ordinary dreamer. It is doubtful if many people dream that when riding on the back of an elephant, even if it is only an elephant made of clay, (that degree of latitude is allowed), they drink up the bottomless sea. Of course it is true, alas, that few of us become princes.
Von Negelein has noticed the reference to elephants[1] in Artemidorus, to whom the significance of the elephant in Indian dreams was evidently known.[2] In Indian folk-tales, of course, the royal elephant frequently chooses the new monarch.
Both Artemidorus and the Indian author realise that there are many dreams which are due to natural causes and have no significance. They may be the results of overfeeding or mental concentration. Both books concern themselves only with allegorical dreams, as the Greek calls them, that is to say, dreams which cannot be accounted for by any condition of the patient, and are further not of the simple kind which merely foreshadows directly a future happening. The Indian makes play with the temperaments, the windy, the choleric, the sanguine temperament, and so on. The planets and the temperaments, which played an exceedingly important part in the learned superstition of the late classical and mediaeval periods, do not affect the theory of Artemidorus.
Any interpretation of omens will proceed largely on the basis of analogy and association. That is true both of the Indian and the Greek. Our elephant is a case in point. Occasionally also the principle of opposites enters. Perhaps this is the true reason, rather than a postulated Semitic influence, why to dream of eating a man's head is lucky.[3] The example of this principle most familiar to folklorists will be the almost universal significance of dreaming of a wedding, which portends a funeral, and vice versa.
- ↑ Speaking of elephants, the following entry in the index has a pleasant simplicity, for which the reader of that rather dull dog Jagaddeva may be grateful: Elefant, kein Haustier.
- ↑ Artemidorus, II. 12. Outside Italy and India an elephant portends danger. It is a terrifying animal, and especially to those not accustomed to it. In Italy it portends greatness, kingship, etc., but it is always of bad import to a woman, and he quotes a sad case.
- ↑ See p. xiv.
