The daughter-in-law of the king of Banaras, charmed by the music of a vagabond, comes down to meet him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixteenth Night
1560
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1560
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
The daughter-in-law of the king of Banaras, charmed by the music of a vagabond, comes down to meet him, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixteenth Night is a 1560 unspecified by Unknown, a Mughal Painting work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
A woman in a gold-trimmed robe climbs down a ladder from her palace window. Below, a musician with a rebab sings under a tree. The right side of the painting is patched—someone fixed it long ago. This is one page from a *Tuti-nama*, a book of parrot tales told to Emperor Akbar. The stories were meant to entertain, but they also showed how people lived and loved in Mughal India. The ladder is a quiet detail—it lets the woman sneak out without being seen. To see more paintings like this, look up Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605).
A ladder connects the daughter-in-law’s chambers to the courtyard below, where the vagabond kneels beneath a tree, a stringed instrument called a rebab in hand, mouth open in song. Because her husband is unpleasant and ill-tempered, the woman falls in love with the musician. The damage to the right side of this page was probably repaired in the early 1800s.
The whereabouts of the previous folio, probably depicting the parrot addressing Khujasta on the sixteenth night, are unknown.
Read the full account in the museum source.
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