The Shortest Line

The great hall of the palace was full that morning, and the Emperor was bored with business.

Petitions had been heard. Reports had been read. Ambassadors had bowed and been thanked and had gone. The courtiers stood in their rows, waiting to be dismissed, shifting a little in the warm air.

Emperor Akbar looked them over. Then he held out his hand.

"Bring me a piece of chalk," he said.

A line on the floor

A servant brought the chalk. To everyone's surprise, the Emperor rose from his throne, came down the steps, and knelt on the smooth stone floor.

With one steady stroke he drew a long, straight white line.

He stood up, dusted his hands and looked around at his court.

"Here is a puzzle for you," he said. "I want this line made shorter. But you may not rub any of it out. You may not cut it, or smudge it, or change it in any way. In fact, you may not touch it at all."

There was a murmur around the hall.

"Shorter, Your Majesty?" said one minister. "Without touching it?"

"Without touching it," said Akbar, and went back to his throne to watch.

The court tries

The courtiers gathered round the line and stared at it, as if it might shrink by itself.

One of them knelt down, looked at it closely, and stood up again shaking his head. "It cannot be done," he said quietly to his neighbour. "If you can't rub it out, it stays the length it is."

Another walked from one end of the line to the other, counting his steps. It did not help.

A third had an idea and brightened. "Your Majesty, if we look at it from far away, from the very end of the hall, it seems shorter!"

Akbar laughed. "Then I shall look at it from close by," he said, "and it will be long again."

A fourth suggested that a cloth might be laid over half of it. "Then you would be hiding it," said the Emperor, "not shortening it. And the cloth would touch it."

One by one, the cleverest men in the empire fell silent. They glanced at one another and at the line and at the floor. A few of them looked a little cross, as if the Emperor had played an unfair trick.

Then someone said, "Where is Birbal?"

Birbal picks up the chalk

Birbal had been standing quietly near the back of the hall. Now he came forward, bowed to the Emperor and looked down at the line.

He looked at it for only a moment.

Then he picked up the chalk, knelt down beside the Emperor's line, and drew another one next to it, parallel to it. His line was straight and steady, just like the Emperor's.

But it was longer. Much longer.

Birbal stood up and stepped back.

The courtiers looked at the two lines lying side by side on the stone floor. And all at once, the Emperor's line, which no one had touched, looked short.

There was a silence. Then Akbar began to clap, and soon the whole hall was clapping with him.

"Well done, Birbal," said the Emperor. "Explain it to them."

The lesson in the chalk

Birbal turned to the court.

"His Majesty's line has not changed," he said. "It is exactly the length it was a moment ago. None of us rubbed it out or cut it or touched it. But nothing is long or short all by itself. A thing only looks short when there is something longer beside it."

He handed the chalk back to the servant.

"All of you were trying to make the line shorter," he went on, "and you couldn't do it without spoiling it. So I drew a longer one instead."

The Emperor nodded slowly, and when he spoke again, he was no longer playing a game.

"Remember this," he said to the hall, "the next time you are jealous of someone. When another man rises at court, or wins a prize, or is praised, it is tempting to try to rub out a little of his line. To speak against him. To make him smaller. But that only spoils things, and it does not make you one inch longer."

He looked down at the two chalk lines on the floor.

"If you want to stand taller than someone," he said, "don't cut them down. Grow."

The court was quiet for a long while after that. And the two lines were left on the floor all that day, so that everyone who passed through the hall would see them.

About this story

Akbar ruled the Mughal Empire from 1556 to 1605, and Birbal was one of his most trusted courtiers. They were real people, but the many stories of Birbal's clever answers are folk tales, told in India for generations. This one is among the best known, and like all of them it changes a little with every teller. This version is a shortened, simplified retelling.