Birbal draws a line
Reading time aloud: about four minutes.
The shortest Birbal story, and the one people carry into adult life.
Akbar drew a line on the floor of the court. A good straight line, about a foot long.
"Make this line shorter," he said, "without rubbing out any part of it. Without touching it at all."
The courtiers came up one by one. One suggested covering part of it, which is not the same as shortening it. One suggested a trick of the light. One asked whether the emperor might reconsider the rules. Most looked at the floor.
Birbal walked up, knelt down, and drew a second line underneath the first — longer.
Then he stood back.
The first line had not been touched. And it was shorter.
Everyone else attacked the line, because that's what the question invited. Birbal changed what it was being compared to. The reason this story outlives the others is that it keeps applying: you very rarely beat something by diminishing it, and very often by building something longer beside it.
Told about Tenali Rama in the south with the same solution, and about Mullah Nasruddin further west. Nobody can say who did it first, which somehow suits the story.
More from the same court: Birbal and the khichdi and the mango tree.
Last updated: 2026-08-11
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