On seasonal change’s festivals of the peoples in Southeast Asia

Abstract

Though there are some differences on the details, New year ceremonies and festivals of many peoples of Southeast Asia, are really festivals to mark seasonal changes: climate season and business season. New year time of many peoples of Southeast Asia is a “rest season” not only of not
only climate, but also business season. Up to now, in Vietnam Central Highlands, after the harvest in the last month (tenth month) of the lunar year, nearly all ethnicities here come to the time of rest
lasted two months. These two months are called not eleventh and twelfth, but “the rest months”
(“ning nơng khei”). The rest months of Vietnam Central Highlands ethnicities fall on March and April. This time is a New year festival time of many peoples in Southeast Asia: Songkran of Thai in
Thailand falls on the 12th, 13th and 14thof April; Khmers in Cambodia usually celebrate their new
year days on 13thof April and the festival lasts for three days; Songkal of Laos corresponds to the
mid April; Rija Nưgar of Chams in Vietnam falls in the end of April or in the first days of May…
Moreover, the word “Songkran” or “Songkal” (Sankranti in Sanskrit or Sankhara in Pali) means the
* Phó Giáo sư, Tiến sĩ - Viện Nghiên cứu Đông Nam Á
TAN TRAO UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE
54 No.04_November 2016
shift of the sun from one sign of zodiac to another. Sonkran and Songkal is fixed by astrological
calculation when the sun moves out of the sign of Pisces into the sign of Aries.
The time of nearly all these seasonal change’s festivals falls on the end of dry season,
when the harvest is already finished, the rain season is not yet coming. In this quite long seasonal
change’s time, the peoples have all necessary conditions and enough of everything: food and free
time, for celebrating their new year festivals. So, the seasonal change’s festival is the most special
traditional festival of the peoples in Southeast Asia. During the festival’s days, many typical
ceremonies and games ofwet rice cultivation’s peoples, such as cleaning houses aswell as public
places, making offerings to ancestors, releasing of birds and fish, throwing water at one another…
are taken place.
So, we can say that seasonal change’s festivals play a vital role in many agricultural societies
in Southeast Asia, where regular and adequate rainfall isessential to the well-being of the people.