The Tales · Indic
The Parrot and the Seventy Nights
A parrot tells a wife a story each night for seventy nights, to hold her at home until her husband returns.
A merchant’s son, Madana, is a wayward young man. A Brahmin friend gives him a talking parrot, and the son reforms. He then leaves on a trading journey. His wife, Prabhavati, plans to take a lover.
Each night she prepares to go out, and the parrot stops her with a story, left unfinished until dawn. This continues for seventy nights. On the last, the husband returns, and she confesses. The parrot’s closing tale pleads for her forgiveness.
What the book is
This is a book of stories about women who deceive, and a counsel that works by delay. The parrot does not forbid. He postpones. He fills the night with something more compelling than the errand, and by morning the moment is gone.
Counsel
Delay is a minister’s whole method. If the impulse cannot be refused, it can be deferred, and most impulses do not survive a night. The Pause on this site is the same device with fewer feathers.
Verification
Frame, Schmidt and Haksar are confirmed at secondary level (Wikipedia 'Shukasaptati'), not against a manuscript or the translation itself. The wife is named Prabhavati; the husband appears as Madana (or Madana Vinoda). Date: the work reached its present form by about the 12th century CE, the oldest manuscript is of the 15th century, and a minority view places the archetype in the early 9th century. The Persian Tutinama is said to derive from it.