Text · parrot frame-story collection · India
Śukasaptati and the Tūtīnāma
Also known as Sukasaptati, Tutinama, Tales of a Parrot, Nakhshabi
Seventy tales told by a parrot to keep a merchant's wife at home each night while her husband is away, each story running until dawn. Nakhshabī turned it into the Persian Tūtīnāma in the fourteenth century, and it is one of the clearest cases of a Sanskrit frame-story book naturalised into Persian literature.
- Date
- 1100–1570
- Function
- Text & inscription
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
Akbar had an illustrated Tūtīnāma made early in his reign, and its two hundred and fifty miniatures are the first securely datable body of Mughal painting — which makes a Sanskrit parrot the occasion for the beginning of a school of art. The device of telling a story to postpone an outcome is the Arabian Nights' frame as well.
Connections (2)
- PatronageAkbar
Akbar commissioned an illustrated Tutinama early in his reign, and its roughly two hundred and fifty miniatures by a workshop under Mir Sayyid Ali and Abd al-Samad are the first securely datable body of Mughal painting. The style is visibly Persian masters and Indian painters working out a joint manner on the page, and the book they were doing it on is a Sanskrit parrot's story cycle.
- AnalogueVetālapañcaviṃśati
The Vetala tales and the Sukasaptati are the two Indian cycles built on postponement: a corpse that must be carried while riddles are answered, and a parrot that talks until dawn to stop a wife leaving. Scheherazade is the same device, and the Arabian Nights' frame is generally traced to an Indian or Persian original of exactly this kind.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Tutinama”. The Śukasaptati, trans. A.N.D. Haksar (2000); the Cleveland Museum of Art's Akbar-period Tūtīnāma manuscript.
Open Śukasaptati and the Tūtīnāma in the repository →