Societies interpreted their dreams in various ways. While dream interpretation has always been an essential part of medical and philosophical discourse, it was only recently that historians began to show certain interest in writing what is called the cultural history of dream interpretation. In fact, dreams, rituals, myths, social memories and consciously constructed histories all share certain similarities since they engage with the past and are expressed in a narrative form. Dream psychology, therefore, may provide a useful analytical tool for historians who are interested in mapping the mental structure of societies. This article is an attempt to unearth the patterns of dream interpretations by analysing the dream expressions found in Tamil literature up to the twelfth century ad. The social attitude towards dreams in the Sangam literature, early Tamil epics and Bhakti literatures is studied in the sociocultural context of their times. One can presume that the literary language of dreams more or less reflected the contemporary cultural beliefs and social practices.

社会以各种方式解释他们的梦想。尽管梦解一直是医学和哲学论述的重要组成部分，但直到最近，历史学家才开始对写作梦解的文化史表现出一定的兴趣。实际上，梦，仪式，神话，社会记忆和有意识地建构的历史都具有某些相似之处，因为它们与过去互动并以叙事形式表达。因此，梦心理学可以为有兴趣绘制社会心理结构的历史学家提供有用的分析工具。本文试图通过分析梦表达发掘梦解释的模式在泰米尔文献中找到了十二世纪广告。Sangam文学，早期泰米尔史诗和Bhakti文学对梦想的社会态度是在其时代的社会文化背景下进行研究的。可以假定，梦的文学语言或多或少地反映了当代文化信仰和社会实践。