Chaturbhuj Nala's rock art in Bhanpura, Madhya Pradesh.
What we see is two peacocks attacking a snake. Peacocks are known to hunt and eat snakes and were kept in palaces for exactly that reason...I think that the dots depicted next to the snake are drops of snake's blood. But does this image have another, non obvious meaning. I think so. And I think that animal calendar markers can help us understand it...
Animal calendar markers are made by people who observed that certain annual animal behaviour, like mating, birthing, migrating, coincides with some climatic event like summer monsoon season...
In India, climatic year is divided into two halves, the wet half of the year, summer monsoon (Apr - Sep) and dry half of the year, winter monsoon (Oct - Mar)...
I talked about deification of the monsoon winds in India in my post "Surya's wives" in which I explained what this commonly depicted scene means.
This very happy looking dude, with two gorgeous babes sitting on his laps, is no other than the Vedic Sun God Surya. He is positively "beaming" with pride...And I guess pretty glad to have few extra hands...But what is really the narrative here? Well sun and monsoon, dry and wet, of course...
And in my post "Vayu", about the "God of wind" whose name literally means air/wind. But not just any wind. Summer monsoon wind...
The peak monsoon rain season in India is Jun-Sep...
Interestingly, this is also the peak mating season of the peafowls. During this time peacocks engage in mad displays and fights and their mating call even sounds like Hindu for "Come rain!!!"...
Not something local people would easily miss...
Which is why peacock became deified animal calendar marker for summer monsoon rain season. I talked about this in my post "Come rain"...
Inevitable deification of peacock animal calendar marker, process we see everywhere with all animal calendar markers, produced in India these kind of legends: Peacocks originally had dull tail feathers...
But once Indra, the god of monsoon rain, battled the demon Ravana. Indra was losing the fight, and was running away from Ravana when he came across a peacock who spread its tail and hid Indra behind it...
In return from being saved by the peacock, Indra gave a boon to the peacock saying that just as he, Lord Indra is Sahasraksha, or thousand-eyed, the peacock too shall get a plumage of a thousand iridescent eyes...
Oh, and since then Indra loves peacock so much, that it is believed that when Indra transforms himself into an animal, he becomes a peacock...
Indra is usually depicted riding on a cloud elephant (another deified animal calendar marker)...
This is another proof that Rig Vedas had to have been written in India proper, cause this link between rain gods and elephants makes no sense anywhere else...
I talk about elephant calendar marker in India in my posts "Musth", "Samantabhadra", "Modesty", "Ganesha"...
But Indra's main general, Kartikeya, rides on a peacock...I will talk about Kartikeya in a separate post soon...
Also, because this overlap between peafowl mating season and the monsoons season, Makara, the mount of the old monsoon god Varuna, but really a complex animal calendar marker for the monsoon season, sometimes has peacock tail...Talked about it in my posts "Makara", "Yakshi", "Maruts"...
But what about the snake?
Snake is a pure solar animal. It is in our world when sun is here (day, hot half of the year) and it is in the underworld when sun is there (night, cold half of the year)...
I talked about this in many of my posts listed here:
I so far didn't write about snake animal calendar marker in Indian mythology, something which is way overdue. Will try to do this soo...I promise...
But what snake is depicted between the two peacocks on the Chaturghuj Nala's rocks? If I was a betting man, I would bet it is the Indian Cobra (Naja naja).
Why? Because it has a mating season in India between April and July...During rain monsoon...
During this period, the female Indian Cobra lays eggs in holes in the ground and then guards them. The incubation period lasts for approximately 48 to 69 days, after which eggs hatch into young snakes that are independent from birth and capable of hunting and delivering venom...
Again, all the things not easily missed by the local population...
So, during the monsoon season, both peacock and cobra have their mating seasons and are because of that both animal calendar markers for the monsoon season...
In the Arthashastra, an Ancient Indian Sanskrit treatise on statecraft, politics, economic policy and military strategy, when the author wants to talk about two natural enemies forgetting their ancient hostility in the face of a common calamity, he says:
The peacock and the cobra are natural enemies. But during the heat of the summer, the cobra lives in the shade of the peacock’s wing...
I believe that this is both political and calendaric allegory...
And so back to the original depictions of peacocks attacking a cobra from the Chaturghuj Nala's rock art. What I think is depicted here is triumph of summer monsoon (peacock) over sun (snake), where the drops of snake's blood represent rain...
That's it. To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…Then check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am way way behind...
