Anecdote collection · Cities & buildings
Driving an ox cart that carried the sun
Chang’an, China · spring 846
夢自御牛車，車中載瑞日，光燭天地。自執靷，行通衢中。
He dreamed he was driving an ox cart himself; in the cart was the auspicious sun, its light filling heaven and earth. Holding the reins, he drove down the great avenue.
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- Source
- Taiping Guangji, dream volumes 276–282 — Li Fang et al. (compilers), 978
- Record type
- Anecdote collection
- Place
- Chang’an, China · Chinese
- Date
- spring 846
- Uncertainty
- High — Anecdote preserved in the Taiping Guangji (978); the dream is reported, not first-hand.
- Imagery
- Sun · Light · Road · Animals · City
- Feelings
- Wonder · Awe
How traditions have read this kind of dream
Psychological
Houses, corridors and endless stairs are frequent dream settings. Some writers read buildings as figures for the self; others note simply that dreams rebuild the spaces we move through every day.
cf. Stevenson, A Chapter on Dreams (1888)
Mythological
Labyrinths, towers and underground cities appear in myths from Crete to Babel — built places where people lose their way, reach too high, or find hidden kingdoms.
Greek myth; Genesis 11
Chinese traditions
Tang tales like “The Governor of Nanke” place a whole kingdom of palaces inside a dream, only to reveal it as an ants’ nest — a lasting image for the brevity of worldly glory.
Li Gongzuo, c. 802
These are cultural lenses, not a diagnosis.
Dreams that share its images
- Heaven, surrounded by dazzling light United States · before 1911
- My own vast shadow England (countryside) · before 1911
- An ivory chariot flying through the clouds Lanka (setting) · c. 5th–4th c. BCE (epic)
- Riding a green dragon up to heaven Jiuquan, Gansu, China · late 4th century (as told)
- A snake became an eagle and carried me off Asia Minor · c. 470 BCE
- Evensong without light England · before 1911