Seven men disputing possession of a woman bring her before the Tree of Justice into which she is absorbed, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

Seven men disputing possession of a woman bring her before the Tree of Justice into which she is absorbed, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixth 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:

Talking trees that predict the future or administer justice recur in medieval Indo-Iranian literature. Here, the blossoming Tree of Justice settled a dispute. Seven different men wanted to marry a woman who had been carved as a wooden statue by the carpenter (lower right in red) and brought to life by the holy man (lower left in green). A sliver of the woman’s body is seen merging with the trunk. The Tree of Justice decided to absorb her, and as she disappeared the tree proclaimed: “Everything must revert to its own origin.”

Object facts

• Title: Seven men disputing possession of a woman bring her before the Tree of Justice into which she is absorbed, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sixth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Culture: Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Painting only: 10.4 x 9.8 cm (4 1/8 x 3 7/8 in.); Overall: 20 x 14.3 cm (7 7/8 x 5 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.42.a

A detail from the museum

A few tools, such as a hammer and an axe, designate the men’s professions.

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.
• Chandra, Pramod, and Daniel J. Ehnbom. The Cleveland Tuti-Nama Manuscript and the Origins of Mughal Painting. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1976.
• Nakhshabī, Z̤iyāʼ al-Dīn, and Muhammed Ahmed Simsar, translator and editor. Tales of a Parrot = The Cleveland Museum of Art's Ṭūṭīnāma. Cleveland, OH: The Museum, 1978.

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.