Thread by @vakibs

In this thread, I will discuss about the most spectacular bird in the world - the peacock, and the fascinating role it played in the cultural imagination of Indians.

Darwin once said that the peacock's feather made him sick. It seems such an outrageous and pointless thing. 😄

Of course, there are scientific theories about how and why such a thing evolved. But irrespective of the merits of these theories, we can all agree that the peacock's feather is a uniquely beautiful thing. In India, it is associated with the play of Kṛshṇa and the eye of Indra.

But the deity the peacock is the most associated with is Skanda/Kārtikēya, also known as Murugan, who is the son of Śiva and Pārvati.

In order to understand this imagery, we need to go through some ancient symbols that will lead to many surprises, including from outside India.

In a previous thread, I discussed about the brother of Kārtikēya - Gaṇēśa, and the cultural symbolism of the elephant in his imagery. Now what is the next best Indian animal to discuss after the elephant, if not the peacock. 😄

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1088462331393130499

Just like the elephant, the peacock has a cosmic symbolism. But before we investigate how to look for the peacock amongst the stars in the sky, we should discuss another bird that came earlier in the imagination of the Indians - Garuḍa, or the cosmic eagle.

Garuḍa is invoked in the most ancient verses of the Vēdas. He liberates Sōma (the nectar of immortality) which is the target of the Vedic Yajña. He is called Suparṇa (the great winged one), who vanquished the Nāgas (snake-like beings) who are symbolic of ignorance and rote.

Just like the eagle, the peacock is also invoked in Indian culture as the enemy of the snakes. It is a naturalistic observation, but there is a deeper meaning.

The snakes are symbolic of Vṛtti (repetitive processes), and Yajña is a way to overcome them.
the-redpill.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-sa…

It is said that the feathers of the peacock were made out of the wings of Garuḍa. Furthermore, the elephant Airāvata was made out of the broken eggshells, out of which Garuḍa was born.

Earlier, I discussed the astronomical significance of the elephant. So what about Garuḍa?

Unlike the elephant, if you look for an eagle to spot among the stars, you will not find it.

Garuḍa is a more abstract symbol who denotes the cosmic division of time, that is apparent in the very process of Yajña. But sometimes, an image of his likeness is made in Vedic altars.

The Agnicayana ritual requires an altar to be made in the model of a Syēna (falcon) or sometimes as a Suparṇa (eagle). This is a fascinating arrangement of a bricks at multiple layers. To do this, one needs to solve interesting problems in geometry like the Pythagoras principle.

What is going on here? It is a division of time across multiple months, and tallying that with the movement of the stars.

The objective is to find Sōma (immortality) i.e, the precise moment of rejuvenation of the year, which happens on earth through spring or monsoon season.

Each of the bricks in the various layers of the altar denote specific divisions of time, which might be associated with Nakshatras (constellations) that are visited by the sun or the moon during a specific period of the year.

The bird represents a complete whole of this process.

However ingenious this model might be, inevitably, it would fail. The primary reason is precession due to the slow rotation of the earth's axis. But it could also be due to higher precision in calculations, which will dispute the exact moment of immortality (onset of the year).

Now, what do we do with the model ?

This is where the peacock comes to the rescue. Each of the feathers is symbolic of new observations (the eyes of Indra) and building them as a catalogue of the sky, which when spread out spans the horizon.

In Indian Purāṇas, we can see a constant dialectic between the two strategies of reducing the observations to a compact model (like an Occam's razor) and increasing the observations to expand the model.

Sometimes the former wins, like Paraśurāma winning over Kārtavīrya Arjuna.

Kārtavīrya Arjuna was supposed to have a thousand arms. Paraśurāma, who represents the Bhṛgu tradition (with a simpler model focussed on the star Sirius) managed to vanquish this chaos.

But his time had to end, during the period of Rāmāyana where Śiva's Pināka bow was broken.

Śrī Rāma is supposed to have stringed the Sāranga bow (Sā+ranga: entire astronomical theater), which better explained the observations at that specific time.

The peacock, with the thousand eyes in its tail, is a similar strategy in the history of astronomical observations.

During the period of Rāmāyana, it was said that Indra hid behind the peacock's tail, when he was pursued by Rāvaṇa. Thus hidden, Indra was saved and then he bestowed the radiant hue onto the feathers of the peacock.

