And thus his crime and sentence shared.
Her frightful claws remind her well
Of how she sinned and how she fell.
The native home of this resplendent pheasant is India and Malaya, and the brilliance of its plumage (in the male sex, to which all that follows refers), the radiating, rustling quills and prismatic eye-spots of the magnificent tail-coverts, together with other features of the bird’s life, led to its association in Eastern mythology with the sun and sometimes with the rainbow. Taken westward by adventurous traders, the glittering dress of the cock entered into the popular conception of the phenix, and thus the peacock came to be accepted in pagan Greece and Italy as a substitute for that gorgeous fiction, as no real phenix was obtainable. Naturally the new bird was assigned, superseding her homely goose, to Hera (Juno) the consort of Zeus (Jupiter) whose cognizance was the eagle—the other component of the hybrid phenix; and, as Juno was queen of heaven, the bird was used by pre-christian artists as the symbol of the apotheosis of an empress as was the eagle that of an emperor.
These ideas were of Eastern origin, and came with the bird when it was introduced into the western world from its home in southern Asia, where its harsh cry of warning to the jungle whenever it espied a tiger, leopard or big snake, was also a welcome signal to the people of the woodland villages to be on their guard. “For this reason, as well as its habit of foretelling rain by its dancing and cries of delight, it has from time immemorial been held in the East as a bird of magic, or the embodiment of some god of the forest whose beneficence is well worth supplication, and whose resentment might bring disaster. Hence it was ever protected, not by law, but from a feeling of veneration.”
The words quoted are from one of a series of articles on Oriental Art by Mrs. Katherine M. Ball,[[68]] printed in Japan (July, 1922), from which the reader may gather further facts as to the place the bird holds in the religious and artistic thought of the Orient. In China, for example, in the time of the Tang dynasty (8th century, A. D.), “many thousand districts,” according to the chronicles, “paid tribute in peacocks, because their feathers were required by the state, not only as decorations for the imperial processions, but for the designation of official rank; for the peacock feather was bestowed upon officials, both military and civil, as a reward for faithful service.” Such feathers differed according to the honor to be dispensed, hence there are the “flower” feather, the “green” feather, and the “one-eyed,” “two-eyed” and “three-eyed,” all of which were greatly treasured and worn on special occasions. This use of the feather is accounted for by Mrs. Ball in this way: “In the Chin dynasty a defeated general took refuge in a forest where there were many peacocks. When the pursuing forces arrived, and found the fowl so quiet and undisturbed, they concluded that no one could possibly have come that way, and forthwith abandoned the search. The general—who later became known as the ancestor of five kings—was thus able to escape, and so grateful was he that later when he came into power he instituted the custom of conferring a peacock feather as an honor for the achievement of bravery in battle.” This incident reminds us of the escape of Yoritomo of Japan, and of the Tartar general who avoided capture under the protection of a quiet owl, as related elsewhere.
The Japanese are fond of the peacock as a motive in their exquisite art, and frequently combine it with the peony, as do the Chinese, who consider that the only flower worthy of such association. Another subject frequently seen illustrated is a representation of the Buddhist healing deity Kujako Myowo, the Japanese analogue of the Hindoo deification of this fowl.
Whether the peacock was brought to the Mediterranean region from India or Persia or from Phoenicia is unknown. It is commonly said that Alexander the Great was its introducer; but wherever it went its symbolic significance accompanied it, otherwise the peoples of Greece and Italy would hardly have given it the name of their own goddess of light and day, or have held it to be a visible sign of the rainbow itself. In combination with the eagle it was originally an attribute of Pan, who later was obliged to yield it to Juno, the goddess of Heaven, thus making it the star-bird, the symbol of the starry firmament, on account of the “eyes” in its tail-feathers, which were regarded as the very stars themselves. Out of this arose many myths, chief among which is that of the hundred-eyed Argus—how Argus was set by Juno to watch Io, of whom she had been jealous, but was killed by Mercury in the interest of the queen’s unrepentant husband; and how Juno makes the best of a bad situation:
Thus Argus lies in pieces cold and pale;
And all his hundred eyes with all their light