Note on dreams at the end of the night

Note: this text is extracted from Book XVI, chapter 111:

Then the day came to an end, and the sovereign performed his evening worship, and went to his bedroom, and got into bed, and reposed there. But in a dream at the end of the night he saw his father being dragged away by a black female towards the southern quarter. The moment he had seen this he woke up, and, suspecting that some calamity might have befallen his father, he thought upon the science named Prajñapti, who thereupon presented herself, and he addressed this question to her: ‘Tell me, how has my father the King of Vatsa been going on? For I am alarmed about him on account of a sight which I saw in an evil dream’”

See Vol. IV, p. 58, 58n². The theory about the fulfilment of dreams dreamt just before morning seems to have been a widely spread view in classical times. In Ovid, Heroides, xix, 195, 196, we read:

“Namque sub aurora, iam dormitante lucerna,
Somnia quo cerni tempore vera solent.”

And in Horace, Sat. i, 10, 11. 32, 33:

“.   .   . vetuit me tali voce Quirinus,
Post mediam noctem visus cum somnia vera.”
      (See Wickham’s edition, vol. ii, 1891, p. 103.)

And Moschus, Idyll, ii, 2 et seq.:

“νυκτὸς ὅτε τρίτατον λάχος ἵσταται ἐγγύφι δ’ ἠώς,
.            .            .             .            .            .            .
εὖτε καὶ ἀτρεκέων ποιμαίνεται ἔφνος ὀνείρων.”

Cf. also Inferno, xxvi, 7:

“Ma se presso al mattin del ver si sogna,
Tu sentirai, di qua da picciol tempo,
Di quel che Prato, non ch’altri, t’agogna”:

and Purgatorio, ix, 13-18:

“Nell’ ora che comincia i tristi lai
La rondinella, presso alia mattina,
Forse a memoria de’ suoi prirai guai;
E che la mente nostra, pellegrina
Più dalla carne, e men da’ pensier presa,
Alle sue vision quasi è divina...”
   (I quote from Lombardi’s edition, 3 vols., Rome, 1820.)

It is also an accepted fact in English folk-lore, see e.g. Britten’s edition of Aubrey’s Remained of Gentilisme, p. 57. Writing on the same subject in North Africa, Doutté says, Magie et Religion dans l’ Afrique du Xord, p. 400,

“Les onéirocritiques arabes sont d’accord pour reconnaitre comme les plus véridiques les songes que l’on a au point du jour; l’observation scientifique montre, du reste, que ce sont les songes précédent le reveil qui sont les plus nets...”

Among the Prophet’s sayings is:

“The truest dream is the one which you have about daybreak”
      (Miṣkāt, XXI, iv, 3).

(Matthews’ translation, vol. ii, p. 392, quoted by Westermarck, Ritual and Belief in Morocco, vol. ii, p. 55.) For the Indian practice see Julius von Negelein, Der Traunuchlüssel des Jagaddeva, p. 14 et seq. Here we read that a dream in the first watch of the night takes a year to come true, one in the second watch six months, one in the third watch three months, one in the fourth watch one month, one in the last two ghaṭikā within ten days, while if the dream occurs at sunrise immediate fulfilment will result. For the four latter references I am indebted to Professor Hallidav.—n.m.p.