Parrot’s Role in Indian Storytelling, and Mystical Theme-creating in Persianate Texts

Due to the special relationship depicted between them and the supernal world, birds are of great significance in the Islamic mysticism. Among them, parrot as a prominent bird in mystical texts is often represented as having two different faces: its manifest face which because of parrot’s indiscriminate imitation of human speech symbolizes an appearance of gaining knowledge without understanding the meaning, and the latent face which stands for a sacred and wise bird from the heavens, whose words partake of supreme truths. As the bird is associated in Persianate texts with one of its main origins India, we examined parrot and related manifestations thereof in India so as to understand the second face, and showed the connection between the bird and major ceremonies in the Indian subcontinent in some religious and fictional texts directly linked to the ceremonies. Parrot in the texts is a bird enjoying true wisdom, a gods’ aide, the memorizer of sacred texts, and a mould for embodiment of the spiritual on earth. Against this background, we tried to show some similarities and correspondences between the image of parrot in Indian as well as mystical Persianate texts and discuss the possibility of some influences