INDIAN OCEAN · EXTINCT

ORIGINS & SOCIAL FUNCTIONS

A wrestling of Madagascar's east coast — Toamasina, Brickaville, Mahanoro, Marolambo — in the Betsimisaraka world, where village contests ordered the young men's worth. Attested and then extinguished, it survives in the record as one of the Indian Ocean's lost games.

THE GAME

A two-round contest of the Malagasy East coast (Toamasina, Brickaville, Mahanoro, Marolambo) with asymmetrical roles: one wrestler first presents his back, conceding the grip and the initiative; victory comes by pinning the opponent's back or both shoulders to the ground, after which the roles are reversed.

PRINCIPLES OF PLAY

The unequal start, conceded on purpose. One wrestler begins by turning his back — surrendering the grip and the initiative to his adversary before the reversal of roles. To open the duel from the position of disadvantage, to accept and even to offer the imbalance rather than flee it, is the paradoxical disposition the thesis reads across the family: the risk of losing accepted, and made the very matter of the game.

PLACE IN THE FAMILY

The thesis groups the tolona with the bènaden and the batuque among the games of a single dimension — distinct from capoeira, maní, danmyé and moring, which unite horizontality and verticality. Its presence extends the family of the Black combat arts into the Indian Ocean, whose geography, the thesis notes, espouses that of the deportations.

SOURCES

Olivier Malo, La capoeira et les arts de combat noirs : histoire effacée, techniques invisibles, 1905–1984, doctoral thesis in History, Université des Antilles, 2020.

HOW TO CITE THIS ENTRY

MALO, Olivier. Tolona. In: The Atlas of the Black Combat Arts [online]. Black Combat Arts Institute, 2026. Available from: https://www.blackcombatarts.com/atlas-en/tolona [accessed date].

RELATED PRACTICES

→ Ringa — Malagasy wrestling

→ Batuque — Two rounds, asymmetrical roles

→ Kandeka — Roles reversed after the first grip

→ Tolon omby — East-coast Malagasy world