The Raja’s daughter, born with three breasts, accompanies her blind husband and his hunchback guide on a journey, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-second Night

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Raja’s daughter, born with three breasts, accompanies her blind husband and his hunchback guide on a journey, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Forty-second 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 blind man clutches tightly to the hunchback’s staff with one hand and his wife’s arm with the other. At the front of the group, the hunchback points ahead to their ultimate destination—a city far from where the raja’s daughter was born. This image represents a story within the story that is being told by a parrot to the merchant’s son ‘Ubaid in order to cure his infatuation with his wife. The woman was forced to leave home after soothsayers predicted that she would someday harm her father.

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