[INDOLOGY] hermaphrodite king as an evil omen

[Lubomir Ondracka]

Dear Jonathan,

last year I went through duḥsvapna and ariṣṭa sections in many texts (mostly Brahmanical), but I don't remember anything similar to your story.

An Indian stock of bad dreams and other omens is rather limited, many of them have long history from Vedic texts upto late medieval nibandhas. It seems that this dream (a monkey/hermaphrodite becoming a king) does not belong to this stock.

The only positive information I can give you is that when a monkey is seen in a dream, it is a duḥsvapna signalling some disaster, usually a death of the dreaming person (e.g. there are a few verses saying this in Jagaddeva's Svapnacintāmaṇi).

It could be useful to have a look at Ballālasena's Adbhutasāgara, it's a treasury of different omens common in India. I didn't read the full text (it's very long), so there's a chance you will find what you are looking for in this text (if you didn't check it yet).

Best,
Lubomir


On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 12:33:02 +0100
Jonathan Silk <kauzeya at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Friends,
> 
> This may be something well known, but...
> I am working now on a set of prophecies of the evil to beset the Buddhist
> community after the Buddha's death. These (they are relatively well known)
> are cast as dreams of King Kṛkin, who lived in the distant past, and whose
> dreams were interpreted by the Buddha Kāśyapa (some sources say this was
> his son!) as pertaining to his far future, namely, our time, more or less.
> Anyway, one of the dreams is that a monkey will be consecrated as king,
> which is interpreted to mean that a hermaphrodite will be consecrated king.
> I've looked (sort of, not exactly sure even how to look for this!) to see
> whether this is considered a sign of decline, but I've come up empty.
> Probably i'm just looking in the wrong place... but one of you śiṣṭas must
> know...?
> 
> thanks!  jonathan
> 
> -- 
> J. Silk
> Leiden University
> Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, LIAS
> Matthias de Vrieshof 3, Room 0.05b
> 2311 BZ Leiden
> The Netherlands
> 
> copies of my publications may be found at
> http://www.buddhismandsocialjustice.com/silk_publications.html