The Kural · Chapter
CXXII: In Praise of the Dream-State explained
The speaker praises the dream-state as a refuge where she can meet her beloved, who is absent in waking life.
What happens
The speaker praises the dream-state as a refuge where she can meet her beloved, who is absent in waking life. She laments the cruelty of waking reality that cuts short these dream encounters and wishes for perpetual sleep to remain with her beloved. The villagers, unaware of her dream visions, wrongly assume she has been abandoned.
Themes in this chapter
Love and Marriage
The chapter centers on the speaker's intense longing for her beloved, expressed through the dream-state as a substitute for physical union.
The Vanity of Worldly Life
The speaker rejects waking reality as cruel and incomplete, valuing the dream-world as the only true source of joy and connection.
Characters to notice
Key passages
“What honours shall I do to the Dream which hath brought me a message from the beloved?”
How can I properly praise the dream that has delivered news of my lover to me?
The speaker elevates the dream as a messenger of love.
“If I am able to support life yet it is only because I see him in dreams who showeth not his face in waking hours.”
I can only endure living because I see him in dreams, since he never appears to me when I am awake.
Dreams are the sole sustenance for the speaker's survival.
“Oh that there were no waking state! For then my dream would never be cut short and my beloved would never depart from me.”
I wish there were no waking state, so my dream would never end and my beloved would never leave me.
The speaker longs for perpetual sleep to keep her beloved with her.
“The cruel one who pitieth me not while I am awake, why doth he haunt me in my dreams?”
Why does the one who shows me no mercy when I am awake still appear to me in my dreams?
The speaker questions the paradox of her beloved's cruelty in waking life and his presence in dreams.
“These village folk say that he hath parted from me: is it that they see him not in dreams?”
The villagers claim he has left me—do they not see him in their dreams?
The speaker dismisses the villagers' ignorance, as they lack her dream visions.