Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): Fourth night: The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, c. 1560. 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 st
Page from Tales of a Parrot (Tuti-nama): Fourth night: The mendicant’s wife deceives him with a soldier, c. 1560. 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.
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Photo credit: © Heritage Art/Heritage Images / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
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Keywords: 1556-1605, akbar, art, cleveland, gold, gum, heritage, india, ink, mughal, museum, painting, paper, reign, tempera, unknown
