________________
IV, 8, 33.
157
This is the reason,
were, swallowed up of his woe. O king, why vice is so mean.'
'Very good, Nagasena! That is so, and I accept it as you say.'
[Here ends the problem as to virtue and vice.]
OF MILINDA THE KING.
[DILEMMA THE SEVENTY-FIFTH. DREAMS.]
33. 'Venerable Nâgasena, men and women in this world see dreams pleasant and evil, things they have seen before and things they have not, things they have done before and things they have not, [298] dreams peaceful and terrible, dreams of matters near to them and distant from them, full of many shapes and innumerable colours. What is this that men call a dream, and who is it who dreams it?'
'It is a suggestion 1, O king, coming across the path of the mind which is what is called a dream. And there are six kinds of people who see dreams— the man who is of a windy humour 2, or of a bilious one, or of a phlegmatic one, the man who dreams dreams by the influence of a god, the man who does so by the influence of his own habits, and the man who does so in the way of prognostication3. And
1 Nimittam, aramunuwa in the Simhalese, p. 438.
* Vâtiko, which Childers renders wrongly rheumatic. Wâta prakriti wa, says the Simhalese, p. 438.
The Simhalese gives the different kinds of dreams seen by each of these six-the first dreams of journeys through space, the second of fire and conflagrations, the third of water, the fourth
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