Peafowl - Cultural Significance

Cultural Significance

In Hindu culture, peacock is the vehicle of the lord Kartikeya. In the heavenly war, Surapadman was split into two, and each half was granted a boon by Kartikeya. The halves, thus turned into the peacock (his mount) and the rooster his flag, which also "refers to the sun".

In Babylonia and Persia the Peacock is seen as a guardian to royalty, and is often seen in engravings upon the thrones of royalty.

Melek Taus (ملك طاووس - Kurdish Tawûsê Melek), the Peacock Angel, is the Yazidi name for the central figure of their faith. The Yazidi consider Tawûsê Melek an emanation of God and a benevolent angel who has redeemed himself from his fall and has become a demiurge who created the cosmos from the Cosmic egg. After he repented, he wept for 7,000 years, his tears filling seven jars, which then quenched the fires of hell. In art and sculpture, Tawûsê Melek is depicted as a peacock. However, peacocks are not native to the lands where Tawûsê Melek is worshipped.

In 1956, John J. Graham created an abstraction of an eleven-feathered peacock logo for American broadcaster NBC. This brightly hued peacock was adopted due to the increase in colour programming. NBC's first colour broadcasts showed only a still frame of the colourful peacock. The emblem made its first on-air appearance on May 22, 1956. NBC later adopted the slogan "We're proud as a peacock!" The current version of the logo debuted in 1986 and has six feathers (yellow, orange, red, purple, blue, green).

A stylized peacock in full display is the logo for the Pakistan Television Corporation.

In some cultures the peacock is also a symbol of pride or vanity, due to the way the bird struts and shows off its plumage.