Sharing Dreams and Making Meaning in Ancient China

 

In the earliest narrative history written in China, we learn that the way that when and how dreams are shared and interpreted is of tremendous importance. You don’t want to tell the right dream to the wrong person. On the other hand, the wrong dream can turn to good if told to the right person. The ancient Chinese history is known as the Zuo zhuan. It is a collection of chronicles composed between the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.  
     Exemplary tales told in these chronicles make it clear that when we talk about dreams, as when we talk about life, we are engaged in the making of meaning. We must be careful in choosing when we tell evil dreams, and to whom we tell them. The act of making an evil dream public could help to manifest an unwanted event. One ruler kept a dream of his own death secret for three years, fearing that by telling the dream he would bring its fulfillment. He finally decided that it was safe to tell the dream – and died right after.
     On the other hand, telling an evil dream to the right person can sometimes help to tame or rescript the message it contains. There is a fascinating example in the eve-of-battle dream of Duke Wen of Jin (birth name Chong’er, literally “Double Ears”; reigned 636-628 bce). The duke dreamed that he was grappling with the ruler of Chu. His enemy threw him to the ground and started sucking out his brains.
     On waking, Duke Wen was terrified. He narrated the dream to his minister Hu Yan. To the duke’s amazement and relief, the minister pronounced that, contrary to appearances, the dream was highly auspicious. The reason: on his back, Duke Wen faced Heaven, while his adversary, bent over him, was face down in the posture of a man receiving punishment. Eating the brains evoked a Chinese proverb about what makes you soft. The minister insisted that Duke Wen’s “brains” would win over his enemy – and indeed, when the battle came, they did.
    The Zuo shuan is a dutiful work of linear history, following events year by year according to strict chronology. Across its vast sweep, it is also a book of dreams. If we are willing to make an intellectual and imaginative leap into the collective mind it represents, we will find a way of looking at both dreams and history that is radically different from that of modern Western understanding, and is both fascinating and rewarding to explore.
     The ancient Chinese chroniclers not only record dreams and how they were interpreted; they use dreams (and other signs) to interpret the world, and reveal the understory behind human events. They understood that in the field of dreams, we can observe and sometimes take part in the interplay of humans and the more-than-human.

 

Source for the dream of Duke Wen: Wai-yee Li, “Dreams of Interpretation in Early Chinese Historical and Philosophical Writings” in David Shulman and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds) Dream Cultures: Explorations in the Comparative History of Dreaming (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)