This beautiful poetic imagery hides a story of astronomy.

Now let us come back to Kārtikēya, who was born from the seed of Śiva (the still center of the cosmic motion of the stars). He was raised by the Kṛttikas (the Pleiades). Then this son of God becomes the Śāsta (the guide to the immortality). He rides the cosmic peacock.

In Indian culture, a story has meaning at 3 levels: Adhibhautika (physical), Ahdidaivika (cosmic) and Adhyātmika (meditative). In the Adhyātmika sense, the peacock refers to the Sahasrāra Chakra (the lotus with 1000 petals), that is a rare blissful experience.

(Art by Alex Grey)

The peacock traveled around the world. 🙂 Sometimes, the imagery had to be adapted because of inability to visualize it. But sometimes it persisted, even if peacock is not a local animal!

This is Malek Taus, the supreme Divine symbol of the Yezidis (Yajāta: those who do Yajña).

The story of Kārtikēya reached Egypt and Greece. In Egypt, it has been adapted into the tale of Osiris. In Greece, this became the story of Dionysus. The Greeks were conscious of the Indian origin of Dionysus, and that he is the same as Osiris in Egypt.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1020393156423159808

The remarkable success of how this myth traveled across the world refers to a peculiarly lucky time for astronomical observations, where a phenomenon associated with the Pleiades unambiguously determined the onset of the spring. When exactly was that, is a mystery to be resolved.

But inevitably, this lucky period of time has ended. The phenomenon was no longer to be seen. But the son of God, who so reliably heralded immortality (the onset of spring) cannot be forgotten.

He was transformed into many new Avatars. And one of them got extremely successful.

The image of the peacock may not have traveled along with the astronomical models (and associated religions), but many cultures remember a cosmic bird, probably from an earlier transmission from India as Garuḍa.

Even in Christianity, the Holy Spirit is represented as a bird.

In China, Zhuang Zi makes a mysterious reference to the mighty "Peng" bird. Similar to the symbolism of Garuḍa, this is likely a reference to the journey of sun along the cosmos.

Owing to such pre-existing folk imagery, Garuḍa became extremely popular in Buddhist Indo China.

This is Garuḍa as the royal emblem of Thailand.

Just as Garuḍa is the mount of Vishṇu, the peacock is the mount of Kārtikēya. Both the birds are enemies of Nāgas (repetitive throes of Samsāra) and their bearers secure the nectar of immortality for the Dēvas.

But I think there is a difference in Vaishṇavaite and Śaivaite traditions, in how the cosmic journey of the sun is understood.

The former is based on heliacal rising of various stars, as I discussed about the Avatāras of Vishṇu in this earlier thread.

https://twitter.com/vakibs/status/1069287527830470661

In contrast, Śaivism accords precedence to the moon. The journey of the sun is computed indirectly, via the journey of the moon.

As Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad says, "The world of the sun is wrapped in the world of the moon. And the latter is wrapped in the world of Nakshatras."

Since both the motions of the moon and the sun lie on the same ecliptic plane (that is divided into stellar zones or "Nakshatras"), the Nakshatras on a full moon day can be used to infer the position of the Nakshatras which correspond to the sun. They will be at the opposite end.

Furthermore, the journey of the moon across the ecliptic is much faster. The Nakshatras along the intermediary phases of the moon provide a finer scale for calculations (akin to Vernier callipers).

I think this was used by Indian astronomers to map historical observations.

How exactly was this done, I don't know.

The birth of Gaṇēśa is on a Śukla Chaturdhi (the 4th day of waxing). The birth of Kārtikēya is on a Śukla Shashṭi (the 6th day of waxing). I think this scale is a clue to when that day was precisely coinciding with a winter solstice.

Now due to precesion, both of these days have been displaced from an earthly event, like equinox or solstice. But these sidereal configurations might have coincided with such an event, at some time in history. That would be the time when these models traveled across the world.

Kālidāśa's epic poem "Kumāra Sambhavam", recounting the birth of Kārtikēya, was very likely composed at a time when the astronomical phenomenon related to the Pleiades was clearly visible, and coinciding with an earthly event like the solstice.

When was this? We don't know !

May Śāstā and his peacock guide us in finding this out. 🙂 (End of thread).