AKBAR AND HIS MINISTER.
Days and months passed by, and the Badshah began to feel more and more the loss of his once favourite minister, and though himself searching in the villages near at hand, and making diligent enquiries everywhere, he failed to discover the slightest trace of him.
Crushed by grief and broken-hearted, he at last called a council of his ministers, and stated to them how much he missed the presence about him of his old attached friend Bīrbal. They, perhaps somewhat jealous of his pre-eminence in the mind of the Badshah, seemed to be callous and indifferent as to his fate. Whereupon the Badshah became as enraged with them as he had before been with Bīrbal, and threatened to decapitate them if his hiding-place were not soon discovered, and the runaway brought back to him.
The ministers and nobles in their alarm, at last hit upon an expedient which they submissively laid before the Badshah.
They said, “Oh Badshah! If an order is given throughout the Empire of so senseless and foolish a nature that it will be impossible for any of your Majesty’s subjects to comply with it, there is just a chance that we may be able to find out the place of concealment of the ever terse and humorous Bīrbal.”
The Badshah listened to their suggestion, told them to act up to it, but under any circumstances, and at the cost of their heads if they failed, Bīrbal must be brought ere long into the Presence.
Accordingly an edict went forth calling upon the “Headman” of every village in the Dominions, on pain of death, to bring the principal “well” of the village to do obeisance to the King’s “well” at the Palace. The edict was entrusted to horsemen who conveyed it to every village in the Empire.
The whole country was filled with lamentation and distress, for it was seen to be impossible to conform to the order of the Badshah.
When the proclamation reached the village where Bīrbal was in hiding, he shared in the sorrow around him, and bethought him of a way of escape for the people, but he was known to them only as a Fakir.