rice dikes ordered.
1810–1861
Radama I unifies most of the island with British-trained armies; Ranavalona I resists European influence fiercely; palace-era arts flourish.
1869–1895
Royal conversion to Christianity; printing and schools spread; French invasion ends the monarchy (1897 exile of Ranavalona III).
1960–present
Independence; Antananarivo the capital of the republic; famadihana, kabary (UNESCO-inscribed 2021) and the sacred hills carry Merina heritage forward.
Sources & Further Reading
Open sources
- Royal Hill of Ambohimanga — UNESCO World HeritageUNESCO
- Malagasy kabary — UNESCO Intangible Cultural HeritageUNESCO
- Britannica: Merina peopleEncyclopaedia Britannica
Premium & scholarly sources