Cleveland Museum of Art
The forty wives and their secret paramours being punished by stoning to death, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-third Night
- Date
- c. 1560
- Medium
- gum tempera, ink, and gold on paper
- Culture
- Mughal India, court of Akbar (reigned 1556–1605)
- Department
- Indian and Southeast Asian Art
- Institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
The Raja’s wives have been hiding forty young men dressed as women in their chambers. When their amorous affairs were revealed, all eighty were killed. Their deaths fulfilled an old prophecy written on a mysterious skull. The Raja’s men stand on the edges of the composition, hurling stones into the pile of intertwined bodies. Mustaches are visible on several women in the pile, indicating that they are men in disguise.
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