Peacock
animal · 6 works · 6 mentions · 6 anchored passages
peacock · the peacock · peacock's tail · peacocks · swan
spoken of as
1 expressionin the texts
Atharvaveda (Paippalāda)
The peacock, named as the natural predator of the scorpion, invoked within the food-chain logic of the scorpion-medicine charm.
The peacock eats the scorpion;
Orations
A richly plumed bird described for its beauty and display, contrasted with the plain owl.
Yet the birds have no wish to look upon the peacock while it adorns itself with all this, nor, when they hear the voice of the nightingale singing at dawn, are they at all moved towards her;
Yet how is it that they do not rather admire the peacock, so beautiful and so richly coloured, and especially when it is preening itself and displaying the beauty of its feathers — when it shows off before the female, raising its tail and spreading it all about itself like a fair vaulted chamber, or like a painted heaven dappled with stars, marvellous too in the rest of its body, very nearly the c …
De Rerum Natura
Bird cited for its light-reactive iridescent tail.
Changes its colours likewise, when it turns.
The peacock's tail, filled with the copious light,
De Anima
The peacock (and, secondarily, the swan) into which Homer and poets generally were claimed to be reincarnated.
granting that the poets pass into peacocks or into swans — if there is a comely voice even to swans — what animal will you put upon a just man, an Aeacus?
De Pallio
Bird whose iridescent, ever-changing plumage exemplifies natural precedent for changing dress.
although for the peacock too the plumage is its dress — and indeed of the choicest kind — nay, more pressing than every purple where his necks bloom, and more gilded than every fringe where his back gleams, and looser than every trailing robe where his tail lies, many-coloured and party-coloured and changing-coloured, never the same, always another, even if always the same when another — to be cha …
Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa
Birds repeatedly invoked as a marker of monsoon joy throughout Rāma's nature description.
peacocks dance;
"Forest borders have come alive, with peacocks dancing beautifully;
"Thrilled, having caught the fragrance of Ketaka blossoms, the great elephants in the forest waterfalls, disturbed by the thunderous sounds, cry out together with the maddened peacocks.