[Graehstone]

According to Aristotle and Pliny the elder, parrots are fond of wine and prone to outrageous drunkenness , their mimicry of human speech is not a sign of intelligence but a trick that can be taught only through physical violence. Likewise, writers of the Renaissance frequently used parrots as emblems of "mindless inferiority," claims the author. In Ben Jonson's comic masterpiece "Volpone," the two most idiotic characters among Jonson's cast of knaves and dupes are nicknamed Sir and Lady Pol, on account of their constant, empty chatter.
Prior to this, however, parrots enjoyed a long period of cultural eminence, when Europeans looked to them as quasi-divine marvels. Once, they say, the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara manifested in the form of a cuckoo to teach the Buddha's dharma to the birds of the Himalayas. Birds play an important role because they can travel in three of the five traditional elements: air, earth and water. In mythology, the Celestial Bird adds the element of space to that repertoire; the Phoenix fire. Their remarkably expressive voices, variety of form and sometimes spectacular coloration contributes to their prestige and mythological importance
In olden times called the popinjay, the parrot was early bird in English and French heraldry. It was an Egyptian symbol of wisdom and of good counsel and in wealthy Roman households; it was the function of one slave to care for the family bird, which was often a parrot. In Medieval and renaissance Europe, it was only royalty or the very wealthy who kept parrots the colors of its feathers are linked with life’s elements, sun, water, fire.
The animal is taken here as an embodiment of sense without understanding or will (and yet with the capacity for articulation). ‘A parrot, that’s what they’re up against, a parrot,’ declares the speaker in the unnamable. Because they share a language with human beings, in a sense, parrots are often presented anthropomorphically.
Thus we find that the parrot as the symbol of beauty, wisdom and spiritual knowledge that is tragically imprisoned, in the pages of postcolonial Burmese literature.