The cultural complexity of Southeast Asia must be studied historically, distinguishing between the different layers of culture that flourished successively in this part of the world: (1) basic agrarian culture of Monsoon Asia, (2) Asian cultures of China, India and Islam, and (3) Western cultures of Portugal, Spain, Netherlands, England, France, United States, etc. The basic agrarian culture, which started early in prehistoric times, has continued down to the present, frequently connected with wet-rice cultivation, and it has a wide range of distribution covering areas of East, Southeast and South Asia, containing many cultural traits common to these regions. Annual festivals of boat-races and tugs-of-war, observed in Southeast Asia, South China and Japan, are to be counted among these traits. The boat and the rope used in these performances are usually regarded as a dragon or snake, and the festival is often connected with the rainy season, rain-making or a good harvest. In Southeast Asian countries and Japan, the mythology of the foundation of the state explains the origins of political power by means of the genealogy of rulers, which can be traced back to an ancestral dragon who is a superhuman aquatic being. When we study the ceremony of royal consecration in Southeast Asian countries, we have to keep in mind the existence of this basic agrarian culture in which life is supported by aquatic power, in particular where the origins of political prestige are mythologically explained by means of dragons.
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