Anecdote collection · Animals
A parrot with both wings broken
Luoyang, China · c. 698 (as told)
夢一鸚鵡，羽毛甚偉，兩翅俱折。
She dreamed of a parrot with magnificent plumage, both of its wings broken.
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- Source
- Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
- Record type
- Anecdote collection
- Place
- Luoyang, China · Chinese
- Date
- c. 698 (as told)
- Uncertainty
- High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
- Imagery
- Bird · Animals · Ruler
- Feelings
- Unease · Confusion
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Animals in dreams often speak, change form or carry strong feeling. Ellis suggested such dreams may lie behind fables of talking animals; later writers read them as instinct given a face.
Ellis (1911), note 262
Mythological
Messenger animals are everywhere in myth: the eagle in Penelope’s dream, Pharaoh’s seven cows, guardian dogs at the gates of the dead.
Odyssey XIX; Genesis 41
Chinese traditions
In the Liezi’s “deer under banana leaves”, a hunted deer becomes a puzzle about where dreaming ends; Zhuangzi’s butterfly turns the question inside out.
Liezi; Zhuangzi
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- Riding a green dragon up to heaven Jiuquan, Gansu, China · late 4th century (as told)
- Three horses at one trough Luoyang (setting) · novel (printed 1522); set 220
- A snake became an eagle and carried me off Asia Minor · c. 470 BCE
- Seven lean cows Egypt (narrative setting) · undated (text c. 6th c. BCE)
- Birds ate from the basket on my head Egypt (narrative setting) · undated narrative
- A young man with wings over Asia and Europe Land of the Massagetae (Central Asia) · 530 BCE (as told)