Green Parrot

Made by an Indian artist for a British civil servant working in Calcutta (now Kolkata), this bird is portrayed with precision and brilliant color. It appears to be of the same type as Tuti, the protagonist of the early Mughal Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot) manuscript. This example, however, has a black beak, indicating she is female, while the male Tuti has a red beak. Though loosely translated as “parrot,” Tuti is technically a Lord Derby’s parakeet. Because of its ability to talk, the parrot often appears in Indo-Iranian tales as a messenger of moral wisdom.