The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth 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:

According to this story, written in Persian, a skilled yogi in India reached such a high level of practice that he was able to perform acts of transformation. Anxious to prevent his wife from committing adultery, he transformed himself into an elephant and carried her hidden in a howdah on his back and stayed only in the deep forest, away from men. One day, when the elephant was out foraging for food, a lone soldier came upon the wife, and they made love. The moral of the story is that no matter how extreme the lengths to which one might go to prevent adultery, if someone is inclined to do so, it will happen.

Object facts

• Title: The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fourth 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: 9.1 x 10.6 cm (3 9/16 x 4 3/16 in.); Overall: 20 x 13.5 cm (7 7/8 x 5 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.26.b

A detail from the museum

Discoloration around the elephant’s face and legs indicate that his body has been repositioned.

Collection credit

Gift of Mrs. A. Dean Perry

Further reading listed by the museum

• Seyller, John. “Overpainting in the Cleveland T̤ūtīnāma.” Artibus Asiae 52, no. 3/4 (1992): 283-318.
• 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.