Once Emperor Akbar thought of a playing a trick on Birbal. He gave one egg to each of his ministers before Birbal reached the court.
When Birbal arrived in the court, the Emperor told everybody about a strange dream that he saw the previous night. He said, “A divine being appeared in my dream and said that I would be able to judge the honesty of my ministers by giving them a simple task. I must ask them to go to the royal garden pond and get an egg from there. Those who are honest, will find an egg there and those who are not, shall return empty handed.”
Then the Emperor directed all of his courtiers to go to the royal garden pool and bring back an egg. One by one, all his ministers went to the pond and returned with the egg, which the Emperor had previously given them.
Birbal also went to the pond and looked around for an egg. He even jumped into the pond but failed to find any egg. He soon realized that the Emperor was trying to play a trick on him. So, he thought for a while and then entered the court crowing like a rooster.
The Emperor asked him to stop makingthat irritating noise and produce the egg.
Birbal smiled and replied that only hens lay eggs, and as since he was a rooster, he could not produce an egg.
Akbar burst out laughing and understood that it was not easy to outwit his clever minister.
The Pickled Clue
Once, a man planned to go for a pilgrimage with his family. He put all his savings in an empty pickle jar and gave it to his neighbor for safe custody. The neighbor took it and promised to take good care of his money.
When the man returned from the pilgrimage, he went to meet his neighbour and asked for his jar. The neighbor brought the jar from inside and gave it to the man. When the man opened the jar, he saw that there was just some mango pickle in the jar, instead of the money. He understood that his neighbor had replaced the money with the mango pickle. He said, “Sir, when I gave you this jar, it was full of my hard earned money, now it contains only mango pickle. How could it be so?”
The dishonest neighbor replied, “I do not know anything about your money. I did not touch the jar in your absence. Whatever you gave me, I am giving it back to you.”
The man was devastated and went to Birbal for justice. Birbal summoned the neighbor and asked him, “Where is the money that was kept in this jar?”
The neighbor replied, “Respected sir, I have already told this man that I do not know anything about his money. I did not open his jar even once! I just took it from him, kept it safely and then returned it back to him when he came back. Instead of thanking me for taking his jar of pickle, he is accusing me of theft.”
Birbal realised that the man would not easily confess his crime, so he called a cook from the royal kitchen and asked him, “My good man, could you tell us how old this pickle is?”
The cook was very experienced and after having a careful look at the pickle, he told Birbal that the pickle was not even a month old. It was definitely not made six months back, as per the claim of the neighbour.
This is how Birbal caught the neighbour’s lie and proved that he had stolen the money from the jar. The culprit was duly punished for the act of theft.