Andal

An imaginary world

Andal is an imaginary world I've been working on since I was about twelve. That means for close on twenty years. I've written a slew of stories set in Andal (all in Dutch), a novel, and another novel I should be working on right now. I've also hosted role-playing adventures in this setting, but the primary function of Andal is to serve as a vehicle for my writing, sketching, sculpting and composition urges.

As far as imaginary worlds go, Andal is quite unusual. It is not Medieval England with unfamiliar names, nor another version of Middle Earth. It isn't Greece in Indonesia, like Gehennum, nor Alexandria in Nehwon. Nor is it post-apocalyps, pre-civilistation or alternate history.

In fact, I'd have a hard time characterizing Andal in terms of familiar cultures. There's something of Song China in it, and traces of Nepal under the Nevari Malla kings.

Years after I had created the words Andal, Charya (Dutch spelling: Charia), Hanudan and others, when I started studying Sanskrit, Pali, Nepali and Classical Tibetan, I discovered that most of these words have a very apt meaning in one or another of the languages of the Indian sub-continent. Andal is a Hindu goddess, sri Madva Charya is a dvaita saint. Hanudan, of course, is almost the same as the monkey god, Hanuman. Curious, those coincidences.

• Copyright
• Introduction
• Adventures
• History
  • The Great Exodus
  • Timeline
  • The Granaries of Broi
• Languages
  • The Broyan Stage Language
    • Grammar of the Broyan Stage Language
  • Translation Exercises
  • Charyan Languages
    • Denden
      • Abbreviations
        
      • Phonology
        
      • Nominal morphology
        
      • Verbal morphology
        
      • Derivational Morphology
        
      • Compounding
        
      • Syntaxis
        
      • Lexicon
        
      • References
        
    • Calendar
    • Personal Names
    • Kinship Terminology
    • The Script
    • Expletives and Terms of Abuse
  • Corpus of Texts
    • Broyan
    • Barushlani
    • Matraian
    • Mostralian
    • Northern Colloquial
    • Southern Colloquial
    • Classical Charyan
    • Denden
• Literature
  • A thousands songs
  • Dutch contents
  • De God van de Wind
  • Duizend liedjes voor tussen de Graanhalmen
  • Het lied van de keizer
  • Raygin tan Broi, An eastern poem
• Music
  • The Charyan octave
• Encyclopedia of peoples and places
  • Listing of articles in the Encyclopedia
  • Charya
    • How to tell if you're a middle-class ethnic Charyan from Broi
    • The Emperor
    • Money
    • Sexuality
    • Brothels
    • Street gangs
    • The Quarters of Broi (mainly Dutch
    • Religion
      • Inleiding
      • Familiefeesten
      • Nationale en locale feesten
      • Het altaar
      • Volksreligie
      • About the gods (English)
      • The Temple of Qunayir, the Cat Goddess
    • Clothes in Broi
  • Drinking in Andal
  • A Recipe for Beer
  • Physical Geograpy
  • The Nine Cities of Charya
  • Who is who
    • Who is who - secondary cast
    • Emperor Rordal