The Religion and Philosophy of the Veda and Upanishads v2.c32.s6.13

v2.c32.s6.13

The meanings of dreams is an interesting part of Vedic magic and is dealt with in various passages, including an Atharvan Pariçiṣṭa. The Rigveda ¹⁰ already regards as ominous the making of a garland or neckband in a dream. Ten dreams which forebode death are recorded in the Aitareya Āraṇyaka:¹¹ when one sees in a dream a black man with black teeth who kills him, when a boar kills him, when a wild cat springs on him, when one eats and then spits out gold, when one eats honey and lotus roots, when one goes to a village with asses or boars, or when one drives south a black cow with a black calf, wearing a garland of nard. If one has a dream, one should, as we have seen, wash one’s mouth. The view is also held that certain stars are unlucky, especially Mūla.¹ Moreover, many sights forebode evil: the sun seeming as the moon, the heaven red like madder, when one’s shadow appears upside down in a mirror or water, or when one’s head smells like a crow’s nest.² Evil is further portended by meteors and lightning. Of ominous birds the main classes are those which are black or whose appearance or utterance is horrible: the pigeon, the owl, the vulture, the Dīrghamukhī, &c., but the bird is also called generally the mouth of Dissolution. Birds,³ too, are said to go about in the semblance of the Fathers, other animals are seldom mentioned in this regard; the fact that a horse on several occasions is used to forecast prosperity, or other results, is rather due to its connexion with the offering than to its intrinsic nature as ominous, though fortune in popular superstition can be inferred from the neighing of a horse.⁴ Other prodigies are the appearance of an ant-heap in the house, the making of honey there by the bees, the scream of a jackal, the drinking of one cow from another, the cows giving blood for milk, and so on.⁵