The parrot mother cautions her young on the danger of playing with foxes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifth Night (c. 1560): Art, History and Details

The parrot mother cautions her young on the danger of playing with foxes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifth Night (c. 1560) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Dasavanta (Indian, d. 1584).

The work and its context

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

One night the parrot Tuti tells Khujasta that he hopes her relationship with her new lover does not wind up being only half-baked, like the medical treatment of the king of Kamarupa. She asks what that was about, and Tuti begins the story by telling of a mother parrot who lived in the forest with her young, who liked to play with the fox cubs who lived at the base of the tree. The mother parrot is perched on the edge of her treetop nest.

Object facts

• Title: The parrot mother cautions her young on the danger of playing with foxes, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Fifth Night
• Date: c. 1560
• Creator attribution: Dasavanta (Indian, d. 1584)
• 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: 10 x 10.5 cm (3 15/16 x 4 1/8 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.32.a

A detail from the museum

A fox cub suckles contentedly, as the mother keeps a sharp eye on the others.

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.
• Kathman, Barbara A. A Cleveland Bestiary. Cleveland, OH; Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981.
• 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.