Dream Galaxy

Anecdote collection · Water

Swallowing pearls in the stream

Nankang, Jiangxi, China · c. 880

嘗夢浴溪中，有人以珠一器遺之曰：「郎吞此，則明悟矣。」諤度其大者不可吞，即吞細者六十餘顆，及長，善為詩。

Original text — Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282, Li Fang et al. (compilers)

As a child he dreamed he was bathing in the stream when someone gave him a bowl of pearls, saying, “Swallow these, young master, and you will become clear-minded.” Judging the large ones too big, he swallowed some sixty small ones. When he grew up he wrote fine poetry.

Translation · Editorial translation (draft)

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Source
Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
Rights
Public domain (ancient text)
Record type
Anecdote collection
Place
Nankang, Jiangxi, China · Chinese
Date
c. 880
Uncertainty
High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
Imagery
River · Water · Child · A stranger · Writing
Feelings
Wonder · Joy

How traditions have read this kind of dream

Psychological

Early dream researchers often linked water imagery to bodily sensation and mood; later psychoanalytic writers read deep water as a figure for what lies below awareness. Modern researchers treat such readings as interpretive traditions rather than findings.

cf. Havelock Ellis, The World of Dreams (1911)

Mythological

Many cosmologies begin with primordial waters — the deep of Genesis, the Babylonian Apsu, the cosmic ocean of Hindu myth — so water often stands for origins, boundaries and crossings between worlds.

Comparative mythology

Chinese traditions

In Chinese poetry water carries time and loss — “all things flow east like water” (Li Bai) — while Daoist texts praise water as soft yet enduring.

Li Bai; Daodejing ch. 8

These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.

Dreams that share its images