The Raja’s son vows to sever his head and offer it to the image if he is united with the princess he has seen in the temple, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-fourth Night (c. 1560): Art, H

The Raja’s son vows to sever his head and offer it to the image if he is united with the princess he has seen in the temple, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-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:

The raja’s son, wearing orange, stands with his hands raised in supplication before an enshrined golden image. When he entered the temple for worship, he encountered a princess and instantly became deeply enamored by her beauty. Upon arriving home, his father ensured that the two would be married, although the promised self-sacrifice remained unfulfilled.

Object facts

• Title: The Raja’s son vows to sever his head and offer it to the image if he is united with the princess he has seen in the temple, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirty-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: Overall: 20.3 x 14 cm (8 x 5 1/2 in.); Painting only: 12.5 x 10 cm (4 15/16 x 3 15/16 in.)
• Collection: Indian Art
• Department: Indian and Southeast Asian Art
• Accession number: 1962.279.227.a

A detail from the museum

In this painting, intended for a Muslim patron, the sculpture of a Hindu deity lacks a face and hands.

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.
• Dalrymple, Sam. “Temples in Early Modern Hindustan.” Mārg 77, i. 3 (March 2026): 16–27.

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.