The peculiar tradition of composing the body of an animal from other animals and human beings, in an arrangement resembling a jigsaw puzzle, was a longstanding one. Any deeper symbolism of such composite creatures is not known, but the visual effects are striking. Like so many other elements of sixteenth-century painting in Bukhara, this particular conceit would appear to have arrived by way of Herat, the center of Timurid culture throughout most of the fifteenth century. It became popular in India in the seventeenth century, presumably as a result of contacts with Bukhara.

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