SIDE BY SIDE
Compare mantic systems
Read systems against shared questions to identify common language, procedural differences and distinct limits.
| Dimension | 占梦与解梦书 ↗ | 风角、云气与物候杂占 ↗ |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Dreams, characters and popular divination | Celestial omens and signs |
| Inputs | Initial dream account, recording time, source and later additions | Direction, time, weather description and traditional judgment |
| Procedural structure | Dream images are reduced to motifs and matched with inherited statements, ritual ideas, puns or phase correlations. Earlier practice also considered timing, dreamer status and ritual resolution. | Time, direction, color, sound and duration were recorded and matched to omen statements through phases, directions, offices, armies or topics. Some rules may preserve weather experience; others are symbolic analogies. |
| Formation | Pre-imperial offices and narratives; medieval Dunhuang manuals; later dictionary-like compilations | Pre-imperial precedents; extensive manuals from Qin-Han through Tang |
| Evidence labels | Textually documented · Traditional attribution · Contested lineage or date | Excavated evidence · Textually documented |
| Texts | Rites of Zhou, Dream Diviner / Dunhuang New Collection of Duke of Zhou Dream Explanations / Menglin Xuanjie | Yisi Zhan / Kaiyuan Zhanjing / Dunhuang cloud and bird-call manuals / Qin-Han daybooks |
| Limits | Received Duke of Zhou dream books were not authored by the historical Duke, and there is no fixed dream-symbol dictionary valid across all periods and cultures. | Practical meteorology and auspicious interpretation must be analyzed separately. Animal behavior cannot be treated as portent without ecology, season and observational bias. |
| Research question | How can the initial narrative be separated from later interpretation? | Can different observers describe the same phenomenon consistently? |