Folio from the Kathasaritsagara
This folio is from a vast compilation of tales in Sanskrit written by the eleventh-century poet Somadeva for the amusement of the Kashmiri queen Suryamati, and translated into Persian for Akbar (r. 1556–1605) in the late sixteenth century. Exactly which of the hundreds of Somadeva’s stories is depicted here has yet to be determined, but the action appears typical of these tales, which are fantastic and unusually complicated, involving many twists and turns.
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