Counting the Crows

The palace garden was full of crows.

They sat in rows along the walls. They hopped across the lawns. They squabbled in the mango trees and strutted along the edge of the fountains, as if they owned the place. Every time a servant carried out a tray of food, a dozen black heads turned to watch.

Emperor Akbar was walking in the garden that morning with his courtiers, and he was in a playful mood.

"Caw!" said a crow, right above his head.

"Caw yourself," said the Emperor. Then he stopped, and a twinkle came into his eye.

A very hard question

He turned to the courtiers walking behind him.

"Tell me," he said. "How many crows are there in our city?"

The courtiers looked at one another.

"How many crows, Your Majesty?" said one.

"How many crows," said Akbar. "Exactly how many. I want a number."

The courtiers looked up at the trees. They looked at the walls. They looked at the sky, where more crows were wheeling and calling over the rooftops.

One of them began to count on his fingers. "One, two, three, four... oh, that one has flown away. One, two..."

Another said, "Your Majesty, it would take a hundred men a hundred days to count them all."

A third said, "Your Majesty, crows do not sit still to be counted!"

Akbar folded his arms and waited. Nobody could give him a number.

Birbal arrives

Just then, Birbal came walking along the garden path.

Birbal was the Emperor's minister and his good friend. He was famous all over the kingdom for his quick wits and his kind heart, and he was very hard to catch out.

"Ah, Birbal!" said Akbar. "Perhaps you can help us. My courtiers cannot tell me how many crows live in our city. Can you?"

Birbal did not even look up at the trees.

"Of course, Your Majesty," he said politely. "There are ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three crows in the city."

The courtiers gasped. The Emperor's eyebrows went up.

"Ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three?" said Akbar. "Exactly?"

"Exactly, Your Majesty."

What if you are wrong?

Akbar smiled a crafty smile. He thought he had caught his friend at last.

"And what if I send my men to count them," he said, "and they find more crows than that?"

"Then, Your Majesty," said Birbal, "it means some crows from other towns have come to visit their relatives here."

The courtiers began to giggle behind their hands.

"I see," said Akbar. "And what if my men find fewer crows than that?"

Birbal bowed. "Then, Your Majesty, it means some of our crows have gone away to visit their relatives in other towns."

For a moment the garden was quite silent.

Then Emperor Akbar threw back his head and laughed. He laughed so loudly that every crow on the wall flapped up into the air at once, cawing in alarm, and the courtiers laughed with him until they had to wipe their eyes.

"Birbal," said the Emperor, still chuckling, "you have answered a question that has no answer, and you have made it impossible to prove you wrong!"

Why it was a good answer

Later that day, one of the young courtiers came to find Birbal.

"Sir," he said, "I don't understand. You can't really know how many crows there are. Did you just make that number up?"

Birbal smiled. "Of course I did," he said. "Nobody could count every crow in the city. The crows themselves don't stay still long enough."

"Then why didn't you just say that?"

"Because the Emperor wasn't really asking about crows," said Birbal. "He was playing a game with us, to see who could think quickly and cheerfully when there was no easy answer. Some of you worried. Some of you started to count. I decided to play the game with him."

He looked up at the crows, who had settled back on the wall as if nothing had happened.

"When someone asks you a question that can't be answered," he said, "it's often wiser to make them smile than to make them cross. And it's always wiser to stop and think about what they really want to know."

The young courtier thought about this for a long time. Then he looked up at the wall.

"Ninety-five thousand, four hundred and sixty-three," he said, "plus visitors."

And Birbal laughed.

About this story

Akbar was the Mughal emperor of India from 1556 to 1605, and Birbal was one of his trusted courtiers. They were real people, but the hundreds of clever stories about them are folk tales, told and retold by families across India for centuries. The details change from teller to teller, and even the number of crows is different in almost every version. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.