Hindu tradition
River in Hindu dream interpretation
Crossing is the event the literature attends to, and the state of the water conditions it.
What this page is
What follows describes what these texts say about particular images, where they say it, and what the framework around them required. It is not a claim that a dream about any of these things means anything. The tradition is also not one thing: the Upanishadic material, the omen literature, the medical texts and the Vedic hymns disagree with each other about what a dream even is.
Water in the omen material is read through what the dreamer does with it. Crossing a river appears among the favourable images, and the condition of the water bears on the reading, clear being distinguished from muddy or turbulent.
That is a two-variable reading, which is more structure than most entries in these lists carry, and it is the closest the omen literature gets to the conditional method of the Greek material. It still stops well short of it: the variable is a property of the dream, never a property of the dreamer.
Comparison across the site is the useful part here. The biblical and Islamic readings of water both exist and neither is organised this way, which is a good demonstration that these traditions are not four dialects of one system.
What is actually recorded about dreaming of river
Rivers differ from other water in one respect that dominates every report: they move, and they move in a direction. What dreamers describe is the current, the far bank, and whether they got across.
The river entrySources and reviewed references
1 reference. What these labels mean
- 1.Brihat Samhita, the chapter on dreamsReligious or philosophical text
Varahamihira (550)
Cited for: The classificatory approach of the omen literature: dreams sorted as auspicious or inauspicious, with the timing of the dream within the night bearing on it. Cited for the structure of the classification and for which images fall on which side of it.