The Tooti Nameh or Tales of a Parrot

Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi

IN THE PERSIAN LANGUAGE, WITH AN ENGLISH TRANSLATION.

London

July,1801

Tutinama (Tales of a Parrot) – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tutinama, literal meaning "Tales of a Parrot", is a 14th-century Persian series of 52 stories. An illustrated version containing 250 miniature paintings was commissioned by the Mughal Emperor, Akbar in the later part of the 16th century. The work redacted in 14th century AD in Iran derives from an earlier anthology ‘Seventy Tales of the Parrot’ in Sanskrit compiled under the title Śukasaptati (a part of katha literature) dated to the 12th century AD. In Iran, as in India, parrots (in light of their purported conversational abilities) are popular as storytellers in works of fiction

The adventure stories narrated by a parrot, night after night, for 52 successive nights, are moralistic stories to persuade his owner not to commit any adulterous act with any lover, in the absence of her husband.

The authorship of the text of the Tutinama is credited to Ziya'al-Din Nakhshabi or just Nakhshabi, an ethnic Persian physician and a Sufi saint who had migrated to Badayun, Uttar Pradesh in India in the 14th century, who wrote in the Persian language. He had translated and/or edited a classical Sanskrit version of the stories similar to Tutinama into Persian, around 1335 AD. It is conjectured that this small book of short stories, moralistic in theme, influenced Akbar during his formative years. It is also inferred that since Akbar had a harem (of women siblings, wives and women servants), the moralistic stories had specific orientation towards the control of women.

The main narrator of the 52 stories of Tutinama is a parrot, who tells stories to his owner, a woman called Khojasta, in order to prevent her from committing any illicit affair while her husband (a merchant by the name Maimunis) is away on business. The merchant had gone on his business trip leaving behind wife in the company of a mynah and a parrot. The wife strangles the mynah for advising her not to indulge in any illicit affair. The parrot, realizing the gravity of the situation, adopts a more indirect approach of narrating fascinating stories over the next fifty-two nights. The stories are narrated every successive night for 52 nights as an entertaining episode to keep Khojasta's attention and distract her from going out.

In this version only 35 from the 52 stories are including. The name of the translator is not mentioned in title page.

ADVERTISEMENT.

A Collection of Persian Tales, written expressly for the improvement of young. Students, accompanied with an English translation, is now submitted to the candour of the Public.

The learned Orientalist will allow, that, to render into English such subjects with any degree of success, is no pleasant or easy task, on account of the difficulty of accommodating the sense to a different idiom, so as to preserve the spirit of the original, and at the same time avoid the ridiculous extremes of insipidity or bombast; and, therefore, such a critic will readily grant indulgence to a translation, which pretends to no merit but that of faithfulness and perspicuity.

In the Name of the most merciful God!

After bestowing every kind of eulogy and praise on the Creator of heaven and earth, we proceed to set forth the nature and true intent of these pages, which is this. The narrations, tales, and fables of Hazerut Nekhsheby, (the mercy of the Almighty rest upon him!) in the Tootinameh, or Tales of a Parrot, being composed in a difficult and abstruse style, Mahommed Kadery (may God amend his condition!) for the sake of distinctness and illustration, and in order to render them intelligible to all descriptions of men, has written them in familiar and easy language, so as to comprise the epistolary style and ordinary conversation befitting persons of high rank, This is one of the above-mentioned Tales.