Ibonia has also been read as a euhemerist myth. Euhemerism declares that myths are distorted accounts of historical events. The epic would in this view contain a kernel of experienced reality that has been embroidered with the fantastic. The hero's prescription of laws before his death is the kind of realistic element associated with true accounts of events happening in the historical past-legends, in the folklorist's sense. That scene, however, also links Ibonia with Indo-European heroes such as Theseus, Moses, and King Arthur (Raglan, The Hero, 173-85), as well as with culture heroes around the world (motif A530, Culture hero establishes law and order). One prominent euhemerist malgachisant, G.-S. Chapus, was such a great authority on Merina history and culture, and so well schooled in the French anthropology of primitive mentality, that it was natural he would read Ibonia as a gilded historical narrative. For him, it is a story of the rivalry between two princes and their localities. Its variant forms are of no interest; it provides archaic facts about the times before European contact. The hero's fantastic birth and the elaboration of his naming show how important the birth of a royal baby was to Merina in the late eighteenth century. Though to us such a passage might seem "useless and fussy chatter, the hearers judged it otherwise," he says; they appreciated its subtle, clever manipulation of language. Similarly, they valued the verbose discussion of Ibonia's encounter with Stone Man, which demonstrates the versatile style of debate favored in old Imerina. The earthquakes, droughts, and tidal waves reflect the supernatural power of royalty. He finds many realistic reflections of old Merina society in the text: the pastimes of the boys, the board game fanorona, the westward orientation of house doors, the groups working in the fields, the deploring of a woman's barrenness.
The trouble with euhemerism is that it does not tolerate fantasy; it must explain it away. When Chapus confronts an obviously fantastic detail like the life-token -- the banana-tree planted by the hero as a signal to his mother of his welfare or his downfall -- he manages to convince himself that even this symbolic element is a realistic record of belief. The old Merina, he says, believed in such things according to the "law of participation" (Levy-Bruhl, How Natives Think). The amulets that Ibonia carries to impart their magic force to his body, the force of Stone Man's talismans, the importance of divination, and the powerful role of the diviner Ranakombe are all elements of primitive Malagasy religion. The narrator's statements about destiny and fate tell most, because superstitions about fate inspire such a host of beliefs in Merina narrative. Ranakombe's precautions, for instance, can do nothing against the oracular predictions voiced by the hero from the womb. For Chapus, these dicta are announcements but also causes; neither the hero nor his evil adversary Stone Man is morally responsible for his behavior. The decisive evidence to Chapus that the old Merina were primitive folk, in Levy-Bruhl's sense, is the mixture of natural and supernatural elements. In the crucial device of folklorization, which makes euhemerism so attractive to those looking down on the natives, he writes: "Malagasy hearers were not shocked by the world of implausibilities contained in this tale. They did not distinguish the natural from the impossible" (Chapus, Les imeriniens, 111). By making the artistic creations of Malagasy into unfortunate primitive beliefs, Chapus could remain the euhemerist. The clues to pre-1810 Merina history he found in Ibonia regrettably complemented the anti-Malagasy prejudices of a man who was yet to his credit, devoted to the interests of Madagascar as he saw them.
Euhemerism is perennial in the interpretation of folklore, and of Ibonia in particular. Does this tale text from the 1870s necessarily reveal kernels of older Malagasy thought? Probably. But which? Divine kingship may be one. In Becker's view, names like Railanitra, Heavenly Father, and Ifararangarandanitra, He-Whose-Gaze-Remains-Fixed-on-Heaven, provide evidence for tracing the genealogy of this earthly prince back to heaven. Divine kingship was indeed an important strand of Malagasy thought among the Sakalava (Feeley-Hamik). Merina tales portray a hero who journeys to heaven and secures his wife, the daughter of Heavenly Lord. By stealing the food of the gods, she furnishes mankind with the indispensable Malagasy staple, rice (Faublee, Recits bara, 449-50; Dandouau, Contes populaires, 123-32; Renel, Contes de Madagascar, 3:36-38). If indeed the tale originated among Sakalava, the hero's genealogy could well have supported the belief that kings are of divine origin. Like any Sakalava king, he changes his name at death. Like any ordinary Malagasy, Ibonia submits to mortality in the conviction that he will be reintegrated into the primary society, that of the ancestors.
Another member of the euhemerist community uses Ibonia as evidence for old Malagasy beliefs about the origin of royalty. Whereas Becker deduced that Ibonia was an earthly prince of heavenly origin, L. M. X. Andrianarahinjaka refutes his view. For him, traditional Malagasy thought denies any direct kinship between the creator and any race, real or imagined. That is his explanation for Ibonia's dying like an ordinary mortal. In this gesunkenes Kulturgut interpretation, Malagasy folktales like Ibonia are of literary origin. They become anonymous only through the vicissitudes of oral transmission. It would follow, improbably enough, that there were no Malagasy oral tales before 1820, since the sora-be of earlier centuries contain no such material. The interpretation supports ruling-class ideology as much as the tale itself.