Khujasta kills the pet mynah who advises her not to be unfaithful to Maymun, her husband, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of the Parrot): First Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Khujasta kills the pet mynah who advises her not to be unfaithful to Maymun, her husband, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of the Parrot): First Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The first illustration of the Cleveland Tuti-Nama shows the merchant departing and his wife killing the mynah bird that tells her not to commit adultery. The bright red background and composition are Indian, while the delicacy of drawing is Persian, and the atmospheric effects in the upper left are a Mughal development.

Object facts

• Title: Khujasta kills the pet mynah who advises her not to be unfaithful to Maymun, her husband, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of the Parrot): First Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 19.9 x 14.2 cm (7 13/16 x 5 9/16 in.); Painting only: 12.9 x 10.5 cm (5 1/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.8.a

A detail from the museum

Merchant ships brave treacherous waters; a distant city appears in the upper left.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.
• Seyller, John. “Overpainting in the Cleveland T̤ūtīnāma.” Artibus Asiae 52, no. 3/4 (1992): 283-318.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.