The invention of musical instruments from the intestines of a monkey, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourteenth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The invention of musical instruments from the intestines of a monkey, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourteenth 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:

A monkey has been disemboweled while jumping from tree to tree. Once the intestine dried, a wise man attached it to a stick and a gourd, creating the first instrument. Instruments developed from this, called the rebab and the vina, are held by the musicians who sit beneath the trees.

Object facts

• Title: The invention of musical instruments from the intestines of a monkey, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourteenth 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: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 9.7 x 10.2 cm (3 13/16 x 4 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.108.b

A detail from the museum

The rebab-player sits on the left, while the vina-player is on the right.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• 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.
• 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.