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Lot Essay
The Tutinama (Tales of the Parrot) is a collection of fifty-two moralizing fables compiled in Persian by Ziya al-Din Nakshahbi around 1329-30. These were based on an earlier Persian translation of a Sanskrit text known as the Sukasaptati (seventy tales of a parrot). The Tutinama is an amusing series of tales woven around a merchant, Maimum who leaves his wife, Khojasta, in the care of a parrot and a myna. The wife kills the myna for advising her not to take a lover while her huband is away; the parrot, to save its skin and preserve her fidelity, proceeds to tell her a series of stories over the next fifty-two nights.
This leaf, illustrated on both sides, comes from the story of a dihqan (village headman) and his cunning daughter-in-law. The first illustration depicts the daughter-in-law seducing a young man, with the help of an older woman acting as an intermediary. The second illustration shows the moment that the dihqan discovers the couple together at night. The dihqan takes the daughter-in-law's ankle bracelet to show his son as evidence of his wife's infidelity. However, she is able to outwit her father-in-law and convince both him and her husband of her innocence (see Ziya al-Din Nakhshabi, Tuti-nama, Fathullah Mujtaba’i & Ghulam-‘Ali Arya (eds), Tehran, H. sh. 1372⁄1993, pp. 81-81.).
Two extensively illustrated imperial copies of the Tutinama survive from the early years of Akbar's reign (1556-1605). The first survives virtually complete in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Our folio comes from the second, dispersed, copy. The bulk of the manuscript, some 143 folios and 102 miniatures, are in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Linda Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, London 1995, Vol.I, pp.21-74). Hence it is commonly referred to as the ‘Chester Beatty Tutinama’.
The manuscript was brought to France by General Jean-François Allard (1785-1839) who had been in the service of Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was later purchased by the prominent manuscript collector Felix Feuillet (also known as Baron F.S. Feuillet de Conches) and was dispersed towards the end of the 19th century when the Baron’s collection was dissolved. Other folios are now in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (68.8.47), the Keir Collection (B.W. Robinson (ed.), Islamic Painting and the Arts of the book, London, 1976, V.I, pp.235-36, pl.107), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.40-1966), the National Museum, New Delhi, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.81.8.6) and the David Collection, Copenhagen (3 / 1999) to name a few. Illustrated folios recently sold in these Rooms on 28 October 2021, lot 41, and 31 March 2022, lot 73.
This leaf, illustrated on both sides, comes from the story of a dihqan (village headman) and his cunning daughter-in-law. The first illustration depicts the daughter-in-law seducing a young man, with the help of an older woman acting as an intermediary. The second illustration shows the moment that the dihqan discovers the couple together at night. The dihqan takes the daughter-in-law's ankle bracelet to show his son as evidence of his wife's infidelity. However, she is able to outwit her father-in-law and convince both him and her husband of her innocence (see Ziya al-Din Nakhshabi, Tuti-nama, Fathullah Mujtaba’i & Ghulam-‘Ali Arya (eds), Tehran, H. sh. 1372⁄1993, pp. 81-81.).
Two extensively illustrated imperial copies of the Tutinama survive from the early years of Akbar's reign (1556-1605). The first survives virtually complete in the Cleveland Museum of Art. Our folio comes from the second, dispersed, copy. The bulk of the manuscript, some 143 folios and 102 miniatures, are in the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin (Linda Leach, Mughal and other Indian Paintings from the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin, London 1995, Vol.I, pp.21-74). Hence it is commonly referred to as the ‘Chester Beatty Tutinama’.
The manuscript was brought to France by General Jean-François Allard (1785-1839) who had been in the service of Sikh ruler Maharaja Ranjit Singh. It was later purchased by the prominent manuscript collector Felix Feuillet (also known as Baron F.S. Feuillet de Conches) and was dispersed towards the end of the 19th century when the Baron’s collection was dissolved. Other folios are now in The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (68.8.47), the Keir Collection (B.W. Robinson (ed.), Islamic Painting and the Arts of the book, London, 1976, V.I, pp.235-36, pl.107), the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.40-1966), the National Museum, New Delhi, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (M.81.8.6) and the David Collection, Copenhagen (3 / 1999) to name a few. Illustrated folios recently sold in these Rooms on 28 October 2021, lot 41, and 31 March 2022, lot 73.