The Indian peafowl (Pavo cristatus) is a remarkable bird. The bright and colourful plumage of the male, the peacock, has made it highly-valued as an ornamental bird, whose nobility of character became associated with numerous powerful Asian and Middle Eastern monarchies, in India, Burma, Vietnam, and Persia. But human observation of peafowl reveals other extraordinary features. Buddhist monks in northern India, accustomed to living off the land, were well-used to which plants were beneficial and which plants were toxic. When they observed peafowl happily grazing on known poisonous plants, they began to associate them with bodhisattvas, individuals who achieved enlightenment through overcoming the ‘poisons’ of spiritual life – hatred, ignorance, desire, and delusion. Finally, like the peacock unfolding its tail-feathers, the bodhisattva’s enlightenment was revealed in beauty and splendour. Legend has it that, at the ceremony during which one becomes a bodhisattva, one wears coloured feathers and eats the same poisonous plants as the peafowl; if enlightenment has been properly achieved, one will be unaffected, and the feathers will change colours. Through their association with bodhisattvas, peafowl became symbols of wisdom, and protective images.

Thus is introduced a kind of Buddhist mythical beast, a chimera, with the face and torso of a human and the body and tail of a peacock, or sometimes of another bird. Beautiful siren-like creatures, these figures were both vicious protectors of temples and other establishments, as well as vital sentinels on the path of wisdom. These creatures are known as kinnari in India, and in Tibet became known as miamchi. In both cases these creatures could be sent by a divinity in the Buddhist pantheon – despite technically being an atheistic religion, Buddhism recognises a number of divinities with powers akin to those of a god, achieved through enlightenment – in order to protect a particular place, person or thing. Alternatively, these figures could be seen as a specific figure in Buddhist myth, known as Mahamayuri, the Wisdom King. Despite her male title, Mahamayuri was a female figure, a kind of wrathful demigod who were originally the guardians of esoteric wisdom. Given the associations of peafowl with wisdom, these animals were often the mounts or companions of Wisdom Kings, and, if lived experience in proximity to peacocks is any guide, potentially dangerous ones at that. Mahamayuri is exclusively portrayed riding a peacock, but it is possible that she has been merged with the peacock in reference to the miamachi here.

The ambiguity of the symbolism is enhanced by the figure depicted on the base, carved from a clear green gemstone which may be emerald or a transparent spinach jade. This is Green Tara, also known as jetsün dölma, the ‘venerable mother of liberation’. Tara is perhaps the most interesting, and most tragic, figure in Buddhist myth. She was originally a princess, living in an alternate dimension millions of years in the past. She made dramatic offerings every year to the Buddha of her world-system, and earned his special favour. He gave her special instruction on how to become a bodhisattva; she attained enlightenment by following his instructions, but was then halted on her path. Women could not become Buddhas, the ultimate compassionate being, themselves. The monks of her world-system informed her that she would have to be reborn as a male in the next cycle of samsara, the endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth, in order to progress. Tara informed the monks that they were simply weak-minded, in seeing gender as a barrier to the ultimate enlightenment. She sadly noted, however, that few of those who achieved enlightenment would work for the welfare of females. She vowed to always be reborn as a woman until the cycle of samsara finally ends, and gender is no longer a barrier to entry into the state of nirvana. She meditated on this for ten million years, before the Buddha of her world-system saw her suffering, and elevated her to divine status, thus offering a kind of path for women to achieve nirvana.

The presence of Tara could simply mean that she has summoned these miamchi as an embodiment of her own power, in order to protect one of her own temples or monasteries, or perhaps a private house. Alternatively, however, Mahamayuri was also often associated with Tara, since both are kinds of divinities and both are explicitly female (the other major ‘female’ figure in Buddhism, known to the Chinese as Guanyin, is in fact a genderless manifestation of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara). Whichever these remarkable hybrid figures represent, it is clear that they are important guardians, designed to sit either side of a door or to flank an interior shrine. The workmanship is outstanding. Each is made up of seven separately-cast pieces of gilt bronze, studded with inlays in various stones – turquoise, coral, moonstone, and ruby, as well as the emerald or spinach jade of Tara’s skin. It is possible that an eighth piece, now missing, may have represented a fanning peacock’s tail. The human elements of the hybrid creatures are presented as feminine, but without traditional gender markers like breasts. This is common for Buddhist deities which come in two forms: the explicitly sexual tantric form, which bears clear gender markers, and the non-sexual form, which avoids any hint at sexual identity.

The remarkable quality of the workmanship is most evident in the hundreds of individual inlays which make up petals in the across the body and legs of the peacock elements, as well as in the detailed filigree decoration of the bases. Filigree, the process of attaching metal wire to a solid metallic base in order to create elaborate patterns, is far from an easy task. The early Chinese form of filigree, practiced in the Fourth and Fifth century AD, relied on painting different strands of gold or other metal onto a surface, in a process known as jin yin cuo; the kind of filigree work exhibited on these pieces is a later Indian adaptation of the European practice invented by the Etruscans, Romans and Skythians. The unusual triangular bases probably represent the trikaya, the three bodies in which each Buddha manifests themselves. Given there are three representations of Tara on each, it is possible that her three bodies are indicated. The green skin of the goddess represents her most important form, Green Tara (śyamatara), a popular protective and nurturing form.