The daughter of the king of the jinns bows before the King of Kings who has just undergone the ordeal of passing through the boiling oil to emerge as a youth, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Sev

The daughter of the king of the jinns bows before the King of Kings who has just undergone the ordeal of passing through the boiling oil to emerge as a youth, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh 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 rejuvenated King of Kings, dressed in orange, stands at the bottom of a pit with the daughter of the king of the jinns and her elderly lover. The Brahman, dressed in white, peers over the edge. The King rubs the old man with the elixir of life so that he can pass through the oil and be purified.

Object facts

• Title: The daughter of the king of the jinns bows before the King of Kings who has just undergone the ordeal of passing through the boiling oil to emerge as a youth, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Seventh 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: 16.7 x 9.9 cm (6 9/16 x 3 7/8 in.); Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.49.b

A detail from the museum

The boiling oil purifies the old man by burning away his animal characteristics.

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]: 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.