ABSTRACT
Przyluski (1931:54) described the essential nature of ‘Indochinese’—and by extension, South East Asian-culture as being a cosmological dualism, in which the mountain and the sea, the winged and the aquatic tribe, the men of the heights and those of the coastal plains are opposed one to the other. This view, which is at first sight an attractive one, seems to have commanded general support, but I propose to argue that the concept of opposition is inappropriate. We should, I believe, think rather in terms of complementarity or of chiasmus. The pattern is frequently chiastic, but it should also be noted that the cross-overs take place within a continuum, that the apparent oppositions are aspects of a totality.